The Erotic Foot And Shoe

In his classic work, The Sex Life of the Foot
and Shoe, William Rossi says:

The human foot possesses a natural
sexuality whose powers have borne
remarkable influence on all peoples of
all cultures throughout all history . . .
The shoe is no simple, protective housing
for the foot, nor a whimsical
decoration. It serves chiefly as a sexual
covering for the foot's natural
erotic character Footwear fashion is podoerotic art.

Fetishes involving the foot and shoe, also known as equus
eroticus, are the most common
of sexual novelties. Rossi quotes from a popular
fetish magazine publisher:

When we started our magazine on sex fetishes, we expected to cover the
whole range. But our mail and other feedback
quickly told us that the foot
and shoe fetishists outnumbered any other fetish
group by at least three to one.

In his Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Havelock
Ellis states, "Of all the forms of erotic
symbolism, the most frequent is that which idealizes the foot and shoe."

Look around. Obvious signs of sexual emphasis are
everywhere. Just one example is the
shiny, brightly colored openbacked heeled shoe.
Often the front of the shoe is cut open,
revealing protruding toes and foot cleavage.

Freud declares the shoe or slipper a "symbol of
the female genitals." The shoe has always
been associated with fertility customs, marriage
and romance.

Many of us can remember from elementary school
hearing about the gallant Sir Walter
Raleigh spreading his cape over a muddied street
so that Queen Elizabeth could cross without
dirtying her slippers.

The drinking of wine from the dainty slipper
of a lover is a well-known symbol of romance.
Many a lover has attested to the attributes
of this ambrosia.

The custom of tying shoes to the departing car
of newlyweds is symbolic of the sexual
union, and there are countless versions of this
custom being played out in different cultures.

The foot itself is responsible, says Rossi,
for the erotic image of the entire human body.
Upright posture and bipedal gait created the
figure as we know it, bringing bosom, abdomen
and thighs into view. It created erogenous
zones and visual sex appeal features. This position
made human frontal copulation, unique in all
nature, possible. Visual stimuli and continuity of
sexual excitement led to year-round sex.
This was the beginning of our psychosexual
inhibitions and fantasies.

Freud discusses how the role of scent as a sexual
stimulant in animals and insects was
replaced by visual stimuli in humans. It is our
bipedal stance that literally lifted us from the
ground, exposed us, leading to feelings of shame
and modesty. Therefore we have an innate
sense that the feet are somehow responsible
for our sexuality.

Florenz Ziegfeld, whose beautiful showgirls
graced the stages of the l920s, interviewed the
girls by first watching them walk in high heels
from behind a white screen, thus seeing only
their silhouettes. "Before I see their faces,
I want to see how they walk. There's more sex in a
walk than in a face or even in a figure."

Gypsy Rose Lee, the famous stripper, knew the
power of a high-heeled shoe. This great
sexual teaser would never be caught on stage
without a magnificent pair of shoes.

The high heel and the position it creates for
the foot is a strong sexual stimulus. The feet are
plantar-flexed (not perpendicular to the leg as
they are in a relaxed position). This is the
position emphasized for the foot in any
centerfold picture. It is also achieved in the sexy
crossing of legs where one foot teasingly flexes
forward. The extension of the foot, pointing of
the toes, particularly with a circular movement,
is a strong body language signal saying "I'm
available."

In women another attribute of sexuality is small
feet. The tiny delicate foot is extolled in the
shoe store as it is in literature.

The Cinderella story promotes the virtues of the
small foot as a symbol of femininity and
sexual desirability. With hundreds of versions
throughout the world, this folk tale often
bordered on erotic literature. It was the
Grimm brothers who tamed it for children.

One of the oldest known versions dates back to
ancient Egypt. A beautiful girl named
Rhodopis was bathing in the River Nile, when
an eagle swooped down and flew off to
Memphis with one of her dainty slippers.
This he deposited at the foot of King Psamtik.
The king was overcome with passion for the
owner of the slipper. He envisioned her image with
lecherous eagerness. Obsessed by thoughts of the
girl, he journeyed through the kingdom,
trying the slipper on the feet of young maidens
until he finally found Rhodopis and married her.
The Third Pyramid of Gizeh stands as testimony
to this union.

In seventeenth-century Europe, Perrault wrote
another version of the Cinderella story.
This version contained obvious erotic
inferences, many of which were lost in the translation
from French. Rossi states that his image of
the foot being inserted into a furry slipper has
phallic-yoni symbolism. "The romantic union of the
prince and Cinderella was sexually
symbolized by the suggestive union of the
virginal phallic foot and the furry yoni shoes."

A ninth-century Chinese version of the
Cinderella tale, Rossi suggests, may have
given rise to the custom of footbinding
which exemplifies the ultimate in foot
eroticism and fetish. For
nearly one thousand years this podoerotomania
captivated the Chinese imagination. The foot
took on a new role in human sexuality, becoming
a sexual organ itself. Hundreds of millions of
people were caught up in this sexual mania,
the lingering effects of which can even be seen
today in the feet of some elderly Chinese
women. Even non-Orientals living in China were
devotees of the practice. "Unbound women"
were stigmatized with remarks such as
"goosefoot" and "demon with huge feet."

Chinese males were obsessed with the sexuality
of the hound foot, dreaming of catching a
glimpse of the desirable appendage
unfettered. The "lotus foot" as it was
called (because the resulting walk resembled
the delicate swaying movement of the lotus
plant in the wind) was regarded as the most
erotic part of the entire female
anatomy -- pornography and prostitution
centered around the lotus foot. Intellectuals,
warriors, and noblemen were as charmed by its
aphrodisiac powers as were the common folk.
Religious movements were completely
ineffective in trying to stop the licentious
foot-binding practice.

The Chinese always had a fascination for small
feet, regarding them as a sign of fine
breeding and grace. They scaled down the foot
to accommodate this image, often to a mere
four inches long.

The process was begun in girls of five or
six years of age, when their bones were soft and
malleable. The four small toes were bent under
the ball of the foot as far as possible and
secured with progressively tighter bandages.
The large toe was left free for propulsion in
walking, and for balance. The foot was gradually
bent as a cross bow, bringing heel and toes
as close together as possible. The heel bone
was brought into a near vertical position and a
high arch was created.

The bandages served in much the same manner
as a brace does for the teeth, redirecting
growth and shaping to the desired effect.
There was a great deal of discomfort from the
bandages but girls grew immune to it much
in the same way that women today have
accommodated pointed shoes and high heels.
In fact, upon X-ray the lotus foot resembles the
X-ray foot of a woman in high heels.

The normal hard callus tissue on the bottom
of the foot became soft and fleshy in the deep
cleft of the arch. Chinese men found the way
these women walked -- the tops of their toes in
a delicate, willowy gait -- extremely exciting.

Because of the great difficulty the women
had in walking they were excluded from the
drudgery of hard work. Imagine women working
in a corn field in extremely high heeled
shoes!

It seems that women have always been amenable
to having their feet deformed, thereby
altering their gait and creating the illusion
of tiny feet.

Rossi said, "If the Chinese concentrated their
deformation on the foot, American,
European, and other women (and often men) have for centuries been doing the same with
tight shoes, the wearing of styles that have
no kinship with natural foot shape, high heels that
force alterations in the whole anatomy, stiff-soled
shoes that prevent natural foot function,
laced shoes and boots that impede circulation,
and platform soles that can jeopardize human
life itself."

Yet women continue to get pleasure from wearing
shoes that intoxicate the male psyche.
They endure the pain for the satisfaction of
being more sexually desirable.

The women's liberation movement initially made
inroads into this self-inflicted
podomasochism and for a while more sensible
low heeled styles were in fashion. Even
comfortable sports shoes were worn on the job.
These, however, have been in direct conflict
with the erotic nature of the foot.

The executive woman soon realized that she
could do a man's job but she was not
psychosexually comfortable walking in a man's shoes.
So we are returning to the days where
the shoes fit the psyche, not the foot.

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