I couldn’t figure out why anyone would have a shoe fetish.

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When I was early in my dating years my girlfriend who had done some modeling told a story of trying to sell off some gently used shoes. Some guy had called, asked some questions, negotiated for a while and then said “you know why I want them don’t you?” “No” said she. “I have a shoe fetish.”

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This mystified me. Why would anyone be sexually excited by shoes?

In fact it mystified me so much that it took me a while to figure out that a shoe fetish had anything to do with sexual excitement.

Months later in some class I heard the word fetish used to describe primitive works of art or religious objects.

This seemed even more confusing.

The life of a teenager is so confusing.

I didn’t let it bother me much and forgot about the whole thing until today when I open The Oxford English Dictionary and I see “fetish: Psychology: An object, a non-sexual part of the body, or a particular action which abnormally serves as the stimulus to, or the end in itself of, sexual desire.”

Apart from making me want to wash my hands or something, this part of the OED does help me figure out the connection between weirdoes on the phone and African tribal masks.

The word fetish got into English in 1613 from French and Portugese. The word before that had come from Latin and a root facere meaning “to make” or “to do.”

This is where our English word fashion comes from.

The African masks and other charmed objects were “made” or “fashioned” by the people who believed in their magic and that’s why the word fetish got applied to these items held magical by tribal people that Europeans met as they explored the world.

Since the Europeans didn’t themselves believe these concoctions of feathers, straw, paint and leather were really magical the things gained a sense of “an item unreasonably worshipped.”

It was the tribe of psychologists who in 1901 adopted the word and applied it to the unreasonable erotic worship of otherwise everyday items.