Fetishism is a bewildering sea of human fantasies, displaying the broadest and most diverse expressions of our endless creativity and imagination.
More than that, history proves that there will always be new fetishes, just as there were old ones that have silently vanished. Fetishes spawn in their own time, by their own logic, in incomprehensible numbers. No two fetishists are exactly alike, not even when they enjoy the same videos and images.
Defining Fetish
A quick word on what fetish actually means. A fetish, strictly speaking, is arousal fixed on an object, material, or body part. A shoe. Latex. Feet. These days, the word stretches to cover actions too, like a “fetish” for spanking or bondage, though clinicians would file those under the broader term, paraphilia. Para means beside or beyond. Philia means love. Put them together, and you get a desire that runs beside the conventional, love that wandered off the main menu.
What outsiders rarely grasp is how specific the wiring gets. A fetish is not “I like feet.” It can be a precise choreography. A particular position, particular words, a particular tone of voice, odors, taste, a particular fabric, sometimes in a particular order. Change one element and the charge collapses. A fetish is everything the mind welded to it long ago.
Fetish is a Time Capsule
In Different Loving, I wrote about some of the now-amusingly quaint fetishes of the past, from a love of shoe buttons to obsessions with ornate hats, among both men and women.
Fashion historian Valerie Steele made that point in her 1996 book, Fetish: Fashion, Sex and Power. Fetishes are not eternal. They are culturally generated. The object has to exist before the fetish can form.
Every era spawns its own erotic objects. And because shame drives fetishists into silence almost instantly, we only know fetish history from the fraction documented by von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis (1886). He documented hundreds of case studies, including foot fetishism, hair fetishism, fur, leather, shoes, gloves, handkerchiefs, and many of the object fetishes we still see today. If there were fetishes for bustles, parasols, or pocket watches (and likely there were), they died with the people who once enjoyed them.
Time Zips On
Quick example: Zippers were invented in the 1890s. By the 1920s and 30s they were being used on shoes and tobacco pouches, and by the mid-1930s, they were used to fasten trousers in front.
Today, zipper fetish content is its own niche on adult sites. One may conclude that if zippers ever go out of style, the fetish for them will slowly follow.
Often Wrong But Never in Doubt
It isn’t that I don’t trust psychiatrists. I just don’t trust them on alternate sexuality because they belong to our culture, which trains us all to be suspicious of unfamiliar or unusual sex.
The American Psychiatric Association has identified fourteen fetishes and paraphilias worth naming in its diagnostic manual (DSM). Fourteen total. Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Bologna analyzed 381 online fetish communities and stopped counting at hundreds. That was in 2007. The internet has had nearly two decades to generate more.
The DSM-5-TR, published in 2022, is the latest edition. It lists eight paraphilic disorders: voyeuristic, exhibitionistic, frotteuristic, sexual masochism, sexual sadism, pedophilic, fetishistic, and transvestic. American Psychiatric Association. The “Other Specified Paraphilic Disorder” catch-all bucket adds telephone scatologia, necrophilia, zoophilia, coprophilia, klismaphilia, and urophilia. Medscape.
The Incredible Diversity of a Single Fetish
A bored sixteen-year-old with a smartphone can name more fetishes than that.
Meanwhile, no one seems to be documenting or studying the endless permutations of fetishes. Sure, some people love rubber raincoats, and you might think that is more than enough detail for you. But others only like rubber raincoats that are black, while some prefer red, and some love wearing them on the street because it’s a kind of exhibitionism for them, while others strictly limit it to the boudoir.
The APA’s fourteen tells us almost nothing about the actual erotic lives of fetishists. It tells us quite a lot about the limits of institutional psychiatry.
The World’s Most Common Fetish Is a Kaleidoscope
The foot is the fixed set of mirrors. Rotate the glass, and you get a different picture every time.
Let me tell you about the foot and shoe fetishes I have personally encountered, in the Scene, in research, and in my office. Settle in.
Boots and Shoes and Hose, Oh My
Black leather boots. Thigh-high boots. Crotch-high boots. Patent leather. Riding boots. Combat boots. Cowboy boots. Rubber Wellingtons. Lace-up Victorian granny boots. Men’s boots with low, thick heels. Women’s boots with heels of every shape and height. And the ballet boot, which forces the foot into a vertical position and is nearly impossible to walk in. That is just boots.
Now shoes. Pumps. Stilettos. Kitten heels. Platforms. Mary Janes. Keds. Pristine designer sneakers. Filthy beat-up sneakers. Ballet flats. Open-toe sandals. Mules. Clogs. Flip-flops. The worn house slipper.
Then there is what covers the foot, because for many, the bare foot is beside the point. Sheer pantyhose. Fishnets. Seamed stockings. Crisp white ankle socks. Sweaty gym socks. Knee-highs. Toe socks. And, for the purists, feet that must never be covered at all.
The foot itself fractures just as far. High arches. Flat feet. Long toes. Short toes. Painted nails. Bare nails. Soft pampered soles. Hard, calloused soles. Tiny feet. Big feet. Men’s feet. Women’s feet. Trans feet. Wrinkled soles. The exact curve of an instep.
And then scent and state, an entire universe of its own. Surgically clean and freshly pedicured. Lightly worn after a day in shoes. Frankly sweaty. Gloriously stinky. And every precise gradation in between, including the connoisseur who wants feet that have been working all day but are, please, not too ripe.
Fetishists Contain Multitudes!
Each variation on Foot Fetish is its own special flavor of feet and legs. Even how people feel about them can factor in
Some only want to look. Others need photos. They may crave to hold feet, worship, massage, kiss, lick, sniff them, suck them, or be trampled, even kicked, by them.
Every item on that list is a real person’s deepest erotic truth. And I have not even attempted to research how many more variations on feet/shoes/legs exist, because they are literally as numerous as fetishists themselves.
The Culture Is the Pathology
In a pro-science world, no fetish or paraphilia would require treatment unless the act itself is criminal. Being unhappy about your fetish is predictable because world culture is a mess about sex. Fetishes are demonized, shamed, rejected, and mocked. Many of us grow up feeling like freaks for being different from peers, whether it’s because we’re kinky, disabled, neurodivergent, or otherwise diverse.
Non-criminal fetishism should never be treated by anyone who frames common sexual behaviors as abnormalities. Leave that to credentialed sexologists. Sex is not like anything else in human psychology. Respect that wisdom.
If you want the full landscape of fetish and desire, explained without shame, judgment, or a diagnostic checklist, it is all in The Truth About Sex, Volume II: Sex for Grown-Ups.
Photo credit: Barbara Light @ Pexels.com
