A life's work: Footloose

[AvidTickler]

I admire Anthony Fusco's guts, and am even more intrigued by the (presumably) str8 male staff's open-mindedness at Nerve.com:

http://www.nerve.com/content/a-lifes-work-footloose

[flickfire]

That was good article, and I'm glad to see Anthony's doing some new work! I've always liked his videos and he seems to find the sexiest guys to model their feet!

[gbmcleod]

and I had to look at the date of the article. It was 2002. I remember reading it at the time, and thinking it was cool that the male staff (presumably straight!) were so jazzed at having someone tell them they had nice feet. Who'd have thought straight guys would even CARE about a thing like that?!? But given that they're younger, it seems that younger guys are a great deal more relaxed about their feet than my generation (1944 to around 1958) were. I mean, I grew up during the "hippie" generation, and part of the hippie lifestyle was going barefoot. BUT, men's feet were not generally seen unless they were at the beach, or part of the swim team at high school. And forget my father's generation! They did not, for the most part, have nice feet at all! That's most likely due to the footwear people had at the time: people just wore shoes and they had feet inside of them, and if the shoe caused problems, well, then you just accepted that ugly feet came with the territory, so to speak. Nobody seemed to care what their feet looked like, because nobody SAW your feet. It was actually weird if an older guy (meaning someone in their 50s) wore sandals back in 1966.

The younger guys (the generation from 82 to present) wear flip flops, which don't interfere with the foot's natural shape (although they lack arch support). Tevas (popular around the early 90s) were the first REALLY good-looking sandal that really allowed you to see a guy's toes and was very flattering to guys with nice feet!

Since this article came out around 2002, a few years before flip flops became the footwear of choice for younger guys, it's great that the Nerve Staff was so open about having their feet assessed. It almost seems that straight guys are flattered to get compliments about their feet - more so than gay guys, who still find it "weird" that a guy gets hot over their feet (although I've been fortunate: living in San Francisco, I don't remember ANY guy I dated really being reactive to my liking how their feet looked. My late lover had beautiful feet, and even had a boil on his ankle removed - and pretty early in our dating - because I had casually mentioned it. I didn't even know he heard me say anything harsh about it, but I noticed it was gone one night and asked him about it, and he told me he'd had it removed because he thought it "bothered" me, so perhaps I DID say something about it. But most of my dates/boyfriends were pretty cool about me touching or kissing their toes. I wonder if that works in less openly gay cities. Hard to shock anyone with anything you're into in San Francisco. People say, "You're into feet? That's fascinating....what do you like about them?" It's like talking about studying astronomy, except the points of interest are the toes, the heel, the arch, etc., etc., etc.