Foot fetishism, foot partialism, foot worship, or podophilia is a pronounced sexual interest in feet.[1] It is the most common form of sexual preference for otherwise non-sexual objects or body parts.[2]
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Foot fetishism has been defined as a pronounced sexual interest in the feet or footwear. It is a mainly male interest. Sigmund Freud considered foot binding as a form of fetishism.[3] For a foot fetishist, points of attraction include the shape and size of the foot and toes (e.g., long toes, short toes, painted toes, high arches, etc.), jewelry (toe rings, ankle bracelets, etc.), treatments (such as pedicures), state of dress (barefoot, flip flops, etc.), odor, and any form of sensory interaction (e.g., licking, kissing, smelling/sniffing, sucking toes, tickling, etc.).[3]
In order to estimate the relative frequency of fetishes researchers at the University of Bologna examined 381 internet discussions of fetish groups, in which at least 5,000 people had been participating. Researchers estimated the prevalences of different fetishes based on the following elements:
It was concluded that the most common fetishes were for body parts or for objects usually associated with body parts (33% and 30% respectively). Among those people preferring body parts, feet and toes were preferred by the greatest number, with 47% of those sampled preferring them. Among those people preferring objects related to body parts, footwear (shoes, boots, etc.) was most preferred (64%).[4][5]
Foot fetishism is the most common form of sexual fetish related to the body.[6][7]
In August 2006, AOL released a database of the search terms submitted by their subscribers. In ranking only those phrases that included the word "fetish", it was found that the most common search was for feet.[8]
Some researchers have hypothesized that foot fetishism increases as a response to epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases. In one study, conducted by Dr. A James Giannini at Ohio State University[9] an increased interest in feet as sexual objects was observed during the great gonorrhea epidemic of twelfth century Europe, and the syphilis epidemics of the 16th and 19th centuries in Europe. In the same study, the frequency of foot-fetish depictions in pornographic literature was measured over a 30 year interval. An exponential increase was noted during the period of the current AIDS epidemic. In these cases, sexual foot play was viewed as a safe-sex alternative. However, the researchers noted that these epidemics overlapped periods of relative female emancipation.[10] Sexual focus on female feet was also hypothesized to have been a reflection of a more dominant posture of the woman in sexual-social relations. (The first surviving mention of foot fetish is by Bertold of Regensburg in 1220.)[11]
Neurologist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran proposed that foot fetishism is caused by the feet and the genitals occupying adjacent areas of the somatosensory cortex, possibly entailing some neural crosstalk between the two.[12]
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