Sommelier

Sommelier (pronounced suhm-uh l-yey or saw-muh-lyey (French))

A waiter, in a club or restaurant or something similar, who is in charge of wines; sometimes known as the wine steward.

1889: Details of the etymology are contested at the margins.  All agree it’s a dissimilated form of the Middle French sommerier (a butler), from the thirteenth century sommier (a military officer who had charge of provisions, a position which evolved into as aspect of the modern role of quartermaster (the the expression used to describe staff in these roles as "on the 'Q' side")).   One version traces this from the twelfth century somme (pack) from the Vulgar Latin salma, a corruption of the Late Latin sagma (a pack-saddle (and later "the pack on the saddle")).  The alternative suggestion was it was from the Old French Provençal saumalier (pack-animal driver) again from Late Latin sagma, the origin of which was the Ancient Greek ságma (covering, pack saddle).  Polish, Portuguese, Spanish & Swedish all use an unadapted borrowing of the French sommelier.  Sommelier is a noun & verb and sommeliering & sommeliered are verbs; the noun plural is sommeliers. 

Fifty-odd years of the Court of Master Sommeliers

Although they call themselves cork-dorks, at the most elite level, a sommelier can belong to a most exclusive club.  The Court of Master Sommeliers was established in 1977, formalizing the layers of qualification that began in 1969 in London with the first Master Sommelier examination, conducted now by the various chapters of the court and globally, they’re a rare few.  While over 600 people have been to space and there are rumored to be some 4000 members of the Secret Society of the Les Clefs d'Or, there are currently only 262 Master Sommeliers in the world. 

In training; practice makes perfect.

The Certified Sommelier Examination (CME) exists as three part concept: (1) a focus on a candidate’s ability to demonstrate proficiency in deductive tasting, (2) the technical aspects of wine production & distribution and (3) the practical skills and techniques of salesmanship required for those working as sommeliers in restaurants and other establishments.  It’s thus a vocational qualification for those who wish to pursue a career in hospitality, either in the specialized field of beverage services or as a prelude to moving into management.  Like the Secret Society of the Les Clefs d’Or, upon graduation as a Certified Sommelier, a candidate becomes entitled to a certificate, title and a lapel pin (in the singular and worn to the left rather than pair of cross keys issued by the Les Clefs d’Or).

It’s a structured process.  As a prerequisite, candidates must have completed the classes and passed the Introductory Sommelier Examination (ISE) although it’s no longer required of students that the CME be completed within three years of the ISE, candidates now encouraged to proceed to the next level when “best prepared”.  The court suggests a minimum of three years industry experience is desirable because both the content of both the ISE & SME are predicated on the assumption those sitting will have this background and it’s further advise it’s best to work in the field for at least twelve months between the two.  The CSE is a one-day examination in three parts and the minimum passing grade is 60% in each (all within the one sitting):

(1) A tasting examination using the court’s Deductive Tasting Method (DTM), candidates during which candidates must with a high degree of accuracy & clarity describe and identify four wines (two white and two red).  The format of this is a written four-section essay which must be completed within 45 minutes and the DTM exists in a structured format which candidates must learn prior to the exam.

The Court of Master Sommelier's Deductive Tasting Method.

(2) A theory examination which is designed to test candidates' knowledge and understanding of wine, beverage, and the sommelier trade.  The test consists of multiple choice, short answer, some non-abstract math (ie the sort of arithmetic relevant to the profession) and matching questions. Candidates must complete the 45-question examination within 38 minutes.

Lindsay Lohan demonstrating early sommelier skills in The Parent Trap (1998).  She decided to focus on acting, pursuing wine-tasting only as a hobby.

(3) A Service Examination: The service examination is a practical-level experience, conducted in a setting which emulates a “real: restaurant environment.  It’s designed to allow candidates to demonstrate salesmanship, knowledge and appropriate conversational skills, all while performing the tableside tasks associated with the job.  The test typically includes opening still or sparkling wines in the correct manner and is not limited purely to what’s in the bottle, students expected to be able to recommend cocktails, spirits or other drinks and discuss the interplay of food and wine; what goes best with what.  As befits a practical exam, candidates must dress and deport themselves exactly as they would if employed as a restaurant sommelier.

Quale

Quale (pronounced kwah-lee, kwah-ley, kwey-lee or kwey-ley)

(1) In philosophy, a property of something considered separately from the thing having that property; an instance of subjective, conscious experience.

(2) A sense-datum or feeling having a distinctive quality.

(3) Death; a plague; a murrain (obsolete).

1665–1675: From the Latin quāle, neuter singular of quālis (of what sort; of what kind) and cognate with the Old English cwalu and the Old Norse kval (torment, torture), both variants from the root of quell.  The later was from quala, from the French quel, the Italian quale and the Spanish cual, ultimately from the Latin quālis, from the primitive Indo-European kwis & kwo (interrogative, relative stem) and (speculatively) hzel (to grow); it was cognate with the Ancient Greek πηλίκος (pēlíkos).  Quale is a noun; the noun plural is qualia (quals is the plural of qual (a clipping of “qualifying exam”).

Qualia are the subjective or qualitative properties of experiences: Some find the experience of seeing a white Ferrari as different from viewing one in white as another might find when comparing an orchid to hemlock.  Although it had appeared before (adding to an already long list of technical terms in the discipline), in philosophy, qualia was first used in its current sense in a paper published in 1929 by US scholar Clarence Irving ("C.I.") Lewis (1883–1964).  Lewis was discussing sense-data theory and explained that he used the word, qualia were properties of sense-data themselves.  Emerging from what was at the time a rather dusty corner of academic philosophy, quale came to be more widely used (especially with the rapid growth of universities in the post-war period) and the sense expanded to refer more generally to properties of experience. While there are experiences which truly are universal with no differentiation in qualia among people, other perceptual experiences (which can be of the mind such as hallucinations, or of the body such a headache, or wholly emotional such as anger or anxiety) intrinsically have a qualitative quality: their quale.

Different qualia likely: 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4.  The term “resale red” (the idea re-painting a sports car red increases its resale value) may not have been coined to describe the Ferrari after-market but such is the association of red (particularly the classic Rosso Corsa) with the marque that some find other shades a disappointment.  However, the right Ferrari in one of the Biancos (variants of white) displays the purity of line as no other color can.

The old, and long obsolete, use of quale to mean “death” seems no longer makes sense given the way the meaning of the word has shifted.  However, although for the deceased, once dead, the experience is the same whether one was struck by a meteorite, drank one’s self to death or was murdered by the Freemasons, the manner of death might mean a different quale for the departed’s grieving loved ones.  That quirk aside, although the existence of qualia seem obvious, in philosophy, there have been decades of disputes, may focused on whether qualia can be identified with or reduced to anything physical, the suggesting being any attempted explanation of the world in solely physicalist terms would leave qualia out.  In the way of squabbles about things which can be neither be proved nor disproved, a century from now lecturers and professors are likely still to be exchanging views.

Qualia are the subjective (individually and differentially qualitative) properties of experiences and the differences between individuals are sometimes significant.  Two people drinking from the same bottle of wine may have two different experiences: one finding pleasure, one distaste; two diametrically opposed qualia.  Why this happens was explained in Why You Like The Wines You Like (2013) by Tim Hanni (b 1952), a certified Master of Wine (MW).  The certification process is administered by the Court of Master Sommeliers, established in 1977, formalizing the layers of qualification that began in 1969 in London with the first Master Sommelier examination.  It’s now conducted by the various chapters of the court and globally, they’re a rare few.  While over 600 people have been to space and there are rumored to be some 4000 members of the Secret Society of the Les Clefs d'Or, there are currently only 262 Master Sommeliers in the world; they describe themselves as “cork dorks”.

Lindsay Lohan explaining her quale upon tasting wine in The Parent Trap (1998).  IRL, she decided to focus on acting, pursuing wine-tasting only as a hobby. 

What Hanni’s book explored were the physiological and psychological reasons peoples’ experience of the taste of wine are so divergent; some factors obvious, some more subtle.  In partnership with US psychologist Dr Linda Bartoshuk (b 1938), he developed what was dubbed the “vinotype” assessment, used to explore individual preferences for, and tolerance of, various external stimuli and how those generalized preferences (or “tolerances”) affect the appreciation of wine.  Essentially, there are those who are “hypersensitive” to tastes and those who are less perceptive (ie “less sensitive”) and thus categorized as “more tolerant”.  That sounds banally predictable but there are social and economic implications because it’s clear an individual’s personal preference is determined by personal physiology and social context as well as the way the taste receptors in the mouth work.  There is still the cultural perception that those who prefer sweet wines to dry are those with a less trained or discerning palate but the difference really depends more than anything on whether or not one is one of the “hypersensitive”.  Despite that, there are social pressures (real or perceived) and some feel compelled, at least in public, to avoid sweet wines, lest they be thought unsophisticated.

Agastopia

Agastopia (pronounced agg-uh-stow-pee-ah)

Deriving visual enjoyment from the appearance of a specific body part or parts (some suggesting the attraction must be fetishistic to cross the threshold from admiration to syndrome).

2011: A coining of etymologists Peter Novobatzky & Ammon Shea who included it in their 1999 book Depraved English (sub-titled: "The most disgusting and hilarious word book ever", a title debatably hyperbolic but that adequately captured the intention).  While not exhaustive, there was an entry for maschalephidrosis (runaway armpit perspiration), the construct being the Ancient Greek μασχάλη (maskhálē) (armpit) + hidrosis, from the New Latin hidrōsis, from the Ancient Greek ἱδρώς (hidrṓs) (sweat) + -sis (the suffix in medicine used to form nouns of condition) so there were certainly highlights.  The construct of agastopia was the Ancient Greek ἀγα- (aga(s)-) (very) + -topia (a back-formation extracted from utopia (and other words) ultimately deriving from the Ancient Greek τόπος (tópos) (place).  Utopia was from the New Latin Ūtopia, the name of a fictional island possessing a seemingly perfect socio-politico-legal system in the 1516 book Utopia by Sir Thomas More (1478–1535).  The construct was the Ancient Greek οὐ (ou) (not) + τόπος (tópos) (place, region) + -ία (-ía) (the New Latin suffix, from the Latin -ia and the Ancient Greek -ία (-ía) & -εια (-eia) which formed abstract nouns of feminine gender.  More’s irony in calling a world in which everything and everyone works in perfect harmony being best translated as “not a real place” is often lost in modern use and the word probably has genuinely undergone a meaning-shift.  Agastopic is a noun & adjective, agastopia is a noun and agastopically is an adverb; the noun plural is agastopias.

Agastopic: Studies of the soles of Lindsay Lohan's feet in three aspects.

Although in non-clinical use there had not previously been a generic descriptor of part-focused voyeuristic fetishism, there’s no suggestion Novobatzky & Shea thought their coining a "serious" contribution to the taxonomy of mental health but some commentators have adopted it, fleshing out the definitional range.  It’s been suggested the condition manifests as (1) a love or admiration of one’s own body part, compelling either a fondness of performing a particular task with it or a preference to cover and shield it with a protective layer or (2) the more familiar admiration of another’s body part(s).  Some sources, without citation, note it’s “…believed to be a rare condition” and (presumably tongue in cheek), one for which there’s “… no cure.”  Despite these helpful nudges, when the fifth edition of the APA's (American Psychiatric Association) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders was published in 2013 (DSM-5), there was no specific mention of agastopia and this was maintained when the revised version (DSM-5-TR) was released in 2022.  Still, for clinicians who find it convenient quasi-medical jargon, presumably a patient found to be "fond of certain body part" without "fetishising" it (or them) would be found to be "agastopish"; fetishes also intrinsically spectrum conditions, the comparative would be "more agastopic" and the superlative "most agastopic".

In an agastopic moment: The artist moved to despair at the grandeur of antique fragments (circa 1778), drawing in red chalk with brown wash by Henry Fuseli (Johann Heinrich Füssli (1741–1825)).

The notion agastopia is “believed to be a rare condition” might be based on some obscure statistics but certainly is a reflection on (1) the profession no longer regarding (most) such things as diagnosable conditions unless certain criteria are fulfilled and (2) the general consensus most instances of agastopia (being untroubling) are never reported to a clinician.  In other words, "believed to be a rare condition" probably is better expressed a "known to be a rarely reported condition".  Impressionistically, the likely real-world experience is that the prevalence of agastopia in a subset of the population doesn't justify funding the research and agastopia should not wholly be conflated with the various fetishistic interests now listed in the DSM as "particularisms" although overlap obviously must exist.  Nor is agastopia something exclusively either a male preserve or sexually focused, some women known to enjoy (in both senses) an agostopic relationship with their hair or fingernails.  In the days when two of the most significant vectors for the distribution of pornography were magazines (that although with glossy covers should not be confused with "the glossies") and various digital media (tapes and optical discs), both forms provided content devoted to or thematically inclinded towards one body part or another, something carried over to the internet when websites became the default mode.  Among the pornography aggregation sites, it’s not unusual for body parts or attributes (and not just the old "usual suspects") to be listed as categories for consumers with a particular agastopic or fetishistic focus.

Highly qualified content provider Busty Buffy (b 1996), whose feet seem never to command the attention they deserve.

So, thus compartmentalized, agastopia is a thing existing at a commercially critical mass.  ‘Twas perhaps ever thus but what has in recent decades changed is the attitude of the mental health community.  Before the release of DSM-III-R (1987), fetishism tended to be 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 the DSM-IV (1994) was a (since further elaborated) codification of the secondary clinical significance criterion for designating a psychiatric disorder, one of the implications of which was it appeared to suggest a diagnostic distinction between partialism and fetishism was no longer clinically meaningful or necessary.  The recommendation was 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.

Fetish was from the the French fétiche, from the Portuguese feitico, from facere (to make) which begat factitious (created; artificial).  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) and it was in the late nineteenth century the lexicon of modern psychiatry began to be assembled.  However, in the literary record, surviving from the seventh century AD are 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 in whom an object or body part has the power to captivate and enthral presumably has from the start been part of the human condition.

Poster for Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel, (1930).  Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992) understood (and exploited) herself as a “fetishized object” but her construct was as knowingly artificial as was Blue Angel of most of Weimar Berlin.

One obvious linguistic virtue of “agastopia” is it can be used as an alternative to “fetishism”, the latter a word with the power to mislead or distort meaning because of the associations vested by popular use although some estimable writers have found “fetish” indispensable while maintaining clarity.  In The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s (2000), a study of the politics on that troubled decade in Europe and the US, English historian Piers Brendon (b 1940) used “fetish” in the way most familiar when writing of a certain aspect of Berlin during the last days of the Weimar Republic (1918-1933): “Sleazy clubs offered anything from cocaine to fetishism and perversions abounded: one coven of coprophagists gorged a prostitute on chocolate, gave her a laxative and settled down to a feast.  There were so many homosexual bars, transvestite dance halls and nude cabarets that an enterprising publisher issued a ‘Guide to Vicious Berlin’.  Outside the palace at the bottom of Unter den Linden [literally “under the linden trees", a boulevard in the central Mitte district running between the Brandenburg Gate and the Berlin Palace, the name gained from the linden (non citrus lime) trees lining the thoroughfare] were two stone lions, one of which was said to roar whenever a virgin walked by.”  If some of what was in the Christopher Isherwood’s (1904–1986) Goodbye to Berlin (1939) was an indication, the lion would not often have had to stir but literature can be highly selective, lives of most of the burghers in Weimar-era Berlin likely as stolid and respectable as stereotypes of Germans suggest.  While Isherwood and Marlene Dietrich painted captivating pictures of a decadent city, generally life was more prosaic.

Brendon however also applied “fetish” to attitudes expressed toward objects, institutions and concepts decidedly non-sexualized including “the Maginot Line” (a French border fortification that proved illusory), “rural conservation”, “the League of Nations” (1920-1945) and “liberalism”.  Of the last, perhaps gleefully, he documented L’Osservatore Romano’s (the daily newspaper of Vatican City) lauding of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & Prime-Minister of Italy 1922-1943) as a man of the same mind as Pius XI (1857–1939; pope 1922-1939) and a “man whom Providence has sent Us (sic)... [who did not believe in the] “villainous fetishes of liberalism.”  The Holy See’s mouthpiece concluded by saying it was “…thanks to the Duce” that “Italy has been given back to God and God to Italy.”  The extent of God’s gratitude can of course only be guessed but as the fate of Italian fascism (with the fall of Mussolini in 1943 it “burst like a bubble” in the unguarded phrase of German Generaloberst (Colonel General) Alfred Jodl (1890–1946, chief of the OKW operations staff 1939-1945)) suggested, the movement never became in Italy quite the fetish the Duce had hoped.

Of Foot Particularism: The DSM-5 Criteria

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 fetishistic 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 (such as 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).

WikiFeet is a wiki which curates users’ submissions of women's feet with a predictable emphasis on celebrities. The Lindsay Lohan page contains 3639 images with the WikiFeet community rating her feet at 4.7 stars (out of 5) and that means she's in the category: "beautiful feet".  The site includes sections for “feet of the day” and “feet of the week” although the criteria for "making the cut" for these honors are not disclosed.  An illustrative sample from WikiFeet's rating table includes:

Billie Eilish, 97 images, rated 4.1 (nice feet)

Anna Kournikova, 362 images, rated 5.0 (beautiful feet)

Selena Gomez, 1963 images, rated 4.7, (beautiful feet)

Nicki Minaj, 1135 images, rated 3.4 (OK feet)

Mila Kunis, 1131 images, rated 4.6, (beautiful feet)

Janelle Monáe, 486 images, rated 5.0 (beautiful feet)

Nancy Pelosi, 14 images, rated 2.9 (OK feet)

Rihanna, 5663 images, rated 5.0 (beautiful feet)

Emily Ratajkowski, 2571 images, rated 5.0 (beautiful feet)

Paris Hilton, 997 images, rated 3.2 (OK feet)

Emma Watson, 1047 images, rated 5.0 (beautiful feet)

Megan Fox, 1866 images, rated 4.1 (nice feet)

Emma Raducanu 80 images, rated 4.6 (beautiful feet)

Charli XCX, 960 images, rated 5.0 (beautiful feet)

Crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013, left) and Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025, right).

Crooked Hillary Clinton’s feet must convey something of her crooked crookedness because Wikifeet's connoisseurs rate them only at 2.5 stars (OK feet) but politics in the US being so polarized, there may be an element of strategic voting involved and the sample size is anyway small, crooked Hillary's page having only 24 images.  Following in the footsteps of the original, there exists a companion WikiFeet page for men’s feet although, predictably, it’s a mere shadow of the feminine version and that must be emblematic of many things in sociology, sexual politics and fetishism.  On the male site there is a solitary entry on Donald Trump’s page and while it’s not the only known photograph of his bare feet, it is the one with the best angle; with only a single image on which to base an assessment, the rating of 1.3 stars (bad feet) may reflect political bias rather than objective judgment.  That may also have influenced voting on the 32 images on Kamala Harris’s (b 1964; VPOTUS 2021-2025) page though the fact she rated a solid 4.0 (nice feet) clearly wasn’t enough to help her win the 2024 presidential election, feet clearly just not an issue.

Shine envy: Field Marshal el-Sisi (left) and President Trump (right), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 2017.  Military men usually have shiny shoes, the more senior ranks allocated a batman to do the polishing and some branding of consumer shoe polishes reflect (get it?) the tradition, "Parade Gloss", "Military Tan" and "Rollcall Black" all having been sold "in the tin".

There was nothing in the recent testimony of Stormy Daniels (stage name of Stephanie Gregory, b 1979) to suggest Donald Trump has a particular thing for feet but he certainly notices shoes.  When meeting Field Marshal Fattah el-Sisi (b 1954; president of Egypt since 2014) in Riyadh, Mr Trump couldn’t help but be impressed how much shinier were the field marshal’s shoes, his seemingly close to identical pumps dull by comparison.  As they left the room, Mr Trump remarked to him: “Love your shoes.  Boy, those shoes. Man …” but knew he’d lost face and doubtless the White House shoe-shine operative loudly was told: "You're fired!"  The Democratic Party seems never to have drawn attention to Joe Biden's (b 1942; VPOTUS 2009-2017 and POTUS 2021-2025) shoes, presumably because they feared Fox News might have demanded proof he could still tie his own laces.

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 attached to a living being) but such an interest would be seriously weird (the "lucky" rabbit foot from another tradition) and a more disturbing 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).  It's a nuanced aspect of "body parts as this and that" because some are in many religious traditions venerated as holy relics or icons.  The critics 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.  While there are those who greatly admire elegant creations such as a stiletto heeled slingback, the interest in these as pieces of design is separate from those who focus on "associative connections": Thigh-length, laced leather boots with a five inch (125 mm) heel are likely to be "enjoyed" not at stand-alone objects but because of the thighs, calves, ankles and feet of those stereotypically assumed most often to pull them on (and, of course, take them off). 

OnlyFans, a place for agastopics.

A genuine phenomenon, OnlyFans is a niche player in the gig economy but the niche is big and if not quite the oldest in the world, it's been around a while.  Something of an early-adopter of techniques embracing the implications of AI (artificial intelligence), while "feet" is just one of many genres serviced, OnlyFans is able to engage in "category proliferation" at little more than marginal cost because the site works on a "bolt-on" principle.  The business model works because the platform's content exclusively is user-generated with revenue streams provided by PPV (pay-per-view) customers and monthly subscriptions with creators collecting the bulk of the payments, OnlyFans essentially "clipping the ticket" on the way through their gateway.  OnlyFans was one of the "plague winners" in the disruptions wrought by the lockdowns imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic but the earnings profile of the content creators is a highly exaggerated curve, a relative handful finding it most lucrative while for most it's at best a hobby or side-hustle; for OnlyFans that's OK, they still clip the ticket.  Although best known for creators posting sexually explicit content, in 2021 (in response to political pressure) it was announced things would be "sanitized" with NSFW (not suitable for work) material purged site-wide.  Such was the outcry from the creators and customers that plan survived not even a week, cynical analysts concluding the original announcement had been made to provoke the revolt, OnlyFans knowing nothing quietens tiresome politicians as quickly as mass public discontent.  The OF content creators are an imaginative lot and some are said to make "feet" NSFW so those wanting a purely anatomical experience are recommended to search with caution.

Foot Finder

When OnlyFans attained critical mass it encouraged the growth of an ecosystem of sites acting as "third party intermediaries" servicing those who for whatever reason preferred their transactions to be handled with a guarantee of anonymity (if curated with care, one’s own feet on an OnlyFans page should be similarly anonymous).  Content providers are known as “sole traders” while in the jargon the third party operators run “parasitic sites” which may sound harsh but the use does mirror the analogous use in biology.  Amusingly, although the internet doomed many other platforms with business models dependent on revenue from advertisers (notably the print media, in the West, many magazines and all but a handful of newspapers driven extinct or taking "an unconscionable time a-dying"), FootFinder (above, left) clearly sees value still in physical, three-dimensional mobile advertising and a large fibreglass foot (above, right) atop a Kei car (diminutive, small displacment Japanese vehicles sold mostly in the JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) certainly must attract attention.  As long ago as the 1950s, there were those predicting there would one day be a world-wide system (at least one encompassing the Western world) of real-time interconnectivity (ie the concept of the internet) but most seemed to envisage it as people having portals (with acid-green screens) through which to look-up stuff in databases or receive text-based content such as news reports or educational instruction.  In short, a world of "few uploaders and many downloaders".  It's doubtful many imagined "mass-upload" models such as YouTube and definitely not OnlyFans; while many would have assumed users would become interactive, Foot Finder would not have occurred to many as a template.  How, 50 years from now we'll all (or at least some of use) be indulging our agastopia(s) may be just as unpredictable.

The feet of Ana de Armas, OnlyFans "Feet of the Year, 2023", plantar flexing.

It need not be an expensive hobby, provided one focuses on one's favorite feet.  English singer Lily Allen (b 1985) has an OnlyFans page (Lily Allen FTSE500) for her (US size 6) feet and subscriptions are offered at US$10 per month, her hook on an Instragram post titled “La dolce feeta” including a snap of her toes next to Rome’s Trevi in which Anita Ekberg's (1931-2005) feet splashed, all those years ago.  While to those not part of the fetish it can be hard to tell one foot from another, the cognoscenti have eyes as well-trained as a sommelier's palate; in 2023 OnlyFans "Feet of the Year" title was awarded to Cuban-born Spanish actress Ana de Armas (b 1988).  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 the modern asexual movement re-defines rather than disproves).  It seemed to be in that spirit the DSM-5 was revised to treat agastopia 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 agastopics will soon again be labeled as deviants.

The washing of feet

Not everything foot-centric is agastopic.  In the New Testament there are three texts describing Christ washing feet, the best known of which is John 13:1-17 (Jesus Washing the Disciples' Feet).  The ritual is explained usually as Jesus demonstrating his humility and mission to serve mankind but it's clear he wished also to set a good example to the not infrequently fractious dozen:

"So after he had washed their feet, and had taken his garments, and was set down again, he said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you? Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you."  John 13:12-15 (King James Version; KJV, 1611)

Pope Francis kisses the foot of a female inmate of Rebibbia prison, Rome, 28 March 2024: Symbolic or a "performative photo-opportunity" depending on one's view. 

One of the set-piece motifs of Christianity, the foot-washing ritual takes place on Holy Thursday (the Thursday before Easter) and seeks to imitate Christ’s washing of the Disciples’ feet the night before he was crucified at Golgotha.  It was on that evening he said to his Disciples: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.” (John 13:21).  The sight of a pope washing feet is familiar but when Francis (1936-2025; pope 2013-2025) performed the ritual at Rome’s Rebibbia prison on Holy Thursday 2024, it was apparently the first time in the institution’s two-thousand year odd existence a pontiff has washed the feet only of women.  Historians concede records from earlier centuries obviously are incomplete but so remarkable was the event deemed, most seemed to conclude a precedent had been set.  In the past Francis had washed the feet of women, Muslims, refugees and other minorities but never women exclusively.  He certainly cast a wider net than his more conservative predecessor, Benedict XVI (1927–2022; pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022) who sponged the feet only of men and, in the final years of his pontificate, only those of ordained priests.  It’s believed feet proffered to popes, scrupluously  are pre-sanitized.