Inside the lucrative business of feet fetishes

As a student at New York University, Olivia took a few sexuality classes and thought she had a good understanding on what fetishes involve. Then she answered a vague Craigslist ad seeking “Girls with Pretty Feet” and found herself swept into the strange world of “foot prostitution.”

“I’m only young and living in New York once,” said 19-year-old Olivia in an interview with the New York Post.

When Olivia first responded to the ad with her name, phone number and head shot, she thought it was for some kind of modeling work. The commissioner quickly responded by instructing Olivia to get a pedicure, wear clothes as if she was going to a nightclub and attend an interview.

Wearing a tank top, black pants and stilettos, Olivia quickly realized she was modestly dressed in comparison to her competition.

“I thought they said dress like you were going to a club; apparently, I came a little overdressed,” Olivia said.

With more than 30 scantily clad, non-English speaking women as her competition, Olivia became nervous she was getting involved in sex trafficking. The fact that the daytime spa was transformed to look like a brothel didn’t help rest her nerves. But, before she had the chance to back out, the man who placed the ad instructed Olivia and a select group of other girls to go into a room beyond the lobby. The man brusquely asked one girl at a time to sit in a chair, remove her shoes and allow her feet to be examined for hammertoes, hangnails or any other imperfections.

^A real feet fetishes ad potentially similar to the one Olivia answered.

“He was looking for high arches and small feet,” said Olivia, who wears a size 6-1/2. “I guess that’s what they like.”

Olivia was one of the few invited to the next segment of the evening: Encounters with paying clients. First, the girls, including underaged Olivia, were treated to drinks provided by the men.

“It took place at a spa but with lots of couches and massage tables and a liquor table that was literally a reception desk covered with alcohol the men were told to bring because the spa legally can’t sell liquor,” she said. “They brought the girliest drinks possible, whipped-cream Svedka, cherry flavored vodka.”

With lowered inhibitions, the girls mingle with about 30 men, who paid $100 entrance fee to the foot pimp.

“The men made it a point to tell us this was their first time, even though they already knew some of the girls by name.”

A middle-aged man with a potbelly and career in finance invited Olivia into a private room. She sits on the couch as he shuts the door and rips her black stilettos off with his teeth. Continually asking if its ok, the man massages her calves with available lotion and sucks on her toes. Although he tried to keep her comfortable, Olivia was challenged to work her feet in a “sexy way.”

“It was weird at first. I mean, I thought he was just going to kiss my feet. Not put my whole foot in his mouth,” Olivia recalled.

Forty minutes later, the satisfied man paid Olivia her $80 fee plus a $120 tip. As a college student and unpaid intern in the expensive New York City, it was a great deal for Olivia. She said she would gladly do it again.

“These guys aren’t hurting anyone and everyone’s got their thing that turns them on,” Olivia rationalized. “I didn’t break the law. I didn’t take off my clothes.”