What’s YOUR weirdest turn on? Tracey Cox reveals why people have kinks for everything from stomach rumbles to medical equipment – and it’s all down to childhood experiences and how easy it is for you to get aroused
- Tracey Cox says people who enjoy sex have at least one sexual fetish
- While some are easy to arouse, others require more intense physical stimulation
- Adding fetishes become powerful because they’re labelled as ‘kinky’ and ‘wrong’
- Said most fetishes develop in childhood and it’s hard to undo them
Ever felt a peculiar tug of sexual excitement for something a little unusual?
Could be you have a fetish. Lots of us do: studies show a high majority of people who enjoy sex have at least one!
A fetish means you have a heightened fascination for a specific object or non-genital body part and use it for sexual gratification.
Mention ‘fetish’ and most people think of something ‘sexy’: wanting a lover to wear a corset, stockings, high heels or a dog collar.
But people can develop sexual fetishes for virtually anything, says social psychologist Dr Justin Lehmiller. ‘It’s not a stretch to say that if you can think of it, somebody probably has a fetish for it.’
Cars, insects, statues, cats, they’re all on the fetish list.
Two people can have the same fetish – a foot fetish, for instance – and experience it in completely different ways.
One person might like to smell or lick feet; another wants to touch and feel while a third might merely enjoy looking at them.
A fetish means you have a heightened fascination for a specific object or non-genital body part and use it for sexual gratification
How do fetishes develop?
Most experts in the field believe it’s through an early sexual experience that involved high arousal (with or without orgasm) that included a particular object or experience.
If your schoolteacher who spanked you for doing something wrong aged six, wore a silky skirt when she did it, you might develop a fetish for silk clothing.
The spank gave you a sexual thrill and that was paired with the feeling of silky fabric.
Basically, it’s about ‘pairing’ and ‘conditioning’ – both illustrated by the famous Pavlov’s Dog study.
Tracey Cox (pictured) says people who have high arousability enjoy sex more than those who don’t. Because they enjoy it so much, they’re easy to please in bed. No bells and whistles needed for them! Even missionary-style, lights-off sex is exciting and enjoyable
Physiologist Ivan Pavlov conditioned dogs to salivate – something they usually do when expecting food – when they heard the ring of a bell. He would ring the bell, then feed the dogs meat powder which made them salivate. By repeating the experiment, the dogs started salivating when they heard the bell, before they’d been fed the meat powder, because they associated it with food.
If you pair something with a sexual reward, the person will become aroused by it.
Dr Jim Pfaus, a researcher in behavioural neuroscience used the same methods to link sexual arousal in rats to odours and clothing.
THIS IS HOW I BECAME SEXUALLY ATTRACTED TO…
When I asked people on my socials to tell me their personal stories of how they think their fetish started, I was astonished at how closely they all conformed to the psychological theory of conditioning.
Medical staff and equipment
‘I developed a medical fantasy fetish because I was constantly naked on the operating table with lots of urologists standing around, looking at me and discussing the best treatment. At the time, I hated it but now when I think of anything medical, it makes me feel aroused.’
Pantyhose
‘I have a tights/pantyhose fetish. It came to me as a young child. I always liked the look of them on women’s legs. One night, I was being babysat at a friend of my Mum’s house. A pair of worn pantyhose were left out. I pulled out my penis and started rubbing it against the nylons. Since then, I have always been sexually attracted to women wearing them. I also enjoy wearing them, along with panties. It’s opened me up sexually to enjoying a lot of new experiences.’
Boots
‘I’m a certified sexuality coach and had an old client who had a boot fetish. He remembers wearing brand new wellington boots to the beach. He was standing too close to the edge of the sea, his mother told him to come back but too late! The cold waves crashed over his completely naked body and filled his boots with water. Seconds later, he felt a crack across his bottom, as his mother spanked him. He said the sensations of the cold waves, the shouting and warmth from the slap, make his senses pop and, from there on, he loves being naked in boots. His fetish started that day and because of this, he carved out a career for himself in handmade footwear.’
Ankle jewellery
‘I was on a beach in the South of France and it was the first time I’d seen a woman sunbaking topless. She wore a gold band around her ankle and I was intrigued. This forged a link between this type of jewellery and being bold and naughty.’
He allowed virgin male rats to have sex with female rats wearing little ‘jackets’. Later, when the scientists gave the males the chance to mate again, the rats preferred to have sex with the jacket-wearing female rats rather than ‘naked’ ones.
Previous studies have trained rats to associate a certain odour with sex (almond), with male rats preferring to mate with females ‘wearing’ that scent.
(If you think this all sounds rather odd, how about the fact that Dr Pfaus, when necessary, stimulated the clitoris of the female rats with a tiny probe. Who knew rats had a clitoris to start with!)
This is all well and good, I can hear you say, but are the results the same for humans?
Can you make a penny ‘sexy’? In the 1960s, researchers decided to test the Pavlovian response theory and see if it applied to sex.
They asked male college students to view images of nude women and images of boots. Initially, the men weren’t aroused by the image of the boots alone. But when the experiment was repeated over and over, they were.
The pairing of boots and nudity worked: the boots made them feel like sex.
Wondering if the boots-sex link was skewing the results (given lots of men find boots on women sexy), researchers in the 1990s decided they’d try to make men become aroused by something completely and utterly non-arousing.
They settled on an image of a jar of pennies – nothing sexual there! – and got the same result. Once the pennies were linked with images of sex, the images of the pennies alone got the male participants aroused.
So that’s how fetishes form. But who gets them?
Are some people more likely to develop a fetish than others?
Yes: men are more likely to develop fetishes than women.
There are various societal reasons to explain this (women aren’t as encouraged to explore ‘kink’ and more likely to be judged if they do).
Fetishes could also be linked to our personal ‘arousability’ level.
Some people are easy to arouse for sex, others require more intense physical stimulation.
Not surprisingly, people who have high arousability enjoy sex more than those who don’t.
Because they enjoy it so much, they’re easy to please in bed. No bells and whistles needed for them! Even missionary-style, lights-off sex is exciting and enjoyable.
If your arousal level is low, it takes a great deal of stimulation to get you even remotely interested in sex. It’s very low on your list of ‘Things I enjoy’…unless something happens to finally jolt you out of sexual blah-land.
You swap a conservative lover for someone who’s more adventurous. They want to try something you haven’t – a tie-up game, spanking, hair-pulling – and suddenly your nerve-endings zing to life. ‘So THAT’S what sex should feel like!’, you think, exhilarated.
‘I WAS PAID TO SATISFY THESE FETISHES’
Nikki Sequoia is the partner of a US adult industry production company but also produced her own content and performed on webcam. These are some of the fetishes she was paid to satisfy and, in her words, how she did it.
Smoking: They wanted me to smoke: sometimes nude, sometimes sultry, and in my pyjamas, as if I was their friend.
Vore: Vore is the fetish of being consumed. On live webcam, it usually consisted of teasing: I would eat it/him. I’d dangle the webcam, as though it is them, and make chewing or swallowing noises, then say they are now in my belly.
Giantess: It’s common for a vore fetish to be paired with a giantess fetish, which is the act of you being large and the client being teeny tiny. Playing giantess is fun because there’s unlimited scenarios when it comes to producing videos for clients – I got to use lots of camera tricks and creative video editing. I am five feet tall and got to feel so big and powerful fulfilling this fantasy.
One shoe: This was my favourite. I stumbled across it by a client who commissioned me to make a video of me losing my shoe and then walking around the parking lot to find it. Hardly any nudity in this one but after producing the custom video, I eventually offered it for sale and it was so popular! One shoe fetishes became extremely popular for me. I loved creating random scenarios as to why in the world I would be somewhere doing something in one shoe.
Stomach rumbles: I started coming up with the most ridiculous things I could create. These videos always did well. I did some compilation videos of the phone just sitting on my stomach, recording the sounds of my belly growling.
Blinking, hiccups, breaking wind, chewing, teeth brushing, hair brushing, toenail clipping, ear pulling: Compilation videos of all of these everyday things were also really popular.
Trans women burping: I also co-own a website that makes five minute videos of trans women models burping. It’s doing well. The point of creating this site was to show young trans men and women that they can make fetish content without being the fetish.
Whatever you just tried quickly becomes the favoured way for you to enjoy sex – and why wouldn’t it!
The more you ‘fight’ a fetish, the more you want it.
Fetishes become powerful because they’re labelled as ‘kinky’ and ‘wrong’ by society – making them even more appealing.
The more you ban yourself from enjoying something, the stronger the craving for it becomes.
‘Vanilla’ sex, the sort that most other couples are having, just can’t compare to the naughty thrill you get from indulging your ‘thing’. But that’s bad. You shouldn’t want it but you want it even more. In fact, you’d rather have no sex at all, rather than have sex without it.
Can watching porn create a fetish?
Porn can have a role in developing a fetish.
You’re sexually aroused while watching porn, so it’s pretty easy to ‘pair’ that arousal with something. You might start to notice your favourite porn video includes women who have a specific kind of tattoo. Suddenly Marnie – a friend you’ve never been attracted before – gets some ink and you feel a stirring that wasn’t there before.
‘Habituation’ also comes into play: if you do something over and over, you get used to it and the thrill wears off. You then need to push to a new level to get the same kick.
This is often the theory touted to explain the draw of auto-erotic asphyxiation: choking yourself to get the euphoric ‘high’ that reportedly happens when the brain is starved of oxygen. Looking for that next level, some devotees push it so far, they die.
Dr Pfaus, the man who put the rats in jackets, finds it interesting that old style porn – the porn we used to watch in the beginning – doesn’t do it for this generation.
Today’s porn is far more graphic. This could be a case of too much of it being available, making us need more explicit images.
Can you get rid of a fetish?
Not really. Because they are developed in childhood and usually formed during our very earliest, most intense sexual experiences, they become part of our sexuality.
Most fetishes don’t hurt people (unless the fetish is about pain and that’s usually done with a consenting adult). Most are fairly harmless, albeit something traditional and conservative lovers can find hard to understand and relate to.
Current thinking is that instead of trying to eradicate a fetish that’s causing you distress, you’ll have more success learning how to accept and live with it.
That usually means finding a community of people who share the same fetish and learning to enjoy it, rather than be upset by it.
You’ll find lots more practical information about sex on traceycox.com. You’ll also find her two sex toy ranges, her blog and podcast, SexTok with Zibby and Tracey.
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