When I was very young, I saw a very powerful picture by Aubrey Beardsley of Salome, who is holding the head of John the Baptist while a pair of shoes is seen just behind her. At the time, I formed a very powerful association between taking off shoes, on the one hand, and the emasculation of John the Baptist through his symbolic decapitation. Salome, for me, came to represent the terrifying power of women. For a young boy, this was certainly an overwhelming encounter, especially considering that I was struggling to be an individual and not get drowned in emotions such as desire. To this day, I tend to feel quite overwhelmed when I see this picture.

An entire blog could be written about Aubrey Beardsley’s imagination and paintings, and it’s been done in other contexts. But I want to concentrate on how the image of the shoes in the background powerfully contributed to an anxiety I had about wearing socks and taking off shoes.

To summarize, I would like to describe the main themes and complexes:

1. Shoes off is the symbolic emasculation: the “undoing” of my boy ego is symbolized in the removal of shoes, which often felt vulnerable and humiliating as a child.
2. Socks represent a disowned aspect of myself which felt “forbidden” to me (not allowed: you are becoming a man now, you must leave behind the world of softness). However,  in a contradictory way, it also represents the threat of woman’s power over me..

One can dwell endlessly on the psychoanalysis of this early childhood life event, but the point is not to indulge in analysis. The point is to understand where to go with this information.

The first form of therapy from this distressing event is to recognize that this was a distressing childhood experience and now I am adult: I need not be imprisoned by it anymore. In fact, there are ways to reverse the traumatizing influence of these themes. The first is to recognize that a woman’s power and identity is not a threat to my own identity. I am okay, regardless of how powerful a woman is. It’s important to practice recognizing that a woman’s power, strength and abilities can be celebrated without the sense that my identity is threatened by it. In other words, I am okay; if anything, the only part that is threatened is my identification with a rigid sense of what it means to be a boy which I had internalized as a young child. So it’s important to stop associating images of women with their shoes off as a threat to my being. If anything, it is a challenge to a false sense of being or identity.

The second form of therapy is to resist the sexual connotations of socks. It’s to recognize that this sexualisation begins when a part of me becomes disowned and then returns as an object of desire. Any time I suppress something, it comes back to me in the form of desire. So I need to go back and reintegrate that disowned experience in a nonsexual way that does not pose it as a desire. This is why confronting the desire face on and talking through it is the only way to make it less powerful and a source of vexation.

Is it important to go into the details and study Aubrey Beardsley’s paintings as a way of unlocking the erotic aspects of them? No, I don’t necessarily see the point of that, because sometimes it re-triggers anxiety rather than helping to resolve the initial anxiety that “splits” people into male and female aspects. If anything, the work that needs to be done is to reinforce the sense that “You are okay; your true sense of being is not threatened by this image. There is no need to sexualize it.”

 What are the ways that enjoying wearing socks can become a form of resistance? And resistance to “what”? I would like to explore this topic in today’s entry.

First of all, it’s about resisting the idea of making socks into a fetish. That sounds contradictory, but in fact it is not. The goal of writing about socks and enjoying their visualization is not to eroticize socks, but in fact, to de-eroticize them, and to essentially revert them back to something that is everyday. In other words, to de-fetishize socks requires a resistance to their “exotification”. I am tired of making socks into a fetish, and I don’t want to be a prisoner to a fetish any longer. I am standing up to that by asking the question, what is it about wearing socks that is such a source of “mysticism”, “shame”, “othering” and “desire”? Can these dynamics be reversed through a new constructed narrative about socks?

Many, many things that we fear the most need to be addressed by directly investigating them, rather than running away from them. When you are able to engage something sincerely with your whole heart and not react to it in an automatic way, you start to change reactions into responses and choices.

I have two distinct principles when I am exploring this idea. The first is that someone else’s socks is not really my business, since I have no idea what the other person experiences happen to be while wearing socks or seeing others in socks. In this way, the “party” that another person has is not my party, and I have no business frequenting that party. The second principle is that whatever I am admiring in the appearance of others can be performed through my own body and subjectivity. In fact, it can only be in this way. Knowing this, I no longer become a prisoner to a mystification of another person’s experience, or trying to “guess” or elaborate on someone else’s experience and thus creating a desire or striving to embrace that mysterious other. Instead, I recreate the experience from my own view without mystifying the experience by adding other layers to it.

Writing about socks, talking about being in stocking feet, and exploring a male’s way to be in socks, is one way that I can resist my fetishistic ideas about socks and stocking feet which have kept me a prisoner for so long. It is also my way of saying that I cannot step into someone else’s experiences (or “step into their socks”), and doing so only creates more strange “mind reading” behaviors which don’t reflect anyone’s reality, much less impacts my experience.

When I was very young, there came a certain point in life when I refused to be seen in my socks! Why? And at what point did this happen? I don’t know when it happened or why, but the point is that it did happen. And now I need to come to terms with that fear I have over being exposed in socks.

What happened at that time was kind of weird but I want to share it anyway. I somehow came to associate socks with something that belonged to girls, and not to me, so it felt embarrassing for me to be wearing only socks. As a result, I either covered my stocking feet with a blanket, or I ended up wearing slippers most of the time. The second terrible thing that happened is that I started to have this strong desire for girls wearing socks. And that desire burned inside me like an inner fire. I couldn’t even pronounce the word “socks” because I associated it with girls and all the fears that I had around being with girls and having forbidden desires for girls.

There is nothing more torturous than associating one thing with so many overwhelming feelings, including the vague anxiety that comes with forbidden sexual desires. I wanted very much to be a girl, so that I could once again enjoy the comfort of wearing socks without embarrassment, but somehow I could not do this anymore: I had to be “a boy” or a “man” and leave this sensory soft world behind because not doing so would leave me feeling exposed and self conscious.

I have learned recently (and am still learning), that there is no sense trying to appeal to girls and women to deal with this kind of problem. One reason is that a woman cannot simply expose her socks to me all day. I wouldn’t even want that either, since it would only exacerbate suffering and anxiety. And secondly, it’s unfair and immoral to treat women in the way of reducing them to an article of clothing. Thirdly, I am a grown up, and I need to take responsibility for myself. It is wrong for me to ask that a woman “solve” this problem. It’s my habit to do so, but lately, I have found that this path leads only to more and more frustration and anxiety.

The better solution is for me to write this blog and start to get used to talking about and seeing my own socks. I want to eventually come to a point where I am not trying to project this love of socks onto a female who is willing to “participate” in my fantasy. Instead, I should accept that fact that I do enjoy the texture and sight of socks. I should learn and come to accept that the anxiety I feel comes from splitting myself into male and female, and then disowning parts of me that I have rejected and eventually projected into women around me. And these “rejected” parts of me only come back to haunt me in the form of strange infatuations that lead absolutely nowhere. They are only the hidden projections of my early shame about wearing socks.

It’s a very radical shift for me to say with confidence that socks can be a part of my identification as a male, but it does require that I stop seeing things in terms of stereotyped notions of what “male” and “female” mean.  From the start, I don’t want to get caught up in these endless assignments of things “masculine” and “feminine”. I want to be able to stop thinking about socks in such extreme ways. I imagine a day when socks will be so “everyday” that I don’t even feel a need to write about them. That will be a day when socks will be as mundane as wearing a pair of mittens. I hope someday that I can see socks in this way that most people see them, and to stop associating them with a crazy sort of lust.

But alongside of this de-stigmatization of socks comes a replacement of “desire” for women with respect for women. True respect does not reduce women to objects of desire or fetishes. And the true respect for women is more precious than any desire. I hope that one day my desire are replaced with a simple respect and appreciation.

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I am posting two picks of a recent pair of Matrix socks. I hope you can enjoy these pictures as much as I am enjoying wearing them.

There is something special about white socks that makes them so fun to wear. The color white reminds me of cream or silk, and whenever I am wearing white socks or seeing others wear them, I see the gentle pale glow of them. Even when they are slightly dirty in the bottoms, the dirt of white socks reflects the contours of the heel and toes, as though they were reflecting a topographical map of the human foot. It is so interesting to reflect on how the beautiful form of the human foot is enhanced when it’s encased in a smooth sock that fits snugly over the foot. 

The silky texture of socks is also something that is quite nice to feel on my feet. It makes me wonder, why feel any embarrassment about wearing socks? If something feels good and soft, one should not feel any anxiety or discomfort over wearing socks. It’s rather absurd that I would even have the idea that socks are forbidden in some way, because they might seem “girlish” or infantile in some way. It’s completely okay and normal to wear socks, and even to write about socks! In fact, I think everyone should let go of their shyness about wearing socks and see them as a part of their normal life.

If you ever feel discomfort, please take a look at these socks and get used to seeing them without fear or anxiety. It’s normal to wear socks, and there is no harm in wearing them at all. Get used to the idea that socks are the perfect thing to wear on your feet. And learn to wear socks all the time! Enjoy.

 In my previous entry, I described how boys can learn how to be comfortable in their socks.  It’s also important to realize that the feminine aspect of socks is forever unconquerable. It’s always beyond reach, and this is the terror and anxiety that arises when we see the soft,  flowing angles of a stockinged foot. Even holding the sock, one can never possess its’ eternal beauty and form, which points to the feminine. So what can a boy do in this case?

  Wearing socks and being able to admire them can be a training in letting go of the desire to possess the feminine. When I have finally given up trying to contain femininity, I can appreciate it without trying to grab hold of it. It might even be important to remind myself that the feminine is unconquerable and can only be treated with respect. Respect is so different from ‘lust’. Lust is always self centered and focused on gratifying one’s senses. Respect, on the other hand, is non-possessive and is about lessening the tendency to try to possess something or indulge in gaining pleasure from it.

If I can feel the desire for the feminine that socks evoke and yet not want to conquer (that is, to respect socked feet and the power it represents), I am able to be with the pain of not ever being able to grasp what I desire, much less “own” what I desire. Learning to abide in that pain is the essence of respecting the power of socks without indulging in lust. I would say it’s none other than the art of wearing and admiring socks! In future posts, I will write more about how this admiration can be cultivated.

 Flexing my toes in socks is one of my favorite things to do before going to sleep. I love the texture of socks: so soft and comfortable,and so soothing for me before resting. I especially like how my toes feel when they are gently gliding along the smooth surface of socks. Curling up in socked feet under the blankets is such an enjoyable pleasure. I don’t imagine that I would ever want to sleep without socks on my feet.

I have found it’s good to practice a gentle appreciation of the feelings of softness arising from socks. There’s also a fear in that it might be considered too infantile for an adult to have these kinds of tactile joys or pleasures. However, there is certainly no harm in the gentle appreciation of stocking feet, especially before bed time.

It’s very unfortunate that sometimes, for males especially, all of this kind of sensory warmth is considered either too childlike or too feminine. Part of the reason I am writing this blog is to destigmatize these urges and to stop putting a “gender” on socks, so that my inner conflicts don’t become overwhelming. If I am telling myself that something is comfortable and nice, and then telling myself that I have to grow out of it, I become very conflicted, and then it turns into a control issue. What would it be like if I simply admitted that I enjoy the soft comfort of socks, without that fact impinging on a sense of masculinity I have acquired from an early age? Once I start to accept my liking and appreciation of socks, a lot of the meaning I attach to socks might start to disappear, and they will simply be appreciated for their warmth, color and beauty.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton