How having a foot fetish has gone mainstream
In 2011, 50 Shades of Grey introduced everyone and their auntie to “BDSM”. I’m using quotation marks because it was a certain idea of what BDSM is, with “slave contracts”, caning and “red rooms” set on a backdrop of supercars and billion-dollar conglomerates. Next came the films, featuring cameos from Rita Ora in an assortment of stressful wigs and confusing accents. Suddenly, a version of kink had become mainstream.
A decade on, it feels like the foot fetish is now the accessible kink-of-the-moment. A “gateway fetish”, if you will. And everywhere I look, there’s people cashing-in on it.
Not convinced? Let’s start with my one true love: reality TV. The Real Housewives of Miami’s Larsa Pippen claims to make $10,000 a day selling foot pictures on OnlyFans. Closer to home, Kerry Katona says she’s made £1m selling foot pictures on the site, finally drawing a line under years of financial instability. Raquel Leviss, from Vanderpump Rules, recently raised $30,000 to pay for cosmetic surgery by selling pictures of her feet. (In some, her toes are squished in spaghetti…)
What’s the appeal?
“Feet are just really hot”, says James*, 31. Ten years ago, James started paying men he met online for pictures of their feet. It started off around £20 per photo and eventually increased to £150 per picture. But why? “I think it’s something to do with paying money for literally the thing that walks on the ground,” he says. “It’s a submissive urge.”
Phil*, 29, has a foot fetish too. “When I was watching porn videos, I realised I kept watching the girl’s feet, even more than other parts of her body,” he tells GQ. The quest for more foot content took him to Tumblr, and eventually what he and James both call “Foot Twitter” – a corner of Twitter that centres around sharing pictures and videos of feet. Similarly to James, Phil hints at a submissive nature to his interest in feet – though he doesn’t use that word. “For me it’s about worshipping the feet of a woman who is hot and probably out of my league,” he says. “When I see a picture, I imagine how they feel and smell. On some level I know I’ll never experience it in the flesh.”
How common are foot fetishes?
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. For heterosexual men the number was similar (18 percent). 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.
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. Sigmund Freud once claimed that people sexualise feet because they resemble penises. Although he wasn’t totally off base, more recent science has provided a more detailed thesis. A study into phantom limbs revealed that feet and genitalia (not just penises) are in “adjacent areas of the somatosensory cortex”. That’s the part of the brain which receives and processes sensory information around the body. 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.
Words like “cross wiring” might sound alarming, but it’s important to note that there’s nothing wrong with having a foot fetish. Besides, Lehmiller thinks fetishes, including of the foot variety, are more likely to be learned behaviours. 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.
Why are foot fetishes suddenly everywhere?
OnlyFans has made all kinds of fetishes, particularly feet, much more mainstream since it launched in 2016. 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. But there are other platforms too: Rate My Foot is a website where people upload pictures to be “rated” by strangers. 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). 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.
Television has also made foot fetishes more mainstream too. 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. 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. At the time, The Sun reported fan complaints that the show was “turning into Love Island”. This is probably a reference to Love Island star Jake Cornish, who entered 2021’s villa and revealed he was very into sucking toes.
A Love Island contestant proudly saying he’s into feet was a big moment for foot fetish visibility. It’s a show that is highly sexualised, but never kinky. “Love Island is probably as ‘vanilla’ as it gets,” says Vice UK’s Lauren O’Neill, a reality TV expert. “Sex-wise, it’s certainly not pushing the envelope in any real way, in fact, often it's the opposite – it's strange to think of a show where people technically 'have sex on TV' as conservative, but Love Island's values often are.”
Foot fetishes have long been considered a fairly mild turn-on compared to other fetishes. But after an appearance on Love Island – the bastion of basicness – is the foot fetish now seen as “vanilla” by the masses too? O’Neill thinks not. “Generally, the show's approach to sexuality is a comic one,” she tells GQ. “Jake’s interest in feet was definitely presented on the show as an oddity and reacted to as such on social media too. It was just niche enough not to be everyday, but not threatening to the status quo either, which is probably why the foot fetish found a place on the show.”
When Jake appeared on Love Island, there was no indication that he pays anyone for foot pics, or sells his own. If there had been, well, it’s likely that scene would have ended up on the cutting-room floor, given the show’s reported dislike for OnlyFans and sex work. Like many people with an interest in feet, Jake’s might not involve financial transactions.
Twitter and OnlyFans
Still, on Twitter and OnlyFans, there is a lot of crossover between people who buy and sell foot pictures, and people who take part in “financial domination”. This is a kink where submissives (subs) pay money to a “dominant” (dom) person as part of a power exchange. Ben* (@MasterDomUK) has been selling foot content on Twitter, OnlyFans and other fetish sites for about 7 months. His partner of eight years, Roxy* (@roxysfeetxoxo), has been selling foot pics since March 2021. Ben caters to a variety of fetishes, including “findom”. He estimates foot fetish content accounted for 90 percent of his client base originally, but it’s still definitely over half of the content he makes now.
Pretty much everyone who approaches Ben is gay and self-defines as “a sub”. He thinks they’re attracted to his feet because they’re “big, hairy and manly,” plus they enjoy being submissive to an “unattainable” straight man. “I’m fascinated by kinks and asking questions about what turns people on, I’d love to study more about the psychology behind it,” he says. And does it turn him on, even though he’s straight? “Absolutely. I genuinely enjoy it! Who doesn’t love being admired and paid for it?”
Ben says his income fluctuates massively, but he and Roxy now earn more than they ever have done before. He’s currently producing fetish content full-time and, in his best month ever, he earned £7,000. But he insists it’s not as easy as it looks. “I've never worked harder at anything in my life,” he says. “I’m constantly at it, whether it’s talking to people, thinking of ideas, recording content, editing stuff.”
Without social media and platforms like OnlyFans, this type of career probably wouldn’t be as accessible. For now, the foot fetish seems to exist in a sweet spot: it’s fairly mainstream, but still kinky enough for people to seek it out and, often, pay for it. “It’s such a huge fetish, but most people still aren’t happy to admit to it publicly yet,” Ben says. “So they’ll come online anonymously and be sneaky about it with someone like me.”
The foot fetish being so in-demand feels representative of a culture that’s increasingly accepting of some kinks. Much like the “BDSM” of 50 Shades, the foot fetish is being allowed to dip its toes into the mainstream because it rocks the boat slightly, without destabilising it. On some level, though, it’s probably shifting our ideas of what’s “normal” – and that’s no small feat.
*Names have been changed
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