Be Upfront About Your Foot Fetish

If you already have one or more partners you trust, then the easiest way to start exploring the fetish is often telling them about your interest in feet and the things you want to try, Top Toes in Hose, the co-host of Oh Those Toes, a foot fetish-focused podcast, told Zipper. That disclosure may be scary, but this sort of vulnerability often brings us closer to our partners—who are usually more than willing to help us explore our kinks, provided we’re equally open to theirs. 

Legend added that you can also broach the topic with prospective new partners, including short-term hookups. Foot fetishes are common enough and increasingly mainstream, so even a casual or one-time partner may be willing to play and explore with you. But Legend acknowledged this would not be a comfortable—or safe—avenue for everyone to explore.

Connect with the Foot Fetish Community

Whether you don’t have a partner to explore the fetish with, or you just want to talk to a wide array of people who share your fetish, then most of the fetishists Zipper spoke to recommend searching for “foot fetish” on platforms like FetLife, Reddit, and Twitter. Dozens of communities will pop up, which you can explore freely for a while, eventually joining the one that feels the most resonant with your desires and welcoming to your social sensibilities. 

You can also search for foot fetish content and models on clip and cam sites. Exploring content is often a great way to learn about the fetish’s many permutations and determine which appeals to you.

If you’re ready to move beyond the digital realm but don’t have a partner or any partners comfortable with foot play, you may want to consider attending a foot party, which suggests foot fetishist and content creator Soles Scream. At these parties, you’ll be surrounded by people who share your fetish and foot models who, usually for a small fee, will allow you to interact with their feet in well-defined ways. (Soles Scream added that it’s entirely possible to attend these parties if you have a partner—you just need to make sure your partner(s) understand why you want to attend, are cool with your rationale, and have set out clear boundaries, within the context of your relationship dynamics, for what you can and can’t do with models.) If you’re uncomfortable with a party setting, you can also book a session with a kink professional, virtually or in person, to engage in one-on-one, controlled foot play.

If you engage in foot-genital contact, you ought to ensure that the feet in question are clean to avoid any irritation or infections and to be mindful of nails to avoid cuts and abrasions. And if you engage in any sort of play like trampling or foot beating, make sure to maintain a good line of communication, and a safe word, so that you can draw a solid line before anything starts to become uncomfortable or dangerous. But beyond those basic kink play safety practices, the only thing to remember during foot play is to have footsie fun! 

A Non-Comprehensive List of Resources, Sites, and Platforms For Exploring Feet:

• Oh Those Toes podcast
• FootNight International (Foot Parties)
• Foot Fetish Talks (Reddit)
• Foot Fetish (Category on Clips4Sale)
• Zipper’s Guide to Foot Fetishes (Zipper)
• 14 Ways to Explore Your Foot Fetish (Zipper)

Bimbofication’s Appeal

The bimbofication fetishists Zipper spoke to for this story mostly suspected that the seeds of bimbofication-the-kink gradually developed within the wider transformation fetish ecosystem. That’s where Mr. Phoenyxx, an adult comic artist who specializes in bimbofication content, stumbled upon the fetish nearly three decades ago. While exploring breast expansion content on the early internet, he encountered and got into art and stories depicting wider transformations that all converged towards the bimbo vibe. By the 2010s, bimbofication was an established tag within transformation fetish art communities.

Part of the potential appeal of bimbofication certainly overlaps with the appeal of transformation art and play writ large: Mr. Phoenyxx notes that he and many others are drawn to both bimbofication and other types of transformation because they love the idea of seeing what they already consider sexy traits amplified past the point of reality. Sortimid, another longtime bimbofication artist and enthusiast, explains that bimbofication is one of many types of transformation content they used to explore elements of their sexuality that they’d repressed in response to their upbringing. Roberts adds that as a trans woman, the idea of transformation kinks are appealing as a manifestation of bodily autonomy—of the reality that “we don’t have to accept nature and can change things to how we want them to be.” She and Sortimid both pointed out that a significant portion of the bimbofication fetish world seems to be trans. 

“Bimbofication proudly embraces femininity, which is so often looked down upon, and seen as lesser than masculinity,” adds Roberts. “Ideas of femininity and autonomy are all tied up together because often women aren’t afforded the same level of bodily autonomy that men are. Bimbofication takes the power out of the negative framing of women’s sexual autonomy”

Giving Up Control

Like other forms of transformation, while bimbofication can be a self-propelled journey, it can also involve giving up control of some or all of the process to a trainer, or a community, often as part of a wider D/s power dynamic. Imposed or guided transformation play can involve aspects of sadomasochism and humiliation, Sortimid points out—in the case of bimbofication, playing with the stigmas around the image of the bimbo. Or it may involve hypnosis, Roberts adds, to draw a person deeper into their transformation. (Bimbofication transformation hypnosis drew critical press coverage earlier this year, when several women accused a trainer of using the practice on people who weren’t familiar with erotic hypnosis safety practices in order to manipulate them. This has led to a degree of backlash against all bimbofication kinks.)  

Bimbos are not all submissives, though. Some use their hyper-feminine appeal to dominate the (typically) men who’re obsessed with them, in the process subverting the idea that bimbo aesthetics exist solely to serve the male gaze. A few use the concept of this power to create dynamics in which they financially dominate or humiliate their male partners as well. 

But bimbofication also taps into desires that other forms of transformation fetishes don’t. Pink, a prominent bimbo trainer, points out that for some fetishists the transformation process itself isn’t appealing—it’s embodying, or seeing someone else embody, the unique character of a bimbo. Roberts says she’s always liked the gestalt “fake” look of bimbos in and of itself, so achieving that borderline unreal overarching aesthetic is a big part of the appeal for her. 

There’s a unique “appeal to the ‘dumbing down’ aspect of bimbofication” too, Roberts adds. “I’ve recently started studying for a PhD about bimbofication, so I’m not stupid” in everyday life, she explains. “But often, being perceived as intelligent can put a lot of pressure on me, which can leave me feeling anxious or overwhelmed. To be treated as if I’m not intelligent, even for a little bit, can be nice.” 

As awareness of and interest in bimbofication expanded within both transformation porn circles and the wider world, communities dedicated solely to bimbofication art, or to chronicling real-life people’s bimbofication journeys, started to pop up around 2013. By 2016, Pink developed “a much-needed framework for the whole process of bimbofication and the idea of what a bimbo is,” which he published via his Pink Bimbo Academy training platform, in an effort to centralize the increasingly visible and vibrant dedicated bimbofication fetish space. (That same year, the kink and fetish platform—and Zipper‘s publisher—Clips4Sale created a bimbofication content category.) And in 2017, adult bimbofication content creators broke through into wider cultural awareness—albeit via confused tabloid tales of aspiring bimbos and Twitter drama about whether or not bimbofication art is misogynistic. Pearl-clutching about the social implications of bimbofication fetish content at the time perfectly predicted the hand-wringing about the purported prospect setting feminism back decades by (supposedly) endorsing female objectification that swirls around mainstream bimbofication social movement today.