The primary Foot Fetishist?

April 4, 2016 By AdrienneMayor

Adrienne Mayor (Regular Contributor)

A foot fetish is a sexual attraction to naked ft. Of non-genital body parts, feet are probably the most fetishized. Not only is free foot fetish, podophilia, surprisingly prevalent, however it is a very historical phenomenon. The earliest literary proof comes from a set of 64 brooding, obsessive "Love Letters" composed in the second century Ad; authorship is uncertain however the work is generally attributed to Philostratus. The love letters are bisexual, addressed to girls and male youths.

Letter 18 "To a Barefoot Boy," for example, insists that only the elderly, lame, and infirm must wear slippers, sandals, and boots-and anyway leather-based tends to pinch, blister, and disfigure one’s feet. "Why don’t you all the time walk barefoot? . . . Let nothing come between your naked foot and the earth." The mud will welcome your tread, declares, the lover, who vows to kiss the boy’s footprints and goes on to rhapsodize on the right shape of the beloved’s toes, evaluating them to "new and unusual flowers sprung from the earth."

"Do not ever wear sneakers!" the lover demands in Letter 36 "To a Woman." Leave your ft bare like your neck and face, he pleads, without any cosmetics or adornments, not even chains of gold or silver. Be like silver-footed Thetis and newly born Aphrodite strolling barefoot on the shore. "Do not torture your ft, my love, and don't cover them . . . walk softly and go away prints of your individual foot behind you, for many who would love to kiss them."

Freud, true to his own obsessions, believed that sexualization of ft arose because they appeared penis-like. But modern mind research point to a neurological rationalization for podophilia. In the human brain’s physique-imaging map, ft and genitalia are adjacent areas.