Hands up whose school careers counsellor suggested foot prostitution as an option?

By ROSIE WATERLAND

Who doesn’t love a good foot massage? Lie back, put your feet up and wait for the masseur to get aroused as they suck on your toes. Bliss.

Wait, what? Yeah, not exactly what I had in mind either. But apparently that’s the kind of foot rub you get when you offer your feet up for cash. As in, they pay YOU – not the other way around.

True story.

A 19 year-old uni student in New York has recently told the internet that this is what she does for a living.

Taking the concept of ‘making it in New York’ to a whole new level, Olivia told to the The New York Post that she works as a ‘foot prostitute’ in order to pay the bills. Basically, foot fetishists pay her for the priviledge of pampering her well-manicured feet, and at 800 bucks a week, it seems like a pretty cushy way to get through your degree.

Olivia simply answered an ad on Craigslist, turned up and got the job:

The ad, which said, “Girls With Pretty Feet Needed (age 18-30) (Lower East Side),” asked for only her name, phone number and a head shot.

“It only took them four hours to contact me back,” she says. “They told me to get a pedicure and dress like you’re going to a club.”

Sounds easy, right? Getting PAID to have someone give YOU a foot massage? Am I crazy or does that seem like the best job ever? I had practically finished packing my bags for New York before I saw the words “groaned while he sucked her toes and gratified himself.”

Yeah. If my life had a soundtrack that’s when the crickets would have sounded.

The Daily Mail described a typical shift for Olivia:

On a typical evening at the spa, which offers daytime services such as massages and scrubs, Olivia says that the clients arrive with bottles of liquor, as the venue cannot legally sell alcohol.

And most bring the ‘girliest’ drinks possible such as ‘whipped-cream Svedka’ and ‘cherry flavored vodka’ in a bid to get the girls tipsy.

Once everyone has had a few drinks the men are then made to pay a $100 entrance fee to a ‘foot pimp’ who pairs them up with a ‘foot prostitute’.

The more you delve into this, the less glossy it feels. At least for me.

But leaving my own very high foot-rub standards aside, I started to really think about whether or not, Olivia’s way of supporting herself is really that saucy or sordid. 

Is the term ‘foot prostitute’ a bit much? Technically, no laws are being broken here and these aren’t sexual relations that money is being exchanged for – they’re just slightly unusual physical contact.

Morally, Olivia says her conscience is clear: “I didn’t break the law. I didn’t take off my clothes. Yes, I showered and changed into clean p.j.’s after, but my morals are still intact.”

So if she’s OK with it, the money is good and everyone involved is a consenting adult (albeit with an extreme appreciation of a good set of toes), who are we to judge?

And in case you were wondering, Olivia is a size six-and-a-half. Apparently that’s pretty standard. So even if I could get past the whole groaning old men thing, my giant size 9 feet wouldn’t make the cut.

So would you work as a foot… professional? Do you think it’s scraping the bottom of the student-job barrel or a genius way to make some much-needed cash?