Why a lover’s feet will never blow your socks off

PERFECTLY polished toenails, silk stockings and a pair of stilettos might seem like part of the ultimate ensemble for a romantic date.

So it could come as a surprise to find that in the majority of cases, that pricey pedicure will have been a waste of time and money.

Because, according to a study, most people believe feet are the least attractive part of the body.

Researchers asked both men and women from different countries to give 41 body parts a score based on how sensual they found them. The scientists found three-quarters of the 800 people surveyed gave feet the lowest erotic rating, a zero. But lips, ears and thighs made it up to near the top of the rankings – followed closely, and perhaps more surprisingly, by shoulder blades.

Hands were more erotic for men than for women, the researchers said, and men gave the back of the legs a much higher score than the women who were surveyed.

Professor Oliver Turnbull, from Bangor University, led the study – billed as ‘the first systematic survey of the magnitude of erotic sensations from various body parts’.

He said: ‘The Cosmopolitan magazines of this world have been running half-baked surveys on this for years and years. But we wanted to look at the question of why the side of the neck is interesting if nibbled but not the forehead or head, when both have the same sensory receptors.’

He added: ‘A lot of people assume that women’s bodies are just full of erogenous zones and that men have only one. But this is clearly not the case.

‘It’s pretty equal, with just perhaps a modest advantage to women – but certainly the differences between the sexes have been hugely exaggerated.’

The scientists, writing in the neuroscientific journal Cortex, were also surprised to see that the ratings were ‘remarkably’ similar despite differences between the respond- ents’ age, gender, sexual orientation, nationality and race.

Professor Turnbull said: ‘We have discovered that we all share the same erogenous zones, whether we are a white, middle-aged, middle-class woman sitting in a London office or a gay man living in a village in Africa.

‘It suggests that it is hardwired, built in, not based on cultural or life experience.

‘It is interesting, though, because a lot of people think that science shouldn’t be looking at such things.

‘But if it is something that human beings are interested in – and we clearly are around sex and intimacy – then it is something scientists should study.’