Earlier this year, an anonymous female porn performer told me she always laughs at the dudes who wear socks during their scenes. Imagine your typical porn swordsman in the center of the frame, his body refracting light as it glistens with oil. The camera slowly pans down, closing in on his chiseled physique and typically big dick until it finally reveals his… thick, white tube socks?
“I can’t stand it. I watched a huge amount of porn before I ever directed, and it would always kill the theme for me if I saw the guy naked with these ankle socks on,” porn director Jacky St. James tells me. “I don’t usually think about socks when I’m directing, but if the guy leaves the socks on when he gets naked, I’m like, ‘Socks! Socks! Socks!’ They’re disgusting. Nobody wants to look at a guy’s little, black ankle socks.”
I ask St. James if she thinks these guys are body dysmorphic about their feet, always worried they aren’t as sexy as the rest of their form, but she says the men that come to mind as repeat offenders are all attractive and neatly groomed. The real motivator, she guesses, is habitual laziness. “You know, when you’re having sex in real life, sometimes it’s just about getting the clothes off,” she theorizes. “You don’t really think about the socks because they don’t play a part in sex. This is also such a gender-specific issue, because with women, it’s cute if they have the socks on.” (As I’ve previously reported, there’s quite the fetish for women in all different types of hosiery.)
Chad White, who St. James divulged as someone who shoots in socks semi-regularly, more or less backs up her theory: “When I keep my socks on, it’s usually because of the heat of the moment, or because it’s an office scene where the table may be a little too tall.”
Of course, when socks don’t appear, it’s mostly just because they’re in the way—usually of another fetish. “Sometimes when I play a dom in a scene, I have the girl take off my shoes and socks and kiss my feet,” says veteran porn performer and director Steve Holmes. “I like to put my feet in girls’ mouths if they let me. That wouldn’t be as pleasurable with a sock. Germans are famous for wearing socks with sandals, but I’m German and I don’t do that.
“Otherwise, though, I don’t think much about socks on set, although I’ve probably worn them once or twice for no particular reason. That said, some of my colleagues love to wear their socks while we shoot. In fact, their socks are always on. As a director, I never say anything. Maybe they don’t like having cold feet. Or maybe they don’t want to risk stepping into some body fluids.”
Not to mention, as Courtney Trouble points out:
Good for traction, make sure they're clean ?
— courtney trouble (@courtneytrouble) October 10, 2018
White, though, does say that socks can be an occupational hazard in certain scenarios and scenes. “In situations like bathtubs and kitchen counters, it’s best to take them off. Especially if you’re using lube and oil, it can be downright dangerous,” he explains.
But when things aren’t so perilous and the heat of the moment hasn’t totally caused him to forget what’s on his feet, he loses his socks for no other reason than to give the people what they want. “I know there are a lot of women who are scared to show their feet and prefer to wear heels 24/7 during their scenes, but I don’t mind. There’s a huge foot fetish audience in this world, and they let themselves be known.”
Tierney Finster
Tierney Finster is a journalist, screenwriter, actor and model from Los Angeles, California. She is a contributing writer at MEL, specializing in love, sex, mental health, drugs, queer culture and the cannabis industry. She has written for publications such as Playboy, Purple, Dazed and Confused, Jezebel and Broadly and was the key researcher behind Sex On, HBO’s revival of its iconoclastic docu-series Real Sex.
