So You Call it Gross?
I was never a sucker for memes. I’m embarrassed to say I either never found them funny nor did I understand them sometimes. Then the quarantine started, the boredom kicked in and I succumbed to Twitter and TikTok. Even as my thumb tirelessly swiped meme after meme, I still couldn’t find much content that made me chuckle. Instead, I noticed recurring themes, a person making an “ew” face to the caption “When he says he has a foot fetish” and the frequent invasion of privacy in intimate conversations. Twitter users purposely screenshotted private messages through text or Tinder when the person on the other end of the phone wrote about their sexual fetishes. They would then proceed to post those messages to the public and bash them in the comments section on how disgusting their desires were.
While I continued to scroll I was oblivious to how hurtful that was. If anything it brought me a hard deja-vu to the high school cafeteria. My friends and I would gossip about who in our grade had a fetish as if it was a source of entertainment to expose perfectly normal people’s sexual preferences. My friends would pass around the phone showing the DMs, saved Snapchats, texts revealing that our peers had fetishes. At the time, I thought it was just highschoolers being highschoolers. I never realized how insensitive that part of “tea culture” really was until a recent conversation with a college friend.
When I brought up the topic of fetishes to one of my closest friends, we talked about them in the most validating and welcoming tone. We spoke about them in the way I now know it should have always been discussed, even as an annoying freshman. Through our dialogue, it was a much needed reminder that someone else’s sexual fetish is their business and not yours! A person likes what a person likes and we’re doing a disservice by implementing our judgment. As my friend and I began to switch topics of conversation, he added one last thought that stayed with me for a while. He mentioned that all the time we are hearing people say “ew that’s gross” or “ew he has a foot fetish” and how it sounds all too similar to what he used to be told in middle school and high school which was “ew...gay people”.
I never thought about it that way, sure there are similarities and differences between the two, but the parallel makes sense. I feel as if we throw around the term “fetish” in a negative connotation when deep down we don’t fully know what we are talking about.
Before I go any further, I want to preface by saying that if a certain sexual fetish is correlated with something that harms that person or others, or pedophilia, or non-consensual activity, that’s a different situation, one that is more serious, unhealthy and wrong. A normal fetish is a preference more than a fixation, nothing wrong with that. I did some research and found that there is a lot to this form of intimacy that I in fact think is not only different but rather unique and well...kinda cool. So let’s get a bit informative.
What is a fetish? “A form of sexual desire in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object, item of clothing or part of the body”. That’s the simple definition. We quickly turn “abnormal” into “disgusting” or “gross” when really all it is, is something unique to that person. Not only can certain fetishes be a part of your family history, but can also be a particular outlet from past trauma.
In the huge umbrella that is sexual fetishes, there are really two types: Inanimate and animate. Inanimate being drawn to certain objects (fur, latex, bras etc.) and animate which is being drawn to specific parts of the body. Whether you’ve had it your whole life or you’ve grown into having one, anyone can have a fetish. It made me realize that when my friends and I rudely pointed the figure at my fellow classmates, a lot of names were whispered, signifying that yeah, clearly a lot of people have fetishes, making it less abnormal that one might think.
The concept isn’t for everyone. Some people may still think sexual fetishes are gross. Personally, I’ve learned to observe that it is simply a different dynamic of sexual culture. Our society is constantly perpetuating certain norms for beauty and love and what is and isn’t acceptable to the point where we’re questioning ourselves and our morals 24/7. If there’s anything to gain from this piece, I hope it is a reminder that YOU DO YOU! We should feel more comfortable in expressing our true sex lives as we can only learn more from that communication. We need to embrace these differences as they are just more opportunities for validation rather than judgment. Love your fetishes, love yourself and tune the haters out! :)