Do you have foot fetish? This might be the reason why

It’s time to break down one of the biggest mysteries of the human brain. And we don’t mean the secret of dreams.

Why do feet turn us on?

If you find sexual arousal in feet – also known as podophilia –, do not fret, you’re in good company. Quentin Tarantino, Andy Warhol and Elvis Presley are just some examples of famous confessed foot fetishists. In fact, foot fetish is far more common than what most people think. It makes what once was a stigmatized taboo, one of the most mainstream kinks these days.

Our brain has an internal map of our body referred to as the body image map. Thus we know that in this map, genitalia and feet occupy adjacent areas. That is, the sections of the brain that control genitalia pleasure and foot pleasure are neighbors. However, this fact alone doesn’t explain why some people like to have their toes sucked and others don’t.

Even Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis himself, explored this phenomenon. He claimed that people sexualized feet because they resembled penises – if your downtown looks like a foot, you might want to go get it checked up. You can easily check if feet turn you on by navigating to our foot fetish cams and exploring your feelings. Today, we have a more scientific theory by the neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran. He is the director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego. But we can’t dive into his theory without first explaining the phantom limb syndrome.

Foot fetish decoded

The phantom limb syndrome is a condition in which patients who have lost a limb, experience sensations, whether painful or otherwise, in that missing limb (it’s been reported to occur in 60-80 % of amputees). Ramachandran worked with phantom limb syndrome patients and found out that this phenomenon occurs when the brain of the person fails to erase the amputated limb from the body image map and rewires it to a different section.

Considering that feet and genitalia are neighbors in the brain’s body image map, it makes sense to think that foot fetishes could possibly result from cross-wiring in the brain between the genital and foot parts. This is what Ramachandran suggested after putting 2 and 2 together. As he himself wrote in his book Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind, “Maybe many of us so-called normal people have a bit of cross-wiring, which would explain why we have a soft spot for feet.”

So if thinking about feet titillates you, blame it on your brain’s wiring. What’s more, now that you know that having a fetish is completely normal, you can easily visit our fetishes section to see if there are any you might want to add to your collection ?