Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about feet. My own, yes, but also other people’s. I don’t just think about them, I even dare to look at them, deliberately but also as discreetly as having two pupils allows me. “You have tiny feet, tiny tiny tiny feet,” said a man who was trying to sell me a pair of shoes at a department store, “look, just like your head, you must have such a tiny skull, how funny.” I laughed and bought the pair of shoes I didn’t want despite the fact that he had been suggesting my brain, thus my intelligence, must’ve been tiny tiny tiny, almost nonexistent.
He was right. My feet are tiny. My head is also tiny. And maybe he was right about my intelligence, or lack thereof, since I ended up spending money on something I did not want, only because he intimidated me a little. Doing something like that requires a certain level of stupidity. The man being so obsessed with the word tiny, I can only imagine the size of his crotch.
Georges Bataille argued that, because feet are at the lowest part of the body, keeping us in contact with the filth of the earth, they are an object of embarrassment. We feel shame for the foot’s vulgarity. It reminds us of our terrestrial nature and, consequently, acts as an obstacle to our quest for a superior dignity. Due to this shame, feet have traditionally remained hidden, and it is ironically because of said concealment that we may observe in the foot a historical capacity to produce sexual arousal. 1
Last summer, I saw a woman I admire wearing a pair of sandals that revealed her toenails: very long and neglected. It struck me because, from the feet up, she’s put together down to the last detail. I think about it almost every week, Does she have a better relationship with life, with her terrestrial nature, with her own sexuality, because she’s not embarrassed by her feet being exposed au naturel?