Have you ever heard the expression, to “kiss one’s feet”? It’s very standard in a lot of romances that a person shows that they are lower than their loved one by kissing their feet. I believe that a lot of the sexualization of stockings goes back to this idea of self-immolation in front of a loved one. In fact, there is something around being able to dare oneself to kiss the less savory parts of a loved one’s body in order to prove their undying love for the other. Unfortunately, this tendency to prostate oneself in front of another has lead to all sorts of sexual dynamics that lead to psychological suffering.
Love is not about abasing oneself in the name of desire. It’s about respecting another person completely and about two people seeing each other as equals in an adult relationship. Unfortunately, if a person is in an abusive situation, they might start to pick up on the idea that “proving” one’s love involves somehow abasing oneself. Conversely, the person in the sadistic position savors the idea of being able to submit their partner to all sorts of degrading punishments, after which their partner “proves” their undying love for them. In both the sadist and the masochist’s position, love is seen as a “test” as well as a form of self-abasement. Never can love in this situation be seen as something between two equal people, since the sadomasochistic relationship equates love with the total erasure of self/identity.
An example might take the form of fantasizing about smelling a partner’s dirty socks or stockings. How did this fantasy ever come about, and why? For the person who dreams about smelling socks, the internalized belief is that the partner is someone they need to completely abase themselves in front of in order to truly show their love. When I perform this act, I am telling myself that I am ‘unworthy’ of being treated any higher than a foul smelling article of clothing that is snugly wrapped around the foot. But the other point of this fantasy is that the other is also reduced to an object that can be disposed of or labelled as dirty. What I am essentially doing is reducing the act of attraction to something that is forever dirty.
This kind of fantasy is a sign of a low self-esteem, but it’s also a fantasy that is incapable of ascending higher than self-abasement. The more I indulge in it, the more I convince myself that I am never truly worthy of self-respect, and I am even a hostage to all the judgments, fancies or feelings of those around me, since in my fantasy, I am nothing more than a doormat for someone’s feet. Such kinds of fantasies play into the misleading idea that abasing oneself will always necessarily lead to a redemption of the self, whether it takes the form of pity or a realization of my “humanity”. In fact, I have found in my own life that the more one abases themselves, the more others will see that as a cue to walk over them. Self-disrespect breeds disrespect all around. That is why the only way to deal with these fantasies is to recognize the need to respect oneself and others.
The way out of this self-immolation is to turn away from the idea that socks symbolize the abasement of oneself before another. I must completely reject such an idea even if it risks labeling me as uptight, too serious, etc. Socks can be represented as clothes that keep my feet warm, and nothing more. Can it be done? Can a fetish symbolism fade? One should try.
boysocks318 