I Have a Thing About Feet

No, not like that...

Jul 09, 2025

grayscale photo of human feet — Photo by Danie Franco on Unsplash

When my children were born, I was fascinated by the teensy gumdrop toes at the ends of their chunky, unused feet. And right there is where my love of feet began and ended.

Feet are polarizing.

Now there’s a sentence I never imagined writing. Oh, Substack—the things you make me do.

I respect feet for their utility—they haul us hither, yon, and often through the aisles of Costco—but I’m also sort of grossed out by their sweaty, smelly, Hobbit-adjacent reality. Unfortunately, in 2025, a societal lack of couth and class leaves me face to face with far more feet than I should ever have to endure.

Like the last time I rode a commuter train.

I wound up in the four seats that face each other. If I’d been with three friends, this would’ve been a score. But instead, I was face to face with two strangers and next to another. The girl diagonal from me kicked off her flip flops, pulled her knee to her chest, and propped her chipped-nails, ripped-cuticles bare foot on the seat. I had two options: stare directly at the stranger in front of me like we were about to duel, or gaze out the window and let those busted-up toes photobomb my peripheral vision. (I couldn’t read since I was going backwards, and motion sickness is my most loyal travel companion.)

Or the last time I was in my daughter’s car.

While she’s away at school, I try to drive it now and then to move the fluids around and give my own workhorse a break. It was winter. The windshield fogged up. As I fumbled for the heat controls, I noticed a distinct outline in the fog: toe prints. Someone had their oily dogs up on the dash and left a greasy little crime scene on the glass. Eww.

Or at the beach.

I know, I know. It’s the beach. Unless you’re a Russian tourist or my dad, everyone is barefoot. But we all anticipate that with our grooming, right? Wrong. There are definitely some people who haven’t been in contact with a nail clipper since the ‘90s. And they always wind up next to me. If there were trees around, they could climb them like jungle lemurs.

Or, at the gym.

I took a few Covid years off from the gym, but my reentry has been rockier than expected. Not only is my middle-aged body no longer game for the punishing workouts my former self took in stride, but women of all ages and states of fitness are in skin-tight clothes that leave nothing to the imagination. As I avert my gaze from the sweat stains crawling up from butt cracks, my eyes land on… you guessed it… feet.

Apparently, it’s now a thing to lift weights in stocking feet. Modern sneakers, in all their plush glory, offer too much cushion for the average squatter, so people kick off their kicks and squat in socks.

First, let me just say, these are not powerlifters.
Okay, Steve. Let’s really see you get under those 70 pounds of ambition with a strong base. Lose those Nikes and let’s gooo! So there’s this dude, in his socks, grunting under the weight of the bar and leaving damp little ghost prints on the deck like he’s exorcising a demon on leg day. Put your damn shoes back on.

Or, with those toe shoes.

Chalk this one up to “people will buy anything.” Those toe-separating monstrosities? I’ve read the reviews—people swear by them. But they look like someone melted a Muppet and called it footwear. You need industrial-strength self-confidence to walk around in public like you’ve got duck feet and zero shame.

Or, with fungus.

If your toenails are the color of ancient scrolls and thick enough to qualify as building materials, please find a podiatrist stat. It’s flip-flop season—have a heart. Is it too much to ask to keep the freakshow under wraps? They do make closed-toe sandals. Ask my 9-toed relative. She’s a fan.

Then there are the foot lovers.

I have a friend whose husband buys her beautiful, strappy, sexy shoes all the time. I used to wish my man ran fast and loose with his credit card like that, until I realized he has a thing for feet.

Clearly, he’s not alone. There is an entire subculture of foot fetishers. I know we all have our weird browser history, but this one is totally lost on me. What fascinates me—which I absolutely will not Google, because I like sleeping—is whether they’re into pedicured unicorn feet (rare) or fugly talons that look like they’ve survived a medieval battle (alarmingly common). Yes, “fugly” is my portmanteau of f*cking + ugly. Feel free to use it liberally.

I’m getting too old for this world.

If, a decade ago, you’d told me that people would make a real living showing off their barking dogs, I would’ve laughed you back to dial-up. Yet here we are. If this is how Rome fell, I totally get it.

I used to think mosquitoes were my only gripe about summer. Thankfully, midlife is giving me all new material to be annoyed or grossed out by.

Where do you fall on the feet spectrum? Love? Hate? Neutral?