Footsies (also footsy or footsie) is a flirting game where two people touch feet under a table or otherwise concealed place, often as a romantic

prelude Prelude may refer to: Music *Prelude (music), a musical form *Prelude (band), an English-based folk band *Prelude Records (record label), a former New York-based dance independent record label *Chorale prelude, a short liturgical composition for ...

. It is a game played either as an act of

flirtatious Flirting or coquetry is a Social behavior, social and Human sexual activity, sexual behavior involving spoken or written communication, as well as body language. It is either to suggest interest in a deeper relationship with the other person o ...

body language Body language is a type of communication in which physical behaviors, as opposed to words, are used to express or convey information. Such behavior includes facial expressions, body posture, gestures, eye movement, touch and the use of space. Th ...

, or simply for enjoyment. Although footsies is not inherently romantic, the nature of it as playful touching is often done between lovers as a sign of affection, and most often without discussion. The term comes from a 1940s humorous diminutive of foot.

Effects

In a 1994 study on secret relationships, participants (college students from the US) played a partnered card game in which a subset were instructed to play footsies with their card playing partner. Of these, individuals whose footsies was kept a secret rated the attractiveness of their partner significantly higher than either those who did not play footsies, or those whose footsies was publicly known.

Use in popular culture and medicine

American

comics author A script is a document describing the narrative and dialogue of a comic book in detail. It is the comic book equivalent of a television program teleplay or a film screenplay. In comics, a script may be preceded by a plot outline, and is almost ...

Robert Crumb Robert Dennis Crumb (; born August 30, 1943) is an American cartoonist and musician who often signs his work R. Crumb. His work displays a nostalgia for American folk culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and satire of contem ...

published an autobiographic

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

named "Footsy" in 1987 which deals with ″his teenager encounters with the feet of various lusty creatures at school″ and is a "typically self-lacerating portrayal of one of Crumb's myriad sexual fetishes". In training of the

plantar fascia The plantar fascia is the thick connective tissue (aponeurosis) which supports the arch on the bottom (plantar side) of the foot. It runs from the tuberosity of the calcaneus (heel bone) forward to the heads of the metatarsal bones (the bone betw ...

, a device called footsie roller is used for the foot. The term "footsies" was coined by the

fighting game community The fighting game community, often abbreviated to FGC, is a collective of video gamers who play fighting games such as '' Marvel vs. Capcom'', ''Mortal Kombat'', '' Soulcalibur'', ''Street Fighter'', ''Guilty Gear'', ''The King of Fighters'', '' ...

in reference to "the mid-range ground-based aspect of fighting game strategy." The word was likely chosen due to its similarity to a common strategy in fighting games whereby a player moves in and out of their opponent's striking range, uses fast, weak moves (such as crouching light kick) to bait their opponent into attacking,''Street Fighter Footsies Handbook, Chapter 2''
Element 04 and subsequently punishes their whiffed attack.

References

{{Reflist, 25em Sexual attraction Philosophy of love