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October 08, 2004
Fetish Friday: Crushed Crickets and Mashed Mealworms
Delving too deeply into some of those areas waaaaaaaaay beyond the sexual norm can lead to serious revulsion. Thankfully, there are usually portions of that extreme realm that are just straight up funny, especially when academics pay such close attention.
Hey, big-footed ladies. You ever step on a bug and notice some perv off to the side leering at your foot? Don't worry. He's probably just a crush freak. As G.A. Pearson wrote in the November 1997 issue of the Digest of Cultural Entomology:
Insects become a fetish object for the crush freak, who wishes to be an insect ground underfoot. Witnessing or imagining the act of a woman crushing an insect is sexually arousing. The bigger the foot the better; shoe size 9 and up are preferred. (My puny size 6 feet made me feel safe enough to discuss his obsession with Vilencia.)
The development of this particular fetish is up for debate. Jeff Vilencia, publisher of The American Journal of the Crush Freaks says:
"When it comes to the crush, several things come to mind... including the Oedipus complex, because certainly we have seen our mothers kill insects and other people kill insects, and I think that the gigantess imagery that seems to be predominant in more people than one would imagine, also come from childhood. Somewhere there was a sexual connection from seeing all the women in heels and hose while very small ourselves..."
I don't really understand what the Oedipus complex has to do with mommy stepping on bugs, do you? Maybe Pearson was a little to liberal with her ellipses in that quote.
Anyway, a more interesting, and incredibly academically wanky, theory is one put forth by writer, Jeremy Biles in his paper "I, Insect, or Bataille and the Crush Freaks" (pdf warning). Biles says,
Among the many obscure sects of sexual fetishism, few remain as perplexing as that of the "crush freaks," who are aroused by the sight of an insect exploded beneath a human foot. Moving beyond the glib discussions of those entomologists and sexologists who classify this fetish as a subset of foot worship and/or macrophilia, I propose an analysis of the crush freaks through the writings of French thinker Georges Bataille. Employing Bataille’s notions of sacrificial eroticism and mysticism to approach the religio-sexual dimensions of crush freakism, I argue that these practices are best understood as ambivalent manifestations of technophilia (sexual arousal associated with machinery). More specifically, crush freakism, I submit, devolves on a violent literalization of the analogies between insects and machines.
It's worth the read, especially if you want to find out more about Jeff "The Bug" Vilencia and what he does to get off. "Vilencia will also occasionally release cockroaches onto public grounds, pointing them out to female pedestrians, and recording the subsequent smash parade with a video camera."
I wonder why this particular fetish gets such an academic treatment. Why aren't balloon popping and hiccups given their proper respect?
For something less erudite and much funnier, I direct you to the featured fetish of two weeks ago, women with big noses. Energy Spatula found it funny enough to link in this Friday's Funnies at Blawgwisdom so it must have induced at least a giggle.
Posted by Half-Cocked at October 8, 2004 04:58 PM