Like most people, I’ve never had a particularly intimate relationship with my feet. They get me places and occasionally give me blisters, and that’s about it. I regard them as roughly on a par with my elbows – un-glamorous but mainly functional. That is, until I discovered them on Wikifeet.
If you’re not already familiar with Wikifeet, think of it as an online directory of celebrity foot pictures, lovingly maintained by a volunteer army of foot fetishists. I stumbled across it in 2022 while trying to Google a photo that somebody had taken of me at a fashion industry event. There I was, or rather there were my feet: on a kink website that gets 20m views a month. I had naturally assumed that journalists were not the target focus of a celebrity fetish website, given that I have yet to star in a James Bond film or become an Estée Lauder brand ambassador. Unfortunately, it seems like anybody who does a mildly public-facing job is considered fair game, and a few podcasts and brief TV appearances were enough for me to qualify.
My profile featured photos of my feet going back nine years, on a surf holiday with friends. Then the ultimate insult: after scouring my social media accounts for any pictures of my exposed feet, the anonymous users of Wikifeet had rated me a deeply average score of 3.5 out of 5 – a whole one and a half stars less than Knives Out actor Ana de Armas. According to Wikifeet, this makes my feet merely “OK”.
Sexualising my lower digits was bad enough. To be given the equivalent of a pat on the head and be told “nice try” was an indignity too far. My inner perfectionist kicked in: “If I must have foot perverts looking at my toes, I want them to like them!” I fumed to a friend. We agreed that while I would ideally not be on Wikifeet at all, the second choice would be to have a perfect Wikifeet rating.
I have nothing against people with a thing for feet, which I roughly view in the same way I do bungee jumping: I can theoretically see why you might be into it, but it’s just not for me. But the idea of faceless people staring at my feet – maybe zooming in on my toenails, which I’ve never managed to trim in an even line – made me feel extremely self-conscious. I began cropping my feet out of photos. Slingbacks became my best friend at summer weddings. At one point, I even debated if leather strappy fishermen’s sandals were too risque. Were they basically bondage harnesses for toes?
I fully acknowledge this is ridiculous, since I have no understanding of what makes a “sexy foot” in the same way I have no idea what constitutes a “good-looking elbow”. (I’m guessing that being bunion-free doesn’t quite cut it.)
Still, I was rankled by my disappointing rating enough to post about it on Instagram. “Just OK?” I questioned in faux outrage. When I checked back a week later, my ranking had gone up to four out of five, garnering me a respectable “nice feet” tag. Clearly, some people following my Instagram were already on the site – I just hoped that it wasn’t anybody I knew in person.
Later on, I discovered that – contrary to my assumption – women actually make up 22% of Wikifeet’s audience. Call me sexist, but the idea of women appreciating my feet made me feel a little less creeped out, mainly because I presume women might be more likely to look approvingly at my feet out of sisterly spirit. After all, we were subject to the same oppressive podal beauty standards, albeit ones I still find incomprehensible.
While I know that changing my appearance to avoid the gaze of the internet’s No 1 foot fetish site is a faintly ludicrous and pointless enterprise, I now feel less embarrassed about it given that I am perfectly on trend – gen Z also hates getting their feet out, apparently, according to Vice.
It helps that a user left a highly complimentary comment that read “incredibly attractive long feet and long toes on a very funny, intelligent lady”, which at least makes me think that some of these nameless people on the internet also appreciate my personality (thank you, @Feetgrinder). Two years on, I’m able to see the funny side of being on Wikifeet. I’ve even got my eye on a pair of fishermen’s sandals for an upcoming holiday. Don’t expect me to post them online, though.
