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A fetish for feet

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I hate feet. I don’t know why, I just do. For as along as I can remember feet have unnerved me. I don’t want to see feet. I don’t want to touch them and I certainly don’t want them to touch me. OK, so I am a bit of a freak but my aversion (until now relatively private) causes me little day to day problem so I live with it.

Why then, when feet form a part of my worst nightmare, do I chose to write about them?

This week there was a memorial service held for the fashion designer Alexander McQueen. As could be expected, the world of fashion turned out for the event.

Some were wearing McQueen’s designs. Many were wearing his shoes. The Daily Mail carried some great photos of the event including one of Daphne Guinness taking a tumble wearing  a pair of McQueen’s twelve  inch platform boots.

For me, shoes, such as those designed by McQueen, appear as instruments of torture. They cannot be comfortable and they distort and damage feet. Put quite simply, these are shoes that are designed to hobble women.

Hobble:
to walk lamely; limp
to cause to limp
to impede or hamper the progress of

I don’t mean to single out McQueen’s designs. Other people make shoes that are equally torturous. What I don’t understand is why some women  chose to wear them?

Research released by the Society of Chiropodists & Podiatrists claims that high heels improve British women’s self-esteem.

Almost half of British women (48%) state they feel more confident when wearing high heels at work and nearly a quarter (24%) feel more assertive and acknowledged by others.

High heels are everyday work wear in Britain, leaving those who wear flatties feeling out of place. Almost a fifth of women (18%) believe that wearing high heels can have a positive effect on their work life giving them a greater chance of promotion.

But there are health costs for women who wear killer heels.

Lorraine Jones, Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists, states “With a high heel, the higher the heel the more pressure that goes to the ball of the foot and through the joints. For example, with a 5cm heel, which is a very commonly worn one, the pressure increases by about 52% with every step and up to 8cm it’s about 79%.”

Despite this, women continue to wear shoes that cripple them and cause long-term damage, in some cases requiring remedial surgery.

But some women are having cosmetic surgery on their feet.

60s pop icon, Sandie Shaw, revealed that she has undergone surgery on her feet which she now describes as “Divine”.

Removal of bunions, toe straitening and toe shortening are all procedures offered for both cosmetic and therapeutic reasons. It has even been suggested that some women have cosmetic toe amputation so that they can wear narrower shoes.

But is foot surgery and the wearing of ridiculous high heels just the modern day expression of foot fetishism gone mad?

An article in the Guardian this week made a comparison between foot surgery and the ancient Chinese practice of foot-binding. But this article has missed the point. It is not the surgery but the shoes that are the problem.

Foot fetishism extends way beyond the people who salivate over toes and insteps. It pervades the everyday lives of women and is manifest in the shoes we wear.

A quick browse on the Internet identifies sites that feature feet. Top 50 feet, ten worse celebrity feet and foot fancying are all available at the click of a mouse. But exactly who is fetishising female feet?

For men it seems it is the feet themselves that are the object of the fetish but for women it seems to be shoes that are the real turn on.

The connection between feet and sexuality is, however, cultural. The Chinese fetishised feet and considered large feet unattractive and common. In the West we link the stiletto heel with eroticism.

But this link is part of a learnt behaviour. What little girl has not dressed up in her mother’s high heels and tottered around pretending to be grown up?

In the same way that we associate high heels with being grown up we also learn to associate them with being and feeling sexy. And while we’re learning to be sexual, men are learning to find us sexually attractive in high heels.

So, when research claims that women feel sexy in high heels – of course we do – just as many men find women wearing them a turn on. What it misses however is the fact that it doesn’t have to be this way. Instead we should be asking why we live in a culture where women must be hobbled to be erotic?

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