Plantar

Plantar (pronounced plan-ter)

In anatomy and zoology, of or relating to the sole of the foot.

1706: From the Latin plantāris (pertaining to the sole of the foot), from planta (sole of the foot) from a nasalized form of the primitive Indo-European root pletə- or plat- (to spread) an extension of the root pele- (flat; to spread).  Related were the Sanskrit prathati (spreads out), the Hittite palhi (broad), the Ancient Greek platys (broad, flat), the Lithuanian platus (broad), the German Fladen (flat cake), the Old Norse flatr (flat), the Old English flet (floor, dwelling) and the Old Irish lethan (broad).  The Latin planta may be analysed as plant +‎ -ar.  The –ar suffix was from Latin -āris (of, pertaining to) and was appended to nouns to create adjectives.  The -aris suffix was a form of -ālis with dissimilation of -l- to -r- after roots containing an l (the alternative forms were -ālis, -ēlis, -īlis & -ūlis); it was used to form adjectives, usually from noun, indicating a relationship or a "pertaining to".  The exact origin of the Latin planta (which in addition to meaning (1) “sole of the foot” could be used in the sense of (2) any vegetable production that serves to propagate the species; a sprout, shoot, twig, sprig, sucker, graft, scion, slip, cutting or (3) a young tree, a shrub that may be transplanted; a set) is uncertain.  It was from either (1) the Proto-Italic plāntā, from the primitive Indo-European pléh-n̥t-eh, from pleh- (flat) or (2) the Proto-Italic plānktā, from the primitive Indo-European pl̥hnk or gteh, from plehk- & plehg- (to strike, fast).  In anatomy, the derived terms include plantar fascia (the thick connective tissue which supports the arch of the foot) and plantar fasciitis (a painful inflammation of the plantar fascia.  The term plantar wart (apparently sometimes initially misunderstood by patients as “planter’s wart”) describes a wart which occurs on the sole of the foot or the toes.  The medical Latin is verruca plantaris.  Plantar is an adjective.

Plantar flexion and dorsiflextion

Lindsay Lohan, plantaflexing.

Plantar flexion refers to the movement of the foot when it is bent at the ankle away from the body, accomplished by flexing muscles in the calf, ankle, and foot.  In normal range of human activity, the range of motion is usually between 20-50^o, a commons example being depressing a car’s accelerator (throttle) pedal. Or even the mere act of walking.  The word “flexion” is used by anatomists and others to describe the movement of many body parts.  The notion of flexing at the knee or elbow is well understood in everyday life and technically, flexion is the decreased angle at a joint between two or more bones.  In the common act of bending the elbow from a straightened position, the angle decreases between the humerus and the radius and ulna of the forearm.  Plantar flexion is defined usually as the decreased angle between the plantar side of the foot and the back of the tibia at the tibiotalar joint (better known as the ankle) and can be visualized as the bending of the sole of the foot down where the toes are moving down and away from the body.  Done deliberately in exaggerated form it can feel unnatural but having one’s toes point downwards is something inherent to human movement, the activities (as well as using a car’s throttle pedal) including bending the foot during walking (propelling the mass of the body forward as it pushes off the ground) and standing on one’s tip toes which reaching for something in a high place.

Lindsay Lohan, dorsiflextion to the left, plantar flexion to the right.

The companion movement is dorsiflexation, an upward bending which, although applied most often to the foot, other body parts such as hands or digits (fingers) can be said to dorsiflex.  Dating from the early nineteenth century, dorsiflexion was a creation which appeared first in the literature of the early-modern science of anatomy.  The construct was dorsi (from the Middle English dorsal or dorsale from the Medieval Latin dorsālis (of or relating to the back)) + flex (from the Latin flexiō (genitive flexiōnis), from flectō (I bend, curve), from the Proto-Italic flektō, of uncertain origin and unknown in other Indo-European cognates) + -ion (the Latin suffix denoting action or condition).  The –ion suffic was from the Middle English -ioun, from the Old French -ion, from the Latin -iō (genitive -iōnis).  It was appended to a perfect passive participle to form a noun of action or process, or the result of an action or process.  Dorsiflexion is also a movement associated with the multiple joints.  The definition is of an action in which induces a decreased angle between the dorsal side of the body part and the bone or bones that are proximal to the body.  When one’s wrist is bent and the back of the hand is moving towards the body, that is an act of dorsiflexion and when the toes are pointed up or raised backward toward the body, this is also dorsiflexion so, using the feet as an illustrative example, plantar flexion and dorsiflextion can be understood as opposite movements at the ankle joint (both obviously being associated with flexion). That means the essence of the difference is the location of the foot doing the bending away from the ankle joint: If the toes rise as the ankle bends, it’s dorsiflexion while if the toes tend downwards, it’s a plantar flex.

Lindsay Lohan, plantar flexion to the left, dorsiflextion to the right.

Although the term (plantar flex) and word (dorsiflex) refer to variations of the same movement, the practice has always been to use a compound form only for the latter although the mechanics of the etymology is the same in that plantar flex references the sole of the foot and dorsiflex the back.  Perhaps counter-intuitively, the upper surface of a foot (the dorsal surface) is, to an anatomist, the back, a convention of use more familiar when used as the “back of the hand”.  Anatomists recommend imaging the dorsal fin of the shark as a memory trick, something associated with the “back side of an animal”. Consider a dorsal fin on a shark which is located on the back side of the shark. If the foot was a four-legged animal, the dorsal side would be the top of the foot. Likewise, if the hand was held out straight, the back side of the hand is called the dorsal side.  Interestingly, by convention, despite the obvious etymological connections, dorsiflex is the universal form while plantarflex, although a correct alternative spelling, is rarely seen outside of technical literature.

Podophilia

Podophilia (pronounced podd-ah-fil-ee-uh or pod-oh-fil=ee-uh)

A paraphilia describing the sexualized objectification of feet (and sometimes footwear), commonly called foot fetishism although the correct clinical description is now "foot partialism".

1980s: The construct was podo- +‎ -philia.  Podo- (pertaining to a foot or a foot-like part) was from the Ancient Greek πούς (poús), from the primitive Indo-European pṓds.  It was cognate with the Mycenaean Greek po, the Latin pēs, the Sanskrit पद् (pad), the Old Armenian ոտն (otn) & հետ (het), the Gothic fōtus and the Old English fōt (from which Modern English gained foot).  The Greek poús was the ancient Greek and Byzantine unit of length originally based upon the length of a shod foot and the idea in Europe endured for centuries although until the seventeenth century there were little attempts at standardization, even within the one jurisdiction and although things were settled well before the twentieth century, in the legal sense it wasn't until 1959 that the US, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Australia and the UK signed the "International Yard and Pound Agreement" which codified avoirdupois weight and length then used in all those nations, a set (although largely supplanted by the metric system (except in the US)) which officially still defines both Imperial and US customary units.  The suffix –philia was from the From Ancient Greek φιλία (philía) (fraternal love), from φῐλέω (philéō) (to love), from the earlier Ionic Greek (where the meanings diverged somewhat over the years.  It was used to to form nouns meaning a fondness, liking or love of something and in pathology picked up the specific technical sense of abnormal liking or tendency such a paraphilia.  One with specific attraction to feet or footwear is a podophile and their predilections are described as podophilic.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

The English phrase “length of the chancellor's foot” is neither an allusion to lineal measurement nor an early example of political podophilia.  It is a critique of law and most associated with a passage by the English jurist and scholar John Selden (1584–1654) which appeared in his Table Talk (published posthumously in London in 1689), discussing the flexible, adaptable law of equity and how its administration differed from the rigid, precedent-bound courts of common law: “Equity is a roguish thing: for law we have a measure… equity is according to the conscience of him that is Chancellor, and as that is larger or narrower, so is equity. ’Tis all one as if they should make the standard for the measure we call a 'foot' a Chancellor’s foot; what an uncertain measure would this be! One Chancellor has a long foot, another a short foot, a third an indifferent foot.”

In other words, in the Court of Chancellery, equity was administered by the Lord Chancellor at his discretion, the attraction being when the application of common law precedents were seen to create an obvious injustice, equity could intervene to provide a just result: justice based on fairness rather than strict legal rules.  However, implicit in that flexibility was the estimation of equity could vary from one Chancellor to next and thus the Court of Chancellery soon created its own contradictions, attracting critics who noted an outcome depended on the personal judgment of the Lord Chancellor who reached his decision on a “case-by-case” basis.

The Lord Chancellor with feet in flippers: Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone (Quintin Hogg, 1907-2001; Lord Chancellor 1970-1974 & 1979-1987).  Hailsham was a Tory (Conservative) but the photograph was taken by the Labour Party politician Lord Healey (Dennis Healey, 1917–2015).

The rationale was both clear and commendable but lawyers trained in the courts of common law liked the certainty and predictability of adherence to precedence; their fees were dependent on them winning their clients’ cases, not seeking an abstraction like “justice”.  Thus the phrase became legal shorthand for judicial arbitrariness in which outcomes depended on personal discretion rather than objective standards.  The equity lawyers were of course sensitive to the criticism and what evolved in the Court of Chancellery was its own set of “rules” although these came to be called “equitable maxims” and were principles & concepts which can be thought of as a kind of “proto-fuzzy law” in that they existed to ensure justice and fairness would be delivered but in a consistent manner.  The phrase however survives as a critique of subjective decision-making by authorities or inconsistencies in governance or law.

Often focused on toe cleavage, many self-described foot fetishists provide curated content.

Although the psychiatric community has since the mid-twentieth century devoted some time to discussing, re-defining and pondering what is apparently the 1800-odd year history of foot fetishism, a glance at the literature does suggest it’s been thought usually an interesting quirk in the human condition rather than a condition, much less a mental disorder.  Before the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in 1987 published the revised third edition of the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III-R), fetishism was usually described as a persistent preferential sexual arousal in association with non-living objects or an over-inclusive focus on (typically non-sexualized) body parts (most famously feet) and body secretions.  With the DSM-III-R, the concept of partialism (an exclusive focus on part of the body) was separated from the historic category of fetishism and appended to the “Paraphilia Not Otherwise Specified” category.  Although one of the dustier corners of psychiatry, the field had always fascinated some and in the years since the DSM-III-R was published, a literature did emerge, most critics maintaining partialism and fetishism are related, can be co-associated, and are non-exclusive domains of sexual behavior.  There was a technical basis for this position because introduced in DSM-IV (1994) was a (since further elaborated) codification of the secondary clinical significance criterion for designating a psychiatric disorder, one the implications of which was that it appeared to suggest a diagnostic distinction between partialism and fetishism was no longer clinically meaningful or necessary.  The recommendation was that the prime diagnostic criterion for fetishism be modified to reflect the reintegration of partialism and that a fetishistic focus on non-sexual body parts be a specifier of Fetishism.

Lohanic footage: Lindsay Lohan’s feet, the right plantar flexing (left), the left dorsiflexing (right).  Wikifeet's expert critics rate Ms Lohan's feet at 4½ stars (beautiful feet); her page has 3653 images.

Fetish was from the Latin facere (to make) which begat factitious (made by art), from which the Portuguese feitico was derived (fetiche in the French), from which English gained fetish.  A fetish in this context was defined as "a thing irrationally revered; an object in which power or force was concentrated".  In English, use of fetish to indicate an object of desire in the sense of “someone who is aroused due to a body part, or an object belonging to a person who is the object of desire” dates from 1897 (although the condition is mentioned in thirteenth century medical documents), an era during which the language of modern psychiatry was being assembled.  However, the earliest known literary evidence of podophilia lies in dozens of brooding, obsessive love letters from the second century AD of uncertain authorship and addressed to both male and female youths.  That there are those to whom an object or body part has the power to captivate and enthral has presumably been part of the human condition from the start.

Suspected podophiles, parked outside shoe shop.

From the beginnings of modern psychiatry, such a focus was not in itself considered a disorder, unless accompanied by distress or impairment although it was noted by many that if even a nominally “harmless” fetish became an obsession, it certainly could impair healthy sexuality.  In DSM-5 (2013), the diagnosis was assigned to individuals who experience sexual arousal from objects or a specific part of the body which is not typically regarded as erotic and presumably any body part or object can be a fetish, the most frequently mentioned including underwear, shoes, stockings, gloves, hair and latex.   Fetishists may use the desired article for sexual gratification in the absence of a partner although it’s recorded this may involve nothing more than touching smelling the item and the condition appears to manifest almost exclusively in men, the literature suggesting a quarter of fetishistic men are homosexual but caution needs always to be attached to these numbers.  Because fetishism is something which many happily enjoy their whole adult lives, it never comes to the attention of doctors and a high proportion of the statistical material about fetishism is from patients self-reporting.  The statistics in a sense reflect thus not the whole cohort of the population with the condition but rather those who either want to talk about it or are responding to surveys.  That is of course true of other mental illnesses but is exaggerated with fetishism because so much lies with the spectrum of normal human behavior and the definitional limitations in the DSM-5 reflect this, including three criteria for Fetishistic Disorder and three specifiers:

Criterion 1: Over a six month period, the individual has experienced sexual urges focused on a non-genital body part, or inanimate object, or other stimulus, and has acted out urges, fantasies, or behaviors.

Criterion 2: The fantasies, urges, or behaviors cause distress, or impairment in functioning.

Criterion 3: The fetishized object is not an article of clothing employed in cross dressing, or a sexual stimulation device, such as a vibrator.

Specifiers for the diagnosis include the type of stimulus which is the focus of attention (1) the non-genital or erogenous areas of the body (famously feet) and this condition is known also as Partialism (a preoccupation with a part of the body rather than the whole person), (2) Non-living object(s) (such as shoes), (3) specific activities (such as smoking during sex).

Not AOC’s feet.

The foot particularists also do PSAs (public service announcements).  When an image of feet was posted to Instagram with a caption claiming they belonged to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC, b 1989, US Representative (Democrat-New York) since 2019 and one of "the squad"), the alleged foot-selfie was lent a whiff of scandal by their owner being in the bath, holding a vape with a bottle of pumpkin-scented shampoo nearby.  Quickly the story was debunked by the online foot fetishists at WikiFeet, the internet’s most comprehensive collection of pictures of women's feet.  In this case, Ms Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Wikifeet page was used to C&C (compare and contrast) against the images in their library and it wasn’t a difficult task for the Wikifeet experts because the toes in the image were mildly brachydactyly (an inherited trait whereby the bones of the digits are relatively short) whereas AOC’s are not so afflicted.  Wikifeet’s users rate AOC’s feet at “3.92 stars” (nice feet), based on the 83 images in her page (many in sandals but some daringly bare).  Further research by the Wikifeet particularists revealed the feet surfacing provocatively from the pink bath-water really belonged to Sydney Leathers (b 1991) who became even better known by parlaying the publicity she attracted for being the sexting partner of disgraced New York politician Anthony Weiner (b 1964) into an apparently brief career as an aspiring porn star.  Why that didn’t flourish isn’t clear because rarely has there been a better porn star name than "Sydney Leathers" and Australian fellmongers and fetishists alike missed a marketing opportunity there.

Gianvito Rossi 85 suede pumps, US$1,210 at net-a-porter.

Noting the definitional model in the DSM-IV-TR (2000), despite the history in psychiatry’s world of paraphilias and a notable presence in popular culture, there were those who claimed the very notion of a foot fetish was false because of that critical phrase “non-living” which would seem to disqualify a foot (unless of course it was no longer alive but such an interest would be seriously weird and a different condition; although in this context there are deconstructionists who would make a distinction between a depiction of a live foot and the foot itself, clinicians probably regard them as interchangeable tools of the fetishist although the techniques of consumption would vary).  The critic noted many fetishes are extensions of the human body, such as articles of clothing or footwear but that did not extend to feet and that diagnostically, a sexual fascination with feet did correctly belong in the category of “Paraphilia Not Otherwise Specified,” and thus be regarded as partialism: Foot partialism.

Design by Davina-India.  Although the extreme examples won’t be possible to render as practical products without (unanticipated) advances in materials, 3D printing offers possibilities for the shoe-oriented faction of the foot partialists.

It was Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) who admitted that, lawfulness aside, as animals, the only truly aberrant sexual behavior in humans could be said to be its absence (something which the modern asexual movement re-defines rather than disproves).  It seemed to be in that spirit the DSM-5 was revised to treat podophila and many other “harmless” behaviors as “normal” and thus within the purview of the manual only to the extent of being described, clinical intervention no longer required.  Whether all psychiatrists agree with the new permissiveness isn’t known but early reports suggest there’s nothing in the DSM-5-TR (2022) to suggest podophiles will soon again be labeled as deviants.

Most Beautiful Ankle competition, Hounslow, England, 1936. What such competitions did was “level the playing field” to ensure a woman was judged only on the body-part being assessed, the rest of her concealed behind a screen so a judge wouldn't ne influenced by “extraneous aspects”.

The matter of podophilia is not exactly a neglected field but beyond the particularists it’s a niche topic for study, probably because despite being often curated as collections of images of objectified, un-clothed body parts, the stuff inherently is SFW (suitable for work) so is not as controversial as some fetishes.  Indeed, even were someone found to be in possession of many images of the feet of minors, unless the circumstances were unusual and disclosed suspicion of other behaviours, it’s likely no offence has been committed.  There have though been some academic studies including Sexualization of the Female Foot as a Response to Sexually Transmitted Epidemics: A Preliminary Study (1998) by A. James Giannini, Andrew E. Slaby, Gale Colapietro, Steven M. Melemis & Rachel K. Bowman.  A review of historic literature, the authors hypothesized a relationship between epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases and foot fetishism, the research prompted by an exponential increase in the behaviour seen in the 1980s, early in the AIDS epidemic.

Most Beautiful Legs competition, Palisades Amusement Park, New York, 1951.  Note the judge crouching to achieve the perfect angle, presumably a podophile with a well-trained eye.

The paper noted that during the second millennium there have been four major epidemics of STDs (sexually transmitted diseases, then the preferred term for what are now classed as STIs (sexually transmitted infections)): (1) what’s believed to have been an outbreak of gonorrhoea in the thirteenth century, syphilis in (2) the sixteenth and (3) nineteenth and (4) AIDS in the late twentieth and during each “there seemed to emerge a sexual focus on the female foot” which “disappeared with the epidemic's subsidence, usually after 30-60 years.”  What was intriguing was “the focus on feet was unique to each of these epidemic periods” whereas in all other eras studied, “eroticism was attached to breasts, buttocks and thighs.”  It was not suggested feet (bare or otherwise) didn’t appear in Biblical, Egyptian or Classical art and literature but they were not depicted as “sexual foci”.

It was in the thirteenth century things began to change as romantic writings came to include paeans to women's feet and the details were often not metaphorical but anatomical, describing in loving admiration the “aesthetically idealized woman's foot” which was to be “narrow with high arches.  The toes were to be somewhat long with no ‘webbing’ or folds of skin in between.  The great toe was longer than the second toe. The nails were to be elongated with large white moons and pale-pink nail-beds.”  The perfect foot was expected to be “white on both plantar and ventral aspects” so clearly, like thighs, buttocks and breasts, women’s feet were expected to conform to what men had decided was “beautiful” and those with body parts outside the “standardized image” could not be beautiful. Plus ça change…

Most Beautiful Ankle competition, Cliftonville open air swimming pool, Margate, England, 1936.

The Church looked askance at this “new” fetish, damning it as a “further form of degeneracy as Europe” and though the paper finds the trend faded to oblivion with the end of what is now believed to have been an epidemic of gonorrhoea, with the outbreak of syphilis in the sixteenth century, there appears again a “near-simultaneous reappearance of the foot fetish” which began in southern Europe before spreading north and the art of the time suggests it was then “toe-cleavage” was first identified as a motif, as a “voyeuristic mark of this time period as decolletage for other generations”.  Interestingly, 300-odd years on, the ideal structure was re-imagined and an “elongated second toe” became suddenly fashionable.  When syphilis re-appeared in the 1800s, so did the focus on women’s feet and because photography was available to the Victorians, there’s a record also of the reaction of polite society with the female foot “removed from photographic tintypes”: While men’s boots commonly remained exposed, women's boots or shoes were either covered with fabric or “mechanically cropped from the plate”.  Ballerinas would perform bare-footed (critics writing of her feet as they “flexed and extended”) ice-cream confections (called the “Trilby”) were sold in the shape of a woman’s foot and the “Cinderella fairy tale was revived with foot fetishistic overtones not now reflected in twentieth century versions”.  

Technicians recording metrics for a contestant in Miss Italia, Rome, 1949.

“Body part” contests offered scope for those who wouldn’t be “competitive” in mainstream beauty contests.  As a footnote, the perfection (in the sense of digital depiction) of generative AI (artificial intelligence) may see the end of the industry’s “body part model” niche in which those with exceptional hands, feet, eyes etc were contracted for photo-shoots involving just that one part.

In the nineteenth century, some did offer explanations (sometimes fanciful) for the phenomenon and although in the medical literature there were observations of the use of the foot “as a safe-sex alternative”, no systematic studies seem to have been undertaken.  The AIDS pandemic revived the interest and the proliferation of foot-fetish publications in the 1980s (before the internet was a mainstream product) was a marker of the trend and interestingly, the titles of what were usually glossy magazines avoided the words “feet” & “foot”, instead using “neutral” terms such as “Leg Action, Thigh High, Leg Show, Leg-Scene, High-heeled Women, Silk Stockings or Leg Tease”.  Despite that, the content seems overwhelmingly foot-centric and the conclusion was the publishers wished to “avoid embarrassment for the purchaser”.  That was interesting in that publications devoted to other body parts seemed to tend to use unambiguous titles and the paradox was that although feet were SWF, the perception was there was shame attached to the predilection, something not suffered by consumers of the definitely NSFW (not suitable for work) breast-related material.  Editorially, there were photographs mostly including feet and tips & techniques for “foot sex” which could be “a pleasurable sexual alternative without risk of sexually transmitted diseases”, the foot described as a safe “erotic alternative to the anus and genitals”.  It was at this point even the mainstream magazines began to advocate “toe sucking” and “foot biting” between couples, not to avoid infections but because for even the most sexually jaded it would be a “genuinely new” experience, novelty in this field much valued.  Diligent washing prior to sucking and biting was recommended.

First heat of Miss Slender Legs Competition, Miami, Florida, 1952.

Many good things happen in Florida; everybody knows that. The pop band The Monks in 1979 released the single Nice Legs Shame About Her Face so the contest in Miami was really an early example of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion).  It's a bit of a stretch but as a Lord Chancellor might have put it, "beauty contests" are a thing of the common law while the "most beautiful body part" competitions belong to equity. 

The AIDS pandemic of course remains afoot although advances in treatment have made it manageable for most, at least in developed economies though there are concerns how cuts to foreign aid will affect outcomes in poorer regions, especially sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific islands.  Despite the the condition fading from public consciousness, foot particularism appears still to be flourishing, the absence of foot-focused print titles an indication of the general industry shift to digital content rather than any decline in interest and the count of related internet pages is said to be in the millions.  To explain the phenomenon which has for centuries re-occurred, the neurology community has also become involved.  In Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind (1998), neurologist V.S. Ramachandran (b 1991) and science journalist Sandra Blakeslee (b 1943) offered the theory of a link with brain areas for the feet and the genitals being physically close, their speculation being there may be some “neural crosstalk between the two”, the idea a concern about STIs induces the brain to be stimulated to think about feet, purely because of the effect of directly adjacent electrical activity.