Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) shows the masterful camera work of Quentin Tarantino, as he films this iconic scene one-handed.

Rule of thumb is, if something exists - there are some people who are made horny by it. Human sexuality is just wild.

Maybe... But there are a lot more people into feet than most other parts of the body.
- Maybe true, would be fun to read up on a reason.
- There really aren't, but it is a funny meme. However, it's funny because it isn't very common and most people think it's weird, but it also doesn't hurt anyone.
  
  There really is.
  
  I guess it depends on your definition of a lot. There are a shit ton of people, so there's a lot of people with every opinion. As a percentage, it's a lot lower than the internet would have you believe. I've met a necrophiliac (which is probably not ok to be into), but I don't think I've ever met someone who admitted they had a foot fetish, although I'm sure the rate of the latter is much higher than the former, just still a relatively small percentage of people.
  
  If you just look up "most common fetishes" foot fetishes are commonly near the top of the list, and are almost always the most popular part of the body for body parts that aren't sexually dimorphic. https://bedbible.com/what-is-the-most-common-fetish-statistics/ here's a random website study I pulled, but if you search it up it's common across more than one study.
  
  You're "technically" correct in that most people don't identify as having a fetish at all, so the percentage of literally any fetish is a small percent of people. But when you talk about the most common fetishes, you're only talking about the population of people who have fetishes in the first place.

I thought I saw somewhere that the nerve center for feet and genitals were right next to each other in the brain and sometimes it gets “flipped” or the pleasure center is “expanded” and includes the feet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical_homunculus
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trollface
I've heard that too, but then why wouldn't you just want to rub your feet on everything instead of looking at other people's feet?
- Is it really that weird? I can't imagine gay dudes jacking off to their own dick
  
  Autosexuals do that

Nobody got a say on what gets them randy. Pee, doo doo, barf, stepping on kittens with high heels. Im just glad I'm only into one-piece swimsuits 👌

Feet are so gross. Even well-manicured, clean, female feet. Still not my jam...

Some people suck dick, some people eat pussy. Some people even eat ass. Non of these things are that clean...
but it is their toe jam
Yes, but what of buttholes! Please, we must know!!

I've never understood why the idea of a feet fetish bothers people enough to comment on it, especially considering what else Hollywood gets up to.

I wouldn't care, except so many women in porn make sure to show their feet so much. It's just as bad as the whole step sibling thing. I don't care if it's your kink but can we please stop putting it in all porn?? It's just distracting.
- I love how upset this seems to make people when usually they are watching stolen porn or porn where the labor of the performers is basically completely unvalued.
  
  We don’t care about that, we just want them not to do kinks we don’t like even if it means they can get a bit more money out of some amount of labor that we aren’t contributing to valuing whatsoever.
  
  I think morally speaking, anime porn is the way to go.
  
  Think about it, those women were literally made to be looked at.
  
  I think morally speaking just treating porn like it is a perfectly respectable, difficult job and valuing the performers as workers is the way to go.
  
  I mean, ok, anime porn might dodge some of that but also what happens when AI just starts spitting out perfectly good anime porn and then the whole industry of people who were doing the labor of making those animations and pictures are unceremoniously shoved into the bin and now we have a bunch of people jacking off to a medium that no longer has any human artists left making anything, it’s just AI endlessly spinning the same bullshit into slightly different forms creating a virtually worthless commodity and destroying an industry even more than it was already destroyed.
  
  Anime porn only appears to dodge the problem.

I couldn't either, until I saw this movie again when I was older. And I also realised where Tarantino might have gotten his fetish

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGefLwREs/

lol he wrote that scene, doubt that's where he got the fetish from -_-.
- TIL

I'm not huge into feet, but I tend to see the soles of women's feet in limited contexts, one is which is sex, so that might be part of it.

Tbh I'm passingly into feet, and I don't even know why

I need them to be manicured, clean, and a particularly pretty set of feet for it to register to me at all. For example, the feet I. The post? Dirty, not attractive. You'd think a guy into get would like the natural state of feet but nah, not for me.

I wouldn't say I have a foot fetish, but I do enjoy giving and receiving foot massages. They feel good, and I want my partner to feel good. If a partner hates feet, I lose interest in the relationship, because I liked them from head to toe. While I don't really get this fetish for how feet look, I also don't get why it's considered kinky, or even gross. Everybody has their thing, you know? Feet seems pretty mild when none of us can escape the incest porn.

I don't find foot fetish gross, just baffling.
- Fair enough. I'd say Tarantino explains his perspective fairly well in Pulp Fiction. It's a sensuous thing. But the way I see it, feet are sensitive. Sometimes overwhelmingly so. Feet get hidden away inside shoes, decorated and accentuated by heels and jewelry, and revealed by sandals when we go swimming. Our reactions to foot stimulation often develop early in life. Tickling. Running around barefoot. Secret footsies under the table with a crush despite family or friends all around. I can see how that becomes a kink. As a fetish needed to get off though, can't say I relate.
  
  Thanks for the perspective!

So I studied medicine for years, specifically in a podiatric medical school. I heard ALL the jokes. Speaking as someone who does not have a foot fetish, I will defend foot people for the same reason I defended my choice of study.

There are a LOT grosser aspects of the body people fetishize. When taken with that knowledge, people into feet seem quaint. Just stop trying to take pictures of random peoples feet out in public, just because they're wearing sandals doesn't give you permission to be a creep.

I study psych and there's actually a hypothesis on feet! If we map out our senses to parts of our brain, the feet are actually right next to the genitals... So it wouldn't be too far off for the brain to associate feet with the sex organs.

Evolutionary throwback.

Foot health was like one of the biggest things for survival.

Same as teeth, just not as visible.

So some people see a nice clean foot free of disease and without a bunch of calluses and ingrown nails and think "this is the kind of young healthy person is should be reproducing with!"

That's all it is, a sign of good health.

[citation needed]
In terms of human evolutionary history, our feet were generally filthy and very heavily calloused. Actually, a heavily calloused foot provides a significant survival advantage in the wild. Keep in mind that shoes are a new invention in evolutionary terms. I don't think you'll find answers in evolutionary psychology on this one.
- And teeth naturally got yellow and worn down, from use or damage.
  
  But we still like a perfectly straight ridiculously bright white smile because it's a sign of health and youth.
  
  Same with feet, you're not going to find someone with perfect feet before shoes, but there would have been an obvious difference between a teenagers feet and a 40 year olds.
  
  But back in the day "good" was mostly absence of parasites.
  
  But back in the day “good” was mostly absence of parasites.
  
  Well, relatively speaking anyhow. Just about everybody had them, it was more of a question of which parasites and how many – and this was largely how things were up until indoor toilets & plumbing became more common and of course still is in many areas.
  
  Funnily enough our immune systems sort of co-evolved with some intestinal parasites, and not having parasites is one factor in people developing autoimmunity. Some autoimmune diseases can even be treated to some extent by purposefully giving you some specific parasite (can't remember which one, too lazy to search)
  
  I mean, kind of?
  
  An autoimmune disease is when your body attacks itself, and it's possible giving yourself a parasite gives it something else to focus on...
  
  But man, that sounds like when people gave themselves tapeworms to lose weight. There was some vague logic to make it sound ok. But any medical professional that condoned it probably wasn't a very good doctor.
  
  Especially if they are infecting people to treat autoimmune disorders
  
  An autoimmune disease is when your body attacks itself, and it’s possible giving yourself a parasite gives it something else to focus on…
  
  It's more complex than that. If someone is exposed to parasites when they're still developing, their chances of having autoimmune issues later in life goes down – the fancy way to say that is that exposure to some parasites lessens the chances of immune system dysregulation. Some parasite proteins can also be used to modulate the immune system to eg. treat asthma. See eg. Helminth Immunomodulation in Autoimmune Disease from 2017, abstract here:
  
  Helminths have evolved to become experts at subverting immune surveillance. Through potent and persistent immune tempering, helminths can remain undetected in human tissues for decades. Redirecting the immunomodulating “talents” of helminths to treat inflammatory human diseases is receiving intensive interest. Here, we review therapies using live parasitic worms, worm secretions, and worm-derived synthetic molecules to treat autoimmune disease. We review helminth therapy in both mouse models and clinical trials and discuss what is known on mechanisms of action. We also highlight current progress in characterizing promising new immunomodulatory molecules found in excretory/secretory products of helminths and their potential use as immunotherapies for acute and chronic inflammatory diseases.
  
  But man, that sounds like when people gave themselves tapeworms to lose weight. There was some vague logic to make it sound ok. But any medical professional that condoned it probably wasn’t a very good doctor.
  
  Especially if they are infecting people to treat autoimmune disorders
  
  Just because giving someone a tapeworm for weight loss is not a great idea doesn't really mean anything here. Immunomodulatory therapy with parasites isn't woo-woo despite how weird it may sound, and the idea isn't to necessarily give people worms (although that's not entirely ruled out either!) but to learn how they do what they do
  
  There have already been attempts to treat immune-mediated diseases by artificially infecting them with helminths. Because Trichuris suis can be obtained from experimentally infected pigs, the parasite has been used in immunotherapy research to artificially infect people. There are some clinical reports that patients who ingested T. suis had a reduction in several immune disorders such as Crohn’s disease (73) and ulcerative colitis (74). However, some clinical trials have shown no therapeutic effect (75, 76) and in a large study using meta-analysis, T. suis showed no apparent benefit for inflammatory bowel disease patients (77). Besides, therapeutic benefit by parasites may be limited to the infection sites but not systemic. A clinical trial of artificial infection with T. suis, a parasite of the intestine, did not provide relief from allergic rhinitis (78). Furthermore, infection with live parasites for therapeutic use may not be practical, and can sometimes cause other unintended consequences. There is also a risk of inadvertently transmitting pathogenic parasites. For this reason, it is imperative to identify immunomodulatory molecules and apply them to treatment of immune-mediated diseases rather than using live parasites. In order to ensure safety, it is also necessary to elucidate the detailed mechanism of how the molecule regulates immunity.
  
  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8977410/
  
  You're right that people are trying it.
  
  I never said no one was, I said only shitty doctors would prescribe it.
  
  I didn't see anything about it being prescribed, but there have been studies.
  
  The studies just show it doesn't work.
So why did he need her feet to be absolutely filthy here? What's the evolutionary reason behind that?
- Beats me.
- Some people like dirty feet...
  
  But clean or dirty, I don't think Margot Robbie has any part of her body that someone would lable as unhealthy.
  
  It's not like there's one reason that contributes to every aspect of feet fetishes. Some people like them dirty because it's also humiliating. Either to the person attached to the feet or the ones looking at it.
  
  Sexuality is like donkeys and onions, they have layers.
  
  But for the general question of "why feet" that's why feet come up so much. It used to be a visible indicator of overall health. It's still an indicator of overall health, just not visible 24/7. Which makes it even more likely to be fetishized
  
  Ogres have layers
- She's walking around barefoot a lot in the movie. Hell, they should be even grosser considering how nasty city sidewalks can be.
Gonna need some data to back up this claim.
- That foot health was a lot more important back in the day?
  
  That it was any easy to notice sign of health back then and now mostly not seen?
  
  Or that a big factor in who animals reproduce with is the perceived healthiness of a potential mate?
  
  Because, I said a couple different basic things, and it seems to really have confused a lot of people.
  
  So to give you a good answer, you kind of have to be specific with questions.
  
  Do you not understand the pieces? How they combine?
  
  Just all of it?
  
  Like, if I told you a=b and b=c so a=c, and you asked that same vague question, would you be wanting me to explain with logic why a=c, or are you saying you need a source that flatly just says a=c?
  
  I just don't know what kind of answer you're looking for
  
  Wow dude. Calm down. You're the one that made the claim. It's on you to provide the facts needed to back it up.
  
  I mean, I still have zero idea what you need explained.
  
  But by now you definitely could have googled it yourself
  
  No need to play dumb. If you can't explain it, that's a good sign that you don't comprehend it yourself.
  
  They explained it like three times, how’d you skip over every one?
  
  Permanently Deleted
  
  That’s not how that word works lol. You don’t have to like or agree with the explanation, but they did explain it.
  
  Thanks, Captain Pedantry

Same what makes people get horney by being beaten, spit on, shat on and other stuff. At some point in our childhoods someone did it to us and we interpreted it as love. At least that is how it works for most.

I don't think "someone did it to us and we interpreted it as love" applies as often as people think.

I've got some kinks that I have no idea where they "came from" because they never happened to me IRL, especially not in childhood. I honestly think there's just certain neuron pathways that accidentally branch over onto sexual arousal pathways and one day you see some stuff and go "huh, guess I'm into that."
- A lot of stuff in nature *just is*, and there doesn't have to be any reason for its existence. Nature is messy and chaotic, and that's one of the beautiful things about it.
  
  Why do we like some of things and dislike others? Why do some people find some things sexually arousing and some don't? Why does sexuality and gender identity vary between people? Why do some people like video games, or snowboarding, or dancing, or doing theater, or collecting rocks, or all sorts of different things, and some don't? Why are some people introspective and like philosophizing and others don't? And then there's all sorts of different physical variances like height, size, shape, colour, etc
  
  Sure, some of these may have evolutionary reasons, but do all of them? Or maybe a lot of variance in humans (and nature in general) *just is* because nature is not clean, robotic, and perfectly logical, and never has been?
  
  Nature is messy, chaotic, and it's not clean or perfect or able to fit in perfect categories. And that's what makes nature interesting and beautiful. It wouldn't be the same if everything operated like a perfect robotic machine, if that would even be possible in the first place.
  
  Why do we like some of things and dislike others?
  Why do some people like video games, or snowboarding, or dancing, or doing theater, or collecting rocks, or all sorts of different things, and some don't?
  
  this post is like a more intellectual version of the opening speech in Rubber
  
  it's true though, our pattern-seeking brains get us hung up on the idea there has to be a purpose for everything but we forget we're the ones defining and assigning "purpose"
  
  nature is not clean, robotic, and perfectly logical, and never has been?
  
  To be clear tho, things don’t just happen in nature for funsies, or magically without any purpose at all. All evolution has “logic”, even if it doesn’t necessarily follow our own. Species don’t evolve randomly for the fun of it.
  
  Except evolution literally does result in random mutations that don't necessarily have any function, or solutions that are sub-par or inefficient, or whatever else. Or things that have unintentional consequences elsewhere. Nature is not perfect.
  
  Nobody’s saying it’s perfect, but it’s never completely random. The adaptations may be subpar or inefficient, but they still happened to serve a purpose, even if they did so less than perfectly.
  
  No animal evolves in a particular way for literally no reason.
Actually the beating is more because of endorphins and people having atypical reactions to pain in general. Every once in a while a class on that topic shows up at bdsm events and it’s always a fun one.

Degradation seems to be less about people interpreting it as love, but more as processing trauma or self esteem issues through role play. People don’t want to get spit on by someone who actually detests them, they want to get spit on by someone who pretends to detest them.