Feet | Fetish vs. Phobia

Hi 🙂

Before I start on this post, I’d like to point out to anyone reading this that I wasn’t trying to make anyone feel bad, I just felt the need to talk about a couple of experiences I had, that I thought went along with the article you’ll be hearing about in a second. It does lighten up with the second section but I wanted to give everybody a warning before you went on ahead, so with that being said, let’s get onto the post for Monday!

Last year, I read this very enlightening article on Push Living. It’s a digital magazine dedicated to people who use wheelchairs and they focus on various topics but mostly lifestyle and travel.

The piece Gina wrote was about devotees. I’ve known about the term a long time and but she explained about the different types of devotees, as she put it “the creeps and awkward turtles”. I’m glad she went on to discuss both sides because if anybody has ever had to deal with a devotee in their lifetime, you just think they’re all sickos, but no, they’re not!

So what is a devotee?

A devotee is somebody attracted to a person with a disability, mostly who use braces and wheelchairs. This is actually a real fetish. In her article she talks about how devotees, the ones that see it purely for their sexual desires and the “admirers” who are basically perfect gentlemen and ladies as they’re a little more shy but want to actually establish a good friendship with you whether than creep you out with weird questions and pictures. This was the best example I could give you to help show you the differences between them. If you want to read the rest of Gina’s article, go here!

I think I’ve had an experience with a devotee before, the reason why I say “I think” is because back in the day I didn’t know what the term actually meant, but the more I think about it and remember how many other women he had as friends on his profiles is still shocking! I met this guy on MySpace (I know, that probably should have been my warning right there!) and he was very nice. The guy was the reason why I basically looked forward to going home after school! I had issues talking to guys my own age and the fact that he was cool with my disability and let me talk about my day I grew to really like him and I generally wanted to know how his day went as well! It was a nice friendship while it lasted!

By the time I went on Facebook, I basically lost contact with him. Two years ago, I actually found him on there but instead of having a totally different picture of himself, he used the exact same one he had on MySpace. Now I don’t know about you guys, but in the years that passed I would change my profile picture a few dozen times! Why did he keep this one? And then to top it all off, he was apart of multiple disability groups and pages and at that time, I actually figured out the definition for “devotee” and I began to feel really cautious. I literally wanted to smack myself up the head because there were signs that something wasn’t right when I was talking to him on MySpace years ago!

Nevertheless, I was really sad to have to give up on that friendship. I just thought it all looked too fishy to continue on with it. No, I didn’t confront him because I still had all of the messages we passed back and forth to each other running around in my head. I just unfriended him, and I had even debated if I should have blocked him but I couldn’t get myself to do it. The one time you start to not only feel beautiful in your skin but you feel like you could’ve been catfished at the same time!

As far this next part, we switch topics completely and talk about how feet can make people really uncomfortable. Apparently, there’s no in between, you either love feet so much that you end up having a fetish for them or you actually despise them.

When I was in middle school, I had a boy in my science class basically come clean about one of his dislikes. Apparently he was afraid of feet. He said it out loud to two other of our classmates and I was in front of him with a very confused look on my face I guess. I knew people have different phobias, some can be afraid of spiders, clowns, heights and even goats! It just puzzled me to think he was scared of feet! For a person who does everything with my feet, this kind of felt like an insult in a way! I can’t explain it any better for you!

What makes it even worse for me though, is that I dared to ask what he thought about mine. I think he was a bit hesitant with his answer. I don’t think he ever gave me a straight answer, you could tell on his face he was conflicted about it. I mean, he was asking a girl that drove an electric wheelchair and had a knack of running over innocent feet throughout her life, he had every right to be scared! I’m just kidding. I’m not that big of a bitch. I would never run over somebody’s feet for a reason like that.

I could understand the reason why he or anyone else would have a phobia of feet. I have my days where I see my dad’s feet and they instantly make my stomach upset. Sorry dad! And honestly, that just made be a guy thing! They have no problem of itching and picking all areas of their feet anyways, so I actually stay away from men’s feet in general. So if somebody came up to me and said they didn’t like feet, I wouldn’t pay them any mind about it.

The older I get, the less chances of my feet going back to their former glory. It’s bad enough that my footwriting has gotten worse! The only thing I have left to do to make my feet seem prettified is to paint my nails different colors. We’ve learned not to use the straight clear glitter because for one you need like four coats for it to show up at all and then scrub until you basically take the nail off to remove it. You guys seem to like my nails paint, don’t ya? I actually need a fresh coat on them. I still have the pink and silver that mom put on for Blondie’s wedding chipping away.

So what are your thoughts about devotees and their fetishes? Are you afraid of feet? If so, how did it come about in your life?

Bebo & MySpace Memories

This post has been a work on progress. Another blogger friend of mine Paisley-May Says wrote a post about 26 Things Only MySpace Kids Will Remember back in February. I had her permission to do something similar but I kept forgetting about it and every time I did remember to do something with it, I could never get the words to unfold.

During my early teenage years, I never heard of Facebook or Twitter. Back in the day, all teenagers that had internet access was on two websites: Bebo and MySpace. As adults, it can be a little bit embarrassing to say that you had an account on MySpace, because let’s face it, it doesn’t matter how much it tries to reinvent itself it’ll never be as good as it once was! I feel my time on the site was short-lived because at that time, MySpace was getting a bad rap of strangers and pedophiles talking and abducting people. So my parents were not okay with me being on the site, I think I had my profile after my mom caved and said if I hid it well from my dad I could have one. I made mine in 2007 I think, I used it up until 2011 when I lost my password to it. I’ve just tried to see if my profile was still on there but I would hope after a few years of no usage the company would remove all of the pages, you know?

What’s funny though is that you’d think MySpace was my first social media account but it actually wasn’t. Bebo was my very first one I ever had! I had this one even longer than MySpace. I made my profile in 2004 or 2003, we didn’t get an actual home computer and internet until around that time because my mom needed to have it for her schooling, it also helped if I needed to use it for my homework as well. I honest to God didn’t even make my first email until maybe 2004, it was made while one of my friends was staying over at the house. At that time, EVERYBODY I went to school with had a Bebo account. I kind of remember the whole outlook of how the profiles looked like, I think Bebo was much bigger than MySpace as the lettering was smaller but the entire page could be bigger on how much you could add to it, like they had a word count but it wasn’t in the 140-200 characters range. You had your friends section, comments, groups, picture albums, and you could add music videos to your profile.In a way, Bebo was our Facebook at that time.

There were a lot of firsts with using Bebo, I was the first one in my family to get one these things and didn’t have to worry about my parents or any other family members snooping on me like I have with MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. Of course, I never kept anything hidden from my mom whenever I used the site. She knew about my first ever friend that wasn’t from school. I don’t have a clue what her name was but she was 15 and lived in Atlanta. She was very friendly to me and thought my disability was cool! As the years went on, more and more of my friends from school were leaving Bebo to move on with MySpace. I actually stayed behind and found other friends through the groups I was apart of on there. There were mostly music based groups on mine, which sounds like me! Although I was making friends with different from all over the US, I also found my first hate group too. There’s nothing like a bunch of people behind a computer screen making fun of people with disabilities. And through this, I found out that people who don’t understand people or kids like me have a thing of calling us “vegetables” because apparently we’re all lifeless and can’t do much. This wasn’t the most ideal lesson I had to learn at the time, but I’m glad I did!

One of my favorite memories of using Bebo was during the summer of 2006 I think. I had just graduated from middle school and now going into high school. A video popped up on everybody’s music video section. I thought it was kind of strange to see a video of what looked like a bunch of my friends being goofy! It was a video of the “journey” to get from the eighth grade section to the cafeteria. At that time, the eighth graders were the last ones to eat lunch. The four of us in wheelchairs would always leave about 5 minutes early to get to our table and eat, so we never got to be apart of the “journey” down with the rest of our classmates. So this video was refreshing in a way because I’ve always wondered what went on in the hallway. The video was apparently not planned which was good because all of the boys seemed too hyper! At one point, two of the boys were wrestling by a section of lockers and one boy picked another up and put him on his shoulders and said, “here, take a picture.” The one who was taping it said “I’m recording it.” Everybody’s like “oh!” I think the video was probably 25 minutes long. If it hadn’t been for the teachers watching them walking down, it probably would have been shorter!

Bebo was good as far as layouts and having a very wide range of pre-made ones. MySpace was great to find awesome music. That’s how I got in brokeNCYDE back in the day, technically my cousin Kristi and sister still used their MySpace profiles before the end of 2011 so that’s how they found them. Oh, my other cousin met his future wife through MySpace too! During the first times we got to meet her she was the one who helped guide me through putting my first layout on my profile! I could not figure it out and thankfully, she knew how to do it! I was the only 13 year old with a Playboy bunny layout. Oh, there were worse things! As I have never figured out MySpace password and stuff, I have always remembered my Bebo password. In 2012, I decided that it was time to delete that piece of my past. I feel like even though we had all of the stories of kids getting kidnapped by creepy people, we would still put our life stories on our profiles. I’m really hoping MySpace has deleted my old profile I’m going to lie! So does this post make you remember your childhood social media sites too? Which do you think was better? Bebo or MySpace?

Doesn’t Mean Anything

I just got off posting a status on my Facebook about how I went on my MySpace profile, because I actually remember my URL better my Email and Password. I went on there how long I haven’t been on there, and it’s been a year or so. I remember when I made my first social network account. At that time I had only one Email account and only a Bebo account. My friends from school were my only friends until I had the nerve to add people I didn’t know and the first person I added was a girl fron Memphis. Technically then that was far away for me. Recently I deleted my account on there and have about four Email accounts that I had made in the paat several years. 

Shortly after joining Bebo everybody switched to the bad reputation website at the time. My mom was the first one to create an account on there. Dad didn’t like MySpace because of the other people, he had heard all the stories of people acting like teenagers and planning to meet up with these teens and finding out afterwards the other people they were talking to was an adult and not a teenager. I understood my dad’s concern, but everybody was switching over and I just asked my mom and she told me, yes. It wasn’t until I turned probably 15 or 16 I made my account and made a second Email account so I wouldn’t get confused and I also realized that everybody had MSN Messager and so that was the reason for that.

I think out of all four years in high school I think I remember Junior year the most. It had it’s good parts and a lot more bad ones too. It was the time of changing the big double doors in the hallways and learning who was on your side and who wasn’t. As much as I hated that year to the core, it helped. I now know I still suck at doing Math that has to deal with money. I remember that it’s not always the kids that are going to talk behind your back. I should have remembered that one. I was hooked to this one guy and then I got hooked onto another one, sadly enough I can’t get over him. I met my friend Fia during my Junior year and she was my first real friend that lived overseas. For prom, I didn’t have a date, but I did get to burrow my friend’s (ex now) boyfriend to walk me down Grand March. A kid I knew from Elementary, told me I looked beautiful, but I didn’t feel it.

I read those comments on MySpace and all of this popped in my head. I’ve never remembered so much in my life at one time. So many memories for that time for me. It was a time where I had friends my own age always talking to me and I felt loved. I learned that some adults will talk you out of things you wanted to do. I learned I fall easily for guys, and I wish I’d forget about every single one that broke my heart. I learned I need to do things on my own, like ask a guy out. I did that in Summer 2008. It wasn’t a date. If it was, it was as awkward as hell. At the end of the year I wanted to get drunk (I didn’t) because I thought the year was both good and bad. Now I know it had lessons and the rest doesn’t mean anything.