Sole traders: how foot fetishism went mainstream | Sex

Toe spreading is a big thing,” beams Lily Allen before continuing to explain how she keeps her “toe daddies” happy. She is sitting on a sofa for her BBC Sounds podcast Miss Me? while casually chatting about delving into the world of selling foot content. After all, it’s only feet… right? And It’s not just Lily Allen’s toes that have been spreading all over the internet. In 2023, Margot Robbie told Cinemablend that she discovered people had become obsessed with her feet after the iconic trailer shot in Barbie. Fans were making compilation videos of her toes and one Reddit thread has counted the amount of times they spotted her feet within the movie (20).

Even my own feet have made it to the kink website WikiFeet, a platform where anybody even remotely in the public eye has pictures of their feet ranked. The platform gets close to 20m views per month and is run by volunteers in the foot-fetish community. In 2017, I was flooded with panic after finding that, for years, images of my feet had been taken off my social media and put on to a rating scale within the WikiFeet website.

Admittedly, I was naive to the world of fetishes. I’d been innocently posting pictures of my feet in posh hotel baths filled with bubbles without realising that some people would be using them for erotic reasons. I would be lying if I said that this was the only naive thing I’d done at 19 without thinking about consequences, but discovering them on the internet years later was a startling reminder that the internet never forgets.

Ten years on, I was offered up to £6,000 for my foot content after it ranked five stars on WikiFeet. If you go with the mindset of “it’s only feet”, this kind of offer is hard to turn down, but it quickly became apparent that “only feet” was far from the truth and this segued into buyers wanting more. I was interested, though, in how much money my feet could make anonymously. While £6,000 seemed a ludicrous amount of cash, how much did knowing it was my feet come into play for buyers? Turns out a lot, because, after setting up an anonymous page dedicated to selling pictures of my feet, I was no richer after six months and encountered nothing but scammers and people who wanted to talk dirty for free. Suffice it to say, this was not an industry I was cut out for.

Back then, stories within my friendship group about finding myself on a foot-fetish website seemed shocking and absurd. Fast forward to 2024, where even celebrities are selling foot content and it would appear the concept has gone mainstream. People rarely bat an eyelid now when I mention the story. Thanks to social media, it’s easier to find any content you could possibly dream of, but to what extent do algorithms play a part in making things appear more mainstream than they actually are?

“To keep users interested and engaged on their platform, social media sites rely on engagement metrics,” explains Louisa Warwick of the PR agency Social Acceleration Group. “Likes, shares, comments and views are most likely to be promoted on platforms, and this creates a feedback loop where niche interests, like foot fetishes, can quickly gain visibility if they attract a dedicated and interactive audience. Celebrity endorsement can legitimise and amplify the trend, encouraging more users to participate.”

If foot fetishes are considered niche, why have they broken into the mainstream now and do those who sell their body for money realise the possible implications? Dr Lori Beth Bisbey, psychologist, explains it isn’t so simple. While she acknowledges that foot fetishism might be getting a higher profile, it really isn’t anything new; foot fetishes have always been one of the most popular private obsessions. “Even back in the 1800s, feet were the only thing you had access to,” she says. Seeing someone’s ankle used to be a big deal. And the appeal for celebrities may come with the added fact that “you might not have to interact or do anything, because people have a whole fantasy of the celebrity already”.

Bisbey, however, questions whether fetish is overused in this context. “It’s a very misused word,” she says. “For someone to have a fetish, they can’t reach orgasm without the thing they have the fetish of.” It would appear that perhaps selling content of feet might be more mainstream than the fetish itself – helped by a notion perpetuated by non-fetishists that selling foot pictures is a quick and easy way to make money.

Bisbey also notes that “there’s a lot more that ends up going with it”. Aside from customers attempting to escalate the transaction she warns that if you are going to sell pictures of your feet, you have to think about the fact those photos are likely to be meeting a sexual need.

London-based Orsolya Molnár has been selling foot content as a side hustle since 2022. Her rates range from £10-£100, depending on what is required in the photo. “It certainly helps that the majority of people – men – are most interested in custom-made videos or pictures, so they can feel special with one-off content others can’t get.”

Molnár explains that she can make a few hundred pounds extra a month without putting too much effort into it. She warns against trivialising this, though: “You are showing yourself in an environment where people can become addicted or obsessed with you.” And this can spill over into real life if any of your clients become so obsessed they want to stalk you, she explains. Molnár says it’s rare for people to make a living entirely out of feet and if you are looking to do so, in some cases, it can branch out into sex work.

Social media expert Desislava Dobreva feels that social media has had a huge part to play in normalising interests that haven’t previously been accepted as conventional. “It’s allowed them to become mainstream – including foot fetishes.” She believes that digital platforms are now helping to empower individuals to reclaim and express their views and sexuality. “The rise of foot fetishes is less about the fetish itself and more about the broader cultural revolution towards inclusivity and the celebration of human diversity in all its forms. Algorithms simply push things which are popular, so if something is being consumed in large volumes, they will bring it to the forefront,” she says.

Back when I was trying to sell my content anonymously, I noticed some platforms were easier to sell on than others. Twitter, now X, at the time was by far the most lenient in terms of allowing nudity, swearing, hashtags of a sexual nature and not shadow banning users for sexual solicitation. Platforms such as Instagram had much harder policies to work around. “Feet can be perceived as less explicit compared with other fetishes; they don’t tend to involve nudity or overt sexual acts,” explains Dobreva. “It’s this ambiguity that allows foot fetishism to slip through the net, because it doesn’t always clearly violate explicit content guidelines. It’s not immediately flagged as inappropriate because there’s a lot of other [non-fetish] content, such as foot modelling and footcare tips.”

“Sean”, 31, who lives near Southampton, has been buying foot fetish-related content since the pandemic. He discovered his fetish as a preteen after watching Girls Aloud on TV and was unable to understand at the time why he wished he could see them with their shoes off. He believes the internet has given a bigger platform to the community, but going mainstream isn’t without its problems. “With more people talking about buying and selling content online, especially via social media, it creates a false assumption that it’s an easy way to make money,” he says.

And then there are the ethical problems: buyers using or selling pictures without the knowledge or consent of the person whose feet are in the image, which poses questions around issues of consent and harassment. “It’s creepy the amount of time users put into finding pictures for WikiFeet,” says Sean. “And I feel like a lot of women get privately messaged asking for foot content, without them showing any interest in feet or fetishism in the first place. Women shouldn’t have to feel like that online, but there are no repercussions for that kind of harassment.” Having said that, he does add that the mainstreaming of feet means the community is finding more foot content at a cheaper price, if not free.

My talk with Sean revealed some issues that made me stop and think. Back when I was reporting for Vice, my journey had originally started with WikiFeet but, not too long after, a friend mentioned he knew someone was casting for a footwear company and they needed a model. I had worked in modelling so him asking me for my portfolio and additional casting shots didn’t seem unusual. I got to the final stages of the casting before realising I was being baited out in the foot-fetish world; that my photos were being used for other means and there was no modelling job at the end of it. He was the one who then went on to offer me £6,000 for video of my feet.

I explained this to Bisbey, who said that this is sexual assault. When I wrote about this, I experienced backlash from the foot community. Although I’m against kink-shaming and the article was very much covering a few bad eggs in the business, the community felt like I was slandering them as a whole.

When I spoke to Sean he was concerned: “Did you feel violated when all that happened?” I think about it often, and violation is the most succinct way I can describe what it’s like to have a friend lure you into a false sense of reality to fuel their fetish. The sad truth is that because it was “only feet”, humour is the one way I’ve been able to talk about that incident. Sean apologised on behalf of the community, explaining that it’s not something he’d like to be a part of due to the consent issues.

Social psychologist Justin Lehmiller acknowledges there’s been a longstanding stigma towards foot fetishes, but he recalls doing research for his book, Tell Me What You Want, where he conducted a survey of more than 4,000 Americans. “I found that about one in seven adults reported they’d had a fantasy where feet or toes had played a prominent role, which suggests that it’s not that uncommon a sexual interest.”

Lehmiller adds: “When we’re talking about the mainstreaming of kinks and fetishes. There’s one discussion to be had about how this plays out on social media, but I think you need to look at it in the broader context of what we are seeing in popular media, television and film. Normalisation is coming from a lot of different aspects and angles. In general, we’re seeing a lot more kink-related content, not just specific to feet. Fifty Shades of Grey helped normalise BDSM-related interests and that helped represent a broad range of diverse sexualities and sexual interests all over the globe.”

While feet might still make a lot of people outside the community squirm, it’s good to see a diverse range of sexual interests being celebrated online. The downside means social media might also give a platform for harassment and opportunities for content to be stolen, but more awareness and an openness about this misunderstood kink can only help to shatter taboos.

And as Lehmiller points out: “The internet in general has helped a lot of people who might have kink or fetish interests to feel less alone and to feel more normal.”