My strange encounter with foot fetishists

Around five years ago I started to receive requests online for photos of and details about my feet. I’ve been asked for foot pictures intermittently ever since. Most of the gentlemen are upfront about what they’re after (‘send foot pic plz’), but one man went above and beyond in his pursuits. Posing as an academic, he sent several emails to my work account claiming dozens of women in the British media had submitted their shoe size to help him with a research project. He was just waiting for my details to finish his ground-breaking study. Although I never responded, I commend his efforts.

I was never able to work out what triggered this attention from foot fetishists, but now I think I’ve figured it out. In the course of doing ‘research’ for an article running in the magazine, my Spectator colleagues recently stumbled across wikiFeet, the internet’s largest ‘collaborative celebrity feet website’, home to unlimited foot content. And on this website we discovered my feet: three photos of them in flip-flops, lifted from my Instagram page in 2016 and 2017.

I suppose there’s never a good time to find out that people have been ogling your feet. But I was hungover, already feeling delicate and a little bit nauseous, and in no condition to process this news. As I sat at my desk, horrified, my colleagues pointed to some silver linings. The website revealed that people who liked Kate Andrews’s feet also liked the feet of Ashley Judd and Mila Kunis. It’s the first and only time I am likely to keep company with these famous actresses.

And my feet were ranked four out of five stars, which officially labels them ‘nice feet’ on the website. This was perhaps the biggest surprise. Years of doing ballet as a child has led to a noticeable ‘smoosh’ effect, so my toes are all shorter than I think they’re supposed to be.