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Page 2 of 3 Research
Relative frequency In order to estimate the relative frequency of fetishes, researchers at the University of Bologna examined 381 Internet discussion groups, in which at least 5,000 people had been participating. Researchers estimated the prevalences of different fetishes based on (a) the number of discussion groups devoted to a particular fetish, (b) the number of individuals participating in the groups and (c) the number of messages exchanged. It was concluded that the most common fetishes were for body parts or for objects usually associated with body parts (33% and 30% respectively). Among those people preferring body parts, feet and toes were preferred by the greatest number, with 47% of those sampled preferring them. Among those people preferring objects related to body parts, footwear (shoes, boots, etc.) was most preferred (64%).
In August 2006, AOL released a database of the search terms submitted by their subscribers. In ranking only those phrases that included the word "fetish", it was found that the most common search was for feet.
Relationships to health and disease Researchers have hypothesized that foot fetishism increases as a response to epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases. In one study, conducted by Dr. A James Giannini at The Ohio State University an increased interest in feet as sexual objects was observed during the great gonorrhea epidemic of twelfth century Europe, and the syphilis epidemics of the 16th and 19th centuries in Europe. In the same study, the frequency of foot-fetish depictions in pornographic literature was measured over a 30 year interval. An exponential increase was noted during the period of the current AIDS epidemic. In these cases, sexual foot play was viewed as a safe-sex alternative. However, the researchers noted that these epidemics overlapped periods of relative female emancipation. Sexual focus on female feet was also hypothesized to have been a reflection of a more dominant posture of the woman in sexual-social relations. (The first surviving reference of foot fetish is by Bertold of Regensburg in 1220. )
Causation
Neurologist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran proposed that foot fetishism is caused by the feet and the genitals occupying adjacent areas of the somatosensory cortex |
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