When Jake appeared on Love Island, there was no indication that he pays anyone for foot pics, or sells his own. This is probably a reference to Love Island star Jake Cornish, who entered 2021’s villa and revealed he was very into sucking toes. At the time, The Sun reported fan complaints that the show was “turning into Love Island”. But now it’s even on the BBC before the 9pm watershed: last summer Holby City featured a storyline about Kylie, a nurse, joining a subscription service to make money from foot pics. This isn’t exactly new: fans of Sex and the City will remember the episode where Charlotte encountered a shoe salesman who had a foot fetish.
Television has also made foot fetishes more mainstream too.
Feet Finder – a site which describes itself as the “safest, easiest and most secure website” for users to view, buy and sell custom feet content – claims to have over 350,000 daily users. On WikiFeet, the feet of celebrities and public figures can be rated too (everyone from Drew Barrymore to British political commentator Ash Sarkar has a “star” rating). But there are other platforms too: Rate My Foot is a website where people upload pictures to be “rated” by strangers. Phil tells me he’s spent “possibly thousands” on custom foot pictures and videos on the over-18s subscription site in the last two years. OnlyFans has made all kinds of fetishes, particularly feet, much more mainstream since it launched in 2016. Why are foot fetishes suddenly everywhere? This might be a reason for the foot fetish’s apparent gender split, or why it feels like fetishes of all kinds seem more common now – just as society seems to be becoming more kink-positive. Besides, Lehmiller thinks fetishes, including of the foot variety, are more likely to be learned behaviours.
Words like “cross wiring” might sound alarming, but it’s important to note that there’s nothing wrong with having a foot fetish. Neuroscientist Vilanayar Ramachandran, who authored the study, says this may lead to a “cross-wiring” in the brain between the two areas, where feet then become associated with genitalia and sex. That’s the part of the brain which receives and processes sensory information around the body. A study into phantom limbs revealed that feet and genitalia (not just penises) are in “adjacent areas of the somatosensory cortex”. Although he wasn’t totally off base, more recent science has provided a more detailed thesis. Sigmund Freud once claimed that people sexualise feet because they resemble penises. Is there a scientific reason why some people – mostly men – are turned on by feet? Every person and every fetish is different, of course, so people can arrive at the same fetish for completely unique reasons. And there does seem to be a gender split: the figures for women were much lower, at 10 percent for lesbian/bi women and just 5 percent for heterosexual women. For heterosexual men the number was similar (18 percent). That’s hard to know for sure, but 2018 study of 4000 Americans by social psychologist Dr Justin Lehmiller found 21 percent of gay/bi men had fantasised about feet.