Biography
Personal experience is labelled as personal experience.
About Markus
Writing personally. Contextualising carefully.
Markus M. Mey approaches foot and shoe fetishes from a personal perspective — connected to psychological, sexological, and social questions.
Biography
Four decades of experience. A clear position.
Author, explainer and perspective shifter: Markus M. Mey brings together personal experience, photographic imagery and open dialogue about foot and shoe fetishes.
For around 40 years, Markus M. Mey has spoken openly about a subject on which most people prefer to remain silent: foot and shoe fetishes. In his book “Am I Normal? Understanding Foot & Shoe Fetishes”, he has turned that experience into a work of non-fiction that informs without lecturing.
His fascination with feet, and high heels in particular, has been with him since childhood. As a schoolboy, he bought his first second-hand camera from a classmate — the beginning of a passion that later became his profession. He worked as a professional photographer with his own studio for 20 years. Alongside commissioned work, he created numerous independent productions centred on high heels, including his own poster series. The camera gave him a way to make inner images visible.
He began speaking publicly about his preference early on. At the cocktail bar he ran at the time, he presented photographic exhibitions that attracted media attention. During the 1990s, he appeared on major German television talk shows, including those hosted by Hans Meiser, Arabella, Jürgen Fliege and Lilo Wanders. Those appearances taught him to remain clear even in unexpected situations and to draw an unequivocal line between a preference and a criminal offence.
The material for his book grew out of an online course he developed several years ago. “Am I Normal?” combines personal experience with scientific perspectives. It is written for people with a foot or shoe fetish, their partners and anyone who wants to understand the subject. The independently published book is available in German, English, Italian and Portuguese. More than 27,000 people from around the world follow him on Instagram.
He is currently developing a new online course designed to help people talk about their fetish — within relationships, among friends and in society. A second course is intended for women whose partners have a foot or shoe fetish. He is also working on a second, considerably more extensive non-fiction book in which many people from the community will speak in their own words.
Markus M. Mey lives in Berlin. He is married and has two daughters.
Experience, not an expert label
He deliberately does not present himself as a scientific expert. He is neither a psychologist nor a therapist, but an author, explainer and perspective shifter — drawing on four decades of experience and countless conversations. His conviction is simple: having a foot or shoe fetish does not make someone abnormal. Sexuality works as it does for other people; the trigger may simply be different.
“Education begins where shame no longer has the final word.”
Why this work?
Because shame grows where language is missing. Because clichés complicate relationships. And because people deserve more than quick answers to complex questions.
The book and this platform are an invitation to look openly at the subject, examine terms, and not reduce a person’s story to a single aspect.
“I want neither to dramatise nor to downplay. I want to help people understand.”
Method
Four levels, clearly separated.
Research
Primary sources and official classifications are preferred.
Interpretation
Contextualisation is not presented as established fact.
Correction
Relevant pages receive review dates and transparent updates.