Do women and people of other genders also have a foot fetish?

01 · Fetish knowledge

Introduction

Yes, women can also have a foot or shoe fetish. From everything I know and have experienced over more than forty years, however, a pronounced sexual fetish is much less common among women than among men. So far, we know very little about people of other genders. And much of what people commonly call a “shoe fetish” in women is not one at all.

02 · Fetish knowledge

A shoe closet is not a fetish

When a woman says she has a shoe fetish, she generally means something quite different from a sexual fetish. The pleasure of buying, collecting, or wearing beautiful shoes, even when very pronounced, has nothing to do with sexual arousal. It is an expression of fashion awareness, aesthetics, or self-image.

A sexual fetish, by contrast, means that feet or shoes themselves trigger arousal. This distinction is important, because otherwise it is easy to get the impression that shoe fetishism is widespread among women. In my experience, the opposite is true.

03 · Fetish knowledge

What I have observed myself

In my book, I report on an experiment. For two years, I ran an Instagram profile on which I presented myself as a heterosexual man with dominant inclinations and a pronounced boot fetish. Among the roughly 1,600 genuine followers, about 1,500 were men. During that time, exactly three women with a genuine sexual shoe or boot fetish contacted me.

This is not a study, but it aligns with everything I have experienced over many years in nightlife, as a photographer, and in countless conversations. Women respond very differently to foot and shoe fetishes: some with curiosity, some with distance, some with rejection. A sexual fixation of their own on feet or shoes is the exception.

04 · Fetish knowledge

What the research shows

Unfortunately, there are no robust figures. In an online study from Iran, 201 men and only 6 women reported an object fetish. Four of these six women also mentioned feet. The group is far too small to draw any general conclusion from it. But it shows that women with a foot fetish exist.

A Canadian study involving more than 1,000 participants examined differences between the genders in unusual sexual interests. However, feet and shoes were grouped together with other objects and materials. No separate conclusion about women with a foot fetish can be drawn from it.

05 · Fetish knowledge

My thesis on why it is more common among men

Why pronounced fetishes are more common among men has not been scientifically resolved. I have my own thesis on this, which I explicitly understand as a thesis. For reproduction, an erection is indispensable for men. I therefore suspect that evolution has arranged male arousal so that it can be triggered quickly and reliably by individual stimuli. One person responds to breasts, the next to legs, another to feet or shoes.

In women, according to my observation, sexual meaning arises much more strongly from the context: from the situation, the relationship, the feeling. A single object rarely has the same force for them.

To show men what this can feel like from a woman’s perspective, I like to use a comparison. Imagine that one evening your new girlfriend pulls a plastic model of the Eiffel Tower from under the pillow and confesses that only this tower truly arouses her. You would probably wonder what role you play in it at all. This is roughly how many women feel when they hear about a foot fetish for the first time.

06 · Fetish knowledge

When women nevertheless take pleasure in it

That does not mean that women cannot make anything of the subject. A young woman once told me that she found neither feet nor shoes arousing. What aroused her was the power to deliberately intensify or diminish her partner’s arousal. This is where couples can find common ground. She does not share the fetish, but she enjoys the effect she has through it.

07 · Fetish knowledge

And other genders?

Here I have to be honest: in the studies I know, trans, non-binary, and intersex people hardly appear separately. Simply no one knows how often foot and shoe fetishes occur among them. This is a genuine research gap. The only clear point is that a fetish says nothing about a person’s gender identity.

Whoever you are: a foot fetish is not a question of gender, but a question of how your arousal works. How often it occurs in your group says nothing about whether it is allowed to be part of you.