How Common Are Foot Fetishes? The Stats Might Surprise You

You've probably wondered whether a lot of other people feel the way you do about feet — or whether you're some rare outlier. It's a fair question, and the internet is happy to answer it with confident-sounding stats like "1 in 4 men have a foot fetish!" Here's the problem: most of those numbers are made up.

The real research is more interesting, more honest, and — good news — it points clearly in one direction. Let's go through what's actually been measured.

The headline finding: feet win

Across the studies that exist, one pattern is remarkably consistent: when it comes to sexual interest in specific body parts, feet are the most common focus, by a wide margin. That part isn't really in dispute. What is uncertain is the exact prevalence — the "how many people, precisely" question — because the studies measuring it all have real limitations. So the takeaway is a confident direction with fuzzy numbers, and it's worth understanding why.

Let's take the three most-cited studies one at a time.

Study 1: Scorolli et al. (2007) — feet dominate the body-part list

Researchers led by Scorolli, publishing in the International Journal of Impotence Research, took a clever approach: they analyzed hundreds of online fetish discussion groups to see which objects and body parts drew the most interest. Among preferences focused on parts of the body, feet and toes came out on top — by far the most common, at roughly 47% of body-part preferences.

That's a striking number, and it's the origin of a lot of "feet are the #1 fetish" claims. But read the caveat carefully, because it matters: this sample was people who were already in fetish communities. It measured what's popular among people who have fetishes and gather online to discuss them — not how common foot fetishes are in the general public.

So Scorolli is excellent evidence for "feet are the most common body-part fetish" and poor evidence for "X% of all people have a foot fetish." It answers the ranking question, not the prevalence question. Keeping those two questions separate is the key to reading this whole field honestly.

Study 2: Lehmiller (2018) — the best population-level snapshot

For something closer to the general population, the go-to source is sex researcher Justin Lehmiller's 2018 book Tell Me What You Want, based on a survey of over 4,000 Americans about their sexual fantasies.

Roughly 1 in 7 respondents reported having foot-related fantasies, and those fantasies were more common among men than women.

That's the most quotable "how common" figure we have from a large American sample, and it's a genuinely useful anchor. But hedge it honestly: Lehmiller's survey wasn't a probability sample (the gold standard where everyone in the population has a known chance of being selected). It drew from people who opted in to a study about sexual fantasy, which can skew results. So "roughly 1 in 7" is a solid ballpark — not a precise, lock-it-in statistic. Lehmiller himself is careful about this, and so should we be.

It's also worth noting what was measured: fantasies. Having fantasized about feet and having a full-blown fetish aren't identical — interest exists on a spectrum, from a passing turn-on to a central part of someone's sexuality. That's not a knock on the finding, just a reminder of what the number does and doesn't capture. If anything, it means "how common is some level of foot interest" is probably a bigger number than "how common is a defining foot fetish" — two different questions hiding inside the same headline.

Study 3: Joyal & Carpentier (2016) — fetish interest is common in general

The third piece of the puzzle zooms out from feet specifically. Joyal and Carpentier, publishing in the Journal of Sex Research, surveyed a general population sample in Quebec and found that so-called paraphilic (atypical) sexual interests are far more common than most people assume — and mostly non-pathological. In their data, around 26% reported an interest in fetishism broadly.

This study isn't foot-specific, but it does something important for the bigger picture: it establishes that having an unconventional sexual interest is statistically ordinary, not deviant. Roughly a quarter of a general-population sample reporting fetish interest tells you that whatever your exact odds on feet specifically, being into something outside the vanilla script puts you in very large company. That's the context foot fetishes live inside — and it's part of why researchers increasingly frame these interests as variations rather than disorders. (We unpack that "am I normal" question in am I normal? accepting your foot fetish.)

Putting it together honestly

So where does that leave the actual answer? Here's the fair synthesis:

• Feet are consistently the most common body-part-focused sexual interest. Scorolli establishes the ranking; nothing in the other research contradicts it. This is about as settled as anything in this field gets.
• Foot-related interest reaches a meaningful slice of the general population — Lehmiller's "roughly 1 in 7" is the best single figure we have, with fantasies more common in men.
• Exact prevalence is genuinely uncertain. Different methods, samples, and definitions produce different numbers, and none of the studies is a perfect probability sample of everyone. Anyone quoting a precise, authoritative "X%" is overselling the data.

If that feels less tidy than "1 in 4 men, guaranteed," that's because the honest version is less tidy. And it's still deeply reassuring: by any credible measure, you are one of a lot of people. This is common. (For the fascinating question of why it's so common, see why do I have a foot fetish?.)

A word on the clickbait numbers

Here's the part worth saying plainly, because it'll help you read every future article on this topic: a huge share of the "foot fetish statistics" floating around online have no source at all.

You'll see confident headlines — "X% of men have a foot fetish," "1 in Y people secretly love feet" — passed from blog to blog to social post, each citing the last, none citing an actual study. Some are loose misreadings of Scorolli or Lehmiller stripped of their caveats; others appear to be invented whole. The tell is simple: if a stat doesn't name a study you could go look up, treat it as decoration, not data.

Why does this matter beyond pedantry? Because inflated, made-up precision cuts both ways. When you eventually see a source that admits "we're not sure of the exact number," it can read as less reassuring than the confident fake stat — when it's actually the opposite. The honest researchers aren't hedging because feet are rare; they're hedging because measuring human sexuality accurately is hard. The uncertainty is about method, not about whether you're alone. You're not.

The real research is messier and more modest than the viral versions — but it's real, and it says something genuinely comforting: you're in good, and large, company.

Knowing you're not alone is one thing. Dating without guessing about feet is another. Mainstream apps almost never show feet, so you can waste 2–3 dates finding out too late. FeetNearby isn’t a dating app — it’s a monthly service that finds Instagram, Tinder, and Bumble profiles of normal girls with clearly visible, attractive feet in your city, so you can DM or match already knowing you like her feet. See how it works →.