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Foot Fetish: It is clear that in recent decades fetishism has changed a lot.
Long time ago, humans were not capable of abstract thinking and therefore, unable to link natural phenomena to the will of a god. Hence, their worshiping was focused towards material objects. That was possible because for primitives there was no distinction between animate und inanimate – everything had a sort of a spiritual life. Such a mentality suggests that an object distinguished by strangeness or having been the protagonist in an extraordinary event (a dream), gained a great power over other humans, things or events.
The moment we began to describe this kind of objects as fetishes dates back in to the dawn of the Portuguese Empire when their sailors started to call a series of amulets “feticiou”. Those were shells worn by indigenous peoples and characterized by a sacred function. The relationship between people and these amulets can be described as adoration, idolatry and fanaticism.
Therefore, in the following years the word fetishism was used by scholars of ancient religions to describe any form of primitive religiosity, contained in the cult of natural or manufactured objects employed in rituals or used to achieve profane purposes.
Neverthless, in our society fetishism has reached a predominantly sexual meaning. A fetishist is a person who reaches sexual fulfillment trough a tactile, olfactory or even just a visual relationship with non-sexual organs. In the beginning of last century, Freud explained the origin of a fetishist drive in a male with the moment in which he realizes that his mother is devoid of a penis, causing an emotional state in which the child mentally replaces that missing part with the part of the body he had seen immediately before, like a foot for instance.
The latter is the most common type of fetishism, and also the one that comes in most variations. A good looking foot, but not only, can trigger the sexual drive. Some appreciate ugly feet, others – dirty feet, or high heeled shoes, boots, smelly socks. There are many ways for this tendency finds expression: some people, after fixing their gaze on a pretty foot, desire to treat it with some massaging. Others, however, yearn to get a foot-job which is like a hand-job but made with feet. Some may want to lick and suck the toes or may get turned on after sniffing the aroma of it. Foot fetishism can also be employed in more extreme sexual practices like trampling – the desire to be crushed by feet, or ball busting.
One of the most famous foot fetishist is Quentin Tarantino. Though he never admitted to this fascination, in almost every movie of his filmography there are scenes with close-up shots of women feet. The most memorable one is to be seen in “From dusk till dawn”. In the movie, Tarantino himself drinks beer while sucking the toe of the actress Salma Hayek.
However, not everyone agrees with Freud’s statement about the origin of fetishes. For Jordan Paterson, a well-known contemporary psychologist, foot fetishism could be a consequence of the fact that in the sensory strip in our brain, the representation of the feet and the one of the genitalia are located in adjacent parts of the tissue. This proximity could be responsible of a sort of a crosstalk between the two areas of the brain, causing excitement towards feet.
Apart from psychological and a neurological, foot fetishism could also have a more sociological nature. For many people, adoring feet symbolizes an act of submission. In the times of the Roman Empire, slaves used to kiss the feet of their masters as to show their obedience. The same kind of dynamics can be observed today, and could be regarded as an evolution in the field of fetishism. As stated by the dominatrix Padrona Isabella in a post on her webpage, the concept is that the Mistress is at the center and the fetishist-slave is one among many. In this view, the Mistress is not a tool for satisfying one’s desires, but the point of arrival for the slave who will by all means try to enter her graces. “This is the only thing that will give him true satisfaction” she adds. “When a slave arrives, I always observe him closely. First, I order him to take off one of my boots. After that, what does he do? Does he kiss them? Does he kiss the first foot he frees from the boot? Or does he sniff the boot just before kissing the foot? These are all details that reveal to me the innermost nature of a worm, and that is how I call them. They crawl to the feet and therefore, they are worms. In the best meaning of the term, the worms are very useful, they do not disturb, they eat the pooches of the feet, smooth them, keep them neat and tidy, they crawl. But what matters most is the mental concentration with which they act. I am satisfied only with maximum concentration.”
In addition, it is very important to learn how to massage the feet of the Mistress. The feet should be massaged only on explicit request, with the hands or with the tongue. If with the tongue it is easy for everyone, doing an adequate and satisfying massage with the hands is not easy at all. The Mistress always tries to teach some techniques that provide her with pleasant sensations. “The most important thing is that the slave is mentally connected with his hands. It is not the massage itself that makes it appreciable – it is the feeling that starts directly from the brain and through the hands and to my feet, flowing through my body and getting finally to my neurons.” With the belief that the precious moment of contact is the only one available for him to give real and tangible sensations to the Mistress, will help a slave make a massage worthy of approval.
It is clear that in recent decades, as we can assume from all said above, fetishism has changed a lot. It has evolved from the adoration of a certain object or a body part to a much more complex relationship between two actors where each of them plays a different role. A master and a slave, a teacher and a student, a nurse and a sick person, or just a man who for a night transforms himself into a woman with the intention of being courted – these represent only a fraction of the options – many are the objects which integrate such sexual practices. Handcuffs, whips, ropes and latex clothes are very popular.
Today, sexual fetishism is a universe in constant evolution, characterized by various trends and facets, which certainly will be explored in the next issues of the magazine.
–By Daniel De Luise
More on Foot Fetish… in Diamonds Production Magazine MARCH 2021