Rosemary McLeod: on foot fetishism

A school friend of mine once wrote a poem about her little toe. She called it "ugsome", a word she claimed to have found in the dictionary.
I remember because I sympathised. On each foot she had two toes virtually welded together, like a pair of small chipolatas crammed into a single casing. There'd be no open-toed sandals in her future.
I also remember that her older sister had pretty feet, a sight of such rarity that I haven't seen it since.
Her toes were straight, her foot pleasingly narrow, toenails evenly clipped, and with strictly one casing to each perfect toe. I envy her still.
A man once flattered me about my feet, a desperate compliment that fell flat because the truth is all too apparent. I have functional replicas of my father's feet, toes curled and turned under each other in a quite peculiar fashion that has nothing to do with wearing tight footwear as a nipper, and everything to do with genetics.
I happen to particularly loathe the hairs that sprout from my big toe, and I can never trim my toenails neatly.
God help, then, any Frenchman who wants to shove my tootsies into his mouth, and God knows what he'd uncover as he slithered his tongue about on the layers of haphazardly applied, chipping nail polish.
I am continually entranced, currently, by disclosures about French sexuality that continue to make headlines, and am naturally drawn to thinking of the foot by tales of what the mayor of Draveil - a suburb of Paris - has been up to.
I draw back from detail, but suffice to say Georges Tron, the suave-looking mayor in question, is said to have a foot fetish and go in for toe-sucking.
He was forced to resign as a civil service minister last week, though he is still mayor, after two employees described his wanton acts, to whit massaging their feet without permission, under a table, on his lap.
He was assisted in further peculiar developments by his female cultural adviser.
"I often ended up naked in his office," one woman declared. She didn't just mean her feet.
So much to think about, so little time. Is he drawn to women wearing socks, I wonder, and repulsed by pantyhose? Is his desire overwhelming in summer, when women have bare legs, meaning their feet are entrancingly naked inside their shoes? And what about women who wear trainers?
Do they get a look-in? Surely the least Monsieur Tron - who denies the claims - can do is pay for pedicures all round. I had one recently. A friend shouted me. It was weird. Did I miss something?
If I'm beguiled by the flurry of recent disclosures - the Italian Prime Minister and the head of the International Monetary Fund's activities among them - it's because these are the kind of powder-room stories women have shared and hooted over for centuries. They're only now reaching a wider audience, as we all increasingly lose our privacy.
So is it really a surprise to discover that otherwise sane people have pockets of lunacy, sexual quirks and wacko fetishes?
How much does it matter and what will the long-term effects of all this knowledge be?
A group of Malaysian Muslims think they've got the answer.
They have formed an Obedient Wife Club, and last weekend held a mass wedding to mark its launch. Alarmingly, the group was invented by women, its vice-president, physician Rohayah Mohamad, spouting the catchy message: "A good wife is a good sex worker to her husband."
The club will reportedly "teach women to be submissive and keep their spouses happy in the bedroom as a cure to social ills". Add to that the demanding task the bearing of children, subsequent child-minding, cleaning the house, doing the daily shopping and cooking, and washing your hair, and you can imagine what joy awaits the 800 head-veiled Malaysian women who have signed on to the proposition that they'll never have a headache.
Surely, among all the bizarre fetishes you could ever imagine, this doormat one is the most bewildering.