Playing with mouth organs: A brief look at lip fetishism

“Dear Abby. Please help save my marriage. My wife of five years discovered an Internet browser history of 13 Web pages I had clicked on the previous day. The pages were of women’s sexy lips. My wife is calling it ‘porn’ and a ‘gateway to porn’. I feel guilty about it, but I told her it isn’t pornography. I think it’s a fetish. She says I’m using that word to get off the hook. Will you please tell her that this probably is a fetish?” (Letter sent to the ‘Dear Abby’ column in Buffalo News, December 26, 2012).

Lips play an important role in human sexual behaviour. Given how important lips are in traditional courtship rituals and sexual intimacy it is perhaps surprising that lip fetishes appear to be relatively rare (at least based on the complete lack of published papers on the topic). Maybe because lips are so integral to sexual courtship is the reason that they are rarely seen as the object of fetish desires.

“Lips are soft, movable, and…are a tactile sensory organ, and can be erogenous when used in kissing and other acts of intimacy…The lip has many nerve endings and reacts as part of the tactile (touch) senses. Lips are very sensitive to touch, warmth, and cold…Because of their high number of nerve endings, the lips are an erogenous zone” (Wikipedia entry for ‘Lip’).

The behaviour in which individuals have a sexual interest concerning a specific (and often exclusive) body part is known as ‘partialism’. In the latest (fifth) edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), partialism is categorised as a ‘fetishistic disorder’ if (i) it is not focussed on the genitals, and (ii) causes significant psychosocial distress for the person or has detrimental effects on important areas of their life. Partialists will often describe the body part of interest to them as having as much (if not greater) sexual arousal for them than the genitals. The Wikipedia entry on lip augmentation makes a number of claims about lip sexuality but few of the assertions are referenced:

“Surveys performed by sexual psychologists have also found that universally, men find a woman’s full lips to be more sexually attractive than lips that are less so. A woman’s lips are therefore sexually attractive to males because they serve as a biological indicator of a woman’s health and fertility. A woman’s lipstick (or collagen lip enhancement) attempts to take advantage of this fact by creating the illusion that a woman has more oestrogen than she actually has, and thus that she is more fertile and attractive. Lip size is linked to sexual attraction in both men and women. Women are attracted to men with masculine lips, that are more middle size and not too big or too small; they are to be rugged and sensual. In general, the researchers found that a small nose, big eyes and voluptuous lips are sexually attractive both in men and women. The lips may temporarily swell during sexual arousal due to engorgement with blood”.

As with other sexual fetishes that I have examined in previous blogs (and where there is little written academically), I went online and tried to locate online forums and dedicated websites where lip fetishism was the sole focus. However, there appears to be very little online. The types of people who claimed to have lip (or lip-related) fetishes were both male and female but provided almost no details. For instance, here are three representative of those I found online (and obviously I have no way of knowing to what extent these are truly representative and/or telling the truth):

• Extract 1: “Is a lip fetish bad? I love big lips on girls and always have the feeling of wanting to kiss and make out a lot with tongues. Is this normal?”
• Extract 2: “I think I may have a lip fetish. Whenever I see a man with full lips, or a lip that have a slight fullness or pucker…I immediately want to touch them and later kiss him. And even with my [boyfriends], I’ve wanted to kiss and suck on their lips”.
• Extract 3: “Has anyone come across a friend, partner, etc. with a serious lipstick fetish before? Now, I love me my lipstick as much (if not more so) than the next girl, but I’ve been hanging out with someone lately who seems really smitten with lipstick on me. I’m thinking of going to buy some nice over-the-top smeary lipstick to tease them with”.

This latter extract is obviously not lip fetishism but lipstick fetishism and my own research online suggests that this is much more prominent (and discussed) online than lip fetishism per se. For instance, there are dedicated lipstick fetish forums (e.g., The Lipstick Fetish Forum), dedicated lipstick domination and ‘point of view’ humiliation pages (e.g., ClipVia.com, HumiliationPOV.com) [please be warned that if you click on the hyperlinks that these are sexually explicit sites]. I also came across lip fetishism being associated with other types of sexual fetishism (most notably smoking fetishism which I examined in a previous blog). Obviously, lip fetishism (and probably lipstick fetishism more so) is hard to separate it from the visual metaphor it represents (i.e., the female vulva). As an online article at the Venus O’Hara website notes (more literary than academically):

“A pair of expressive lips, shiny and smooth, are an easy indicator of health and vigour and they draw the fetishistic gaze at least as much as a pair of attractive eyes but to a completely different effect. They recall the last pair of lips that a man has kissed, reminding him of shared breath, intimate heat and his sensual longing to return to that moment. This is particularly true if the allure of the lips is enhanced by smooth movements, casual licks and oblivious bites that signify interest, shyness and arousal in the woman. Lips can project much more than just personality. They they can show attitude, emotion and forcefulness and can be altered, subtly, to achieve specific fetish effects as well, the cupid’s bow suggests innocence, rich colour hints at debauchery and natural lips speak of confidence and individuality”.

Perhaps the strangest type of lip-related fetishism is one that I wrote about an academic paper that I published with Richard Greenhill in the International Journal of Sexual Health. Our paper was actually about dacryphilia (sexual arousal from crying) and comprised data collected from online interviews with eight dacryphiles (six females and two males aged 20 to 50 years). One of the males expressed his dacryphilia primarily through an interest in curled-lips. More specifically, he was aroused by the sight of someone’s bottom lip curling while crying. Two sub-themes were identified as characteristic of this individual’s interest in curled-lips: (i) attraction to lips during crying; and (ii) rarity of this dacryphilic interest. In the first instance, he suggested that his interest was rare, or perhaps unique:

“My own dacryphilia focus (lip curling) is pretty much unique, as far as I can tell. I haven’t found any dacryphiliacs who focus on this aspect of crying. I have come across a minority of people who like it, but it is still not their main kink…[I personally like the] protruding, curling, contorting or bulging of the bottom lip when women cry”.

Here, the fetish focused primarily on the physical (i.e., the lips, a physical part of the body), and differed from other dacryphiles (who focus on either on compassionate or dominant/submissive interests, and which both involve emotional components). We claimed in our paper that this ‘curled lip’ dacryphile was different from lip fetishism and was more linked to one of the secondary products of crying (i.e., the movement of the lips):

“I’m definitely a big fan of women’s lips in general, but I feel there’s a definite difference between being attracted to lips and being attracted to lips curled as a result of crying”.

In this extract, our participant’s interest in curled lips appeared to be a dacryphilic interest, rather than a form of partialism. He expressed his interest as focussed on the movement of the bottom lip during crying. Although the sexual arousal being caused by the movement of the bottom lip would initially appear to be linked with partialism, our participant clearly distanced his dacryphilic interest from this sexual interest by specifically differentiating the two. This suggests that dacryphilia may not only be concerned with the primary product of crying (i.e., tears), but also with the secondary products (i.e., how the rest of the face moves during crying).

Given that the love of lips (or lip-related behaviours) is unlikely to cause problems, it is therefore unsurprising that there is so little academic or clinical literature on the topic as most sexual fetishes are written about only when the behaviour is problematic (e.g., an individual seeks help for their problem, partner discovers the fetish and doesn’t like it) – something that appears to be incredibly rare where lip fetishism is concerned.

Dr. Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Further reading

Aggrawal, Anil (2009). Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unususal Sexual Practices. Boca Raton: CRC Press.

American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing.

Greenhill, R. & Griffiths, M.D. (2014). The use of online asynchronous interviews in the study of paraphilias. SAGE Research Methods Cases. Located at: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/978144627305013508526

Greenhill, R. & Griffiths, M.D. (2015). Compassion, dominance/submission, and curled lips: A thematic analysis of dacryphilic experience. International Journal of Sexual Health, doi: 10.1080/19317611.2015.1013596.

Griffiths, M. D. (2012). The use of online methodologies in studying paraphilias – A review. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 1, 143-150.

Milner, J. S. Dopke, C. A. & Crouch, J.L. (2008). Paraphilia not otherwise specified: Psychopathology and Theory. In Laws, D.R. & O’Donohue, W.T. (Eds.), Sexual Deviance: Theory, Assessment and Treatment (pp. 384-418). New York: Guildford Press.

Scorolli, C., Ghirlanda, S., Enquist, M., Zattoni, S. & Jannini, E. A. (2007). Relative prevalence of different fetishes. International Journal of Impotence Research, 19, 432-437.

Wikipedia (2015). Dacryphilia. Located at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacryphilia

Wikipedia (2015). Lip. Located at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lip

No fuss over pus? A bizarre case of oral partialism

According to Dr. Martin Kafka in a 2010 issue of the Archives of Sexual Behavior, partialism refers to “a sexual interest with an exclusive focus of a specific part of the body” and occurs in both heterosexual and homosexual individuals. Dr. Kafka also noted in the same paper that partialism is categorized as a sexual paraphilia ‘not otherwise specified’ in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and then goes on to say that “individuals with partialism sometimes describe the anatomy of interest to them as having equal or greater erotic attraction for them as do the genitals”. Scientific research indicates that the most prevalent from of partialism is podophilia (i.e., sexual arousal from feet). Historically, partialism was viewed as synonymous with sexual fetishism. However, Dr. Kafka noted that there is a “diagnostic separation of partialism (intense, persistent, and ‘exclusive’ sexual arousal to a non-genital body part) from fetishism (intense and persistent sexual arousal to non-living objects, including some body products)”. Although I accept this very subtle difference, I essentially view partialism and fetishism as one and the same. In the 2008 book Sexual Deviance: Theory, Assessment and Treatment, Dr Judith Milner and colleagues noted that:

“In ‘partialism’, the paraphilic focus is on some part of the partner’s body, such as the hands, legs, feet, breasts, buttocks, or hair. Partialism appears to overlap with morphophilia, which is defined as a focus on one or more body characteristics of one’s sexual partner…it is unclear whether these two categories are unique paraphilias or different names for the same paraphilia. Historically, some authors (e.g., Berest, 1971; Wise, 1985) have included partialism as part of the general definition of fetishism, which once included both parts of bodies and nonliving objects (e.g., shoes, underwear, skirts, gloves). Again, however, the [DSM] criteria for fetishism indicate that the focus must involve the ‘use of nonliving objects’, which eliminates body parts from meeting this criterion”.

One of the most bizarre cases of partialism in the academic literature is a case study (of ‘oral partialism’) by Dr. Brian McGuire and colleagues published in a 1998 issue of the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy. As far as I can see, the case has only been cited three times in the academic literature. One of these sources was Dr. Raj Persaud’s 2003 book From The Edge Of The Couch (and it is from this book that I have taken the case from).

The case in question involved a single and severely obese man in his late teens that lived at home with his father and sister (his parents had separated some years before), and of borderline intellectual disability. The father described his son as a recluse that spent the majority of the day alone in his room with little or no social interaction with anyone except his family (and even then the social interactions were minimal). The man had very poor personal hygiene (described as typically wearing torn and dirty clothes), rarely washed or bathed, and his weight was estimated at around 300 pounds. As a consequence of his very poor hygiene, the teenager “developed ulcerated sores under his arms, above the pubis, and in the groin area” (that he had for most of the teenage years). To treat the sores and skin ulcers he was prescribed a course of antibiotics. However, overall compliance by the man was low (taking just over half of the tablets initially prescribed) – even though he was extensively monitored by the medical staff taking care of him. The man then claimed that he had lost his antibiotics at home. It was then that the medics discovered what was really going on and why he didn’t want to take his medication. The unhealed sores and ulcers had taken on sexual significance for the man. As Dr. Persaud summarized:

“Upon questioning, the patient reported that he was easily sexually aroused and habitually masturbated at least twice a day, and more often four or five times a day. Ejaculation would always occur. He reported interest in the opposite sex and said that he often fantasized. However, the fantasy content and its accompanying behavior never involved sexual intercourse, nor indeed any conventional sexual act. The patient’s primary sexual fantasy stimulus was that of a women’s mouth, although the fantasy never involved kissing or oral stimulation…Rather, he imagined the woman licking her fingers or gently biting her own lips. Simultaneously, the patient would put his own fingers into the ulcers/sores in his groin and/or under his arms and then lick the pus from his fingers. It appears that he ingested the pus and found both the smell and taste exciting, although he was unable to pinpoint exactly the sexually stimulating aspect of this act. He reported that it was the mere sight of a women with her fingers to her mouth or lips was adequately arousing to initiate masturbation with the accompanying fantasy image and oral behaviour”.

As I’ve noted in many of my previous blogs, almost every (seemingly non-sexual) fluid that can come from a human body has a corresponding sexual paraphilia and/or fetish. This includes urine (urophilia), faeces (coprophilia), vomit (emetophilia), blood (menophilia, clinical vampirism, vorarephilia), saliva (spit fetish), breast milk (lactophilia), and pus (acnephilia). Obviously this bizarre case arguable shares some similarities with acnephilia (as both involve sexual arousal to pus) but they are different in terms of its sexualization.

At the outset, the man was given some psycheducation about the unhygienic nature of the sexual behaviour that initially resulted in a behavioural decrease of his strange sexual behavior – although the oral sexual fantasies still persisted. (Such psychoeducation has also been successfully used in the treatment of other sexual paraphilias. For instance, a case reported by Dr. R. Denson in a 1985 issue of the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry used psychoeducation as part of his treatment of a urophile). In his commentary on the case, Dr. Persaud said that it was open to debate as to whether the behaviour should be treated as problematic and/or psychopathological as (despite the arguably unsavoury nature) it had little impact on other people and wasn’t seen by the individual in question as problematic.

Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Gambling Studies, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Further reading

Berest, J. J. (1971). Fetishism: Three case histories. Journal of Sex Research, 7, 237–239.

Denson, R. (1982). Undinism: The fetishization of urine. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 27, 336–338.

Kafka, M. (2010). The DSM diagnostic criteria for fetishism. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 39, 357–362.

Kafka, M. P. (2010). The DSM diagnostic criteria for paraphilia not otherwise specified. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 39(2), 373-376.

McGuire, B.E., Choon, G.L., Nayer, P., & Sanders, J. (1998). An unusual paraphilia: Case report of oral partialism. Sexual and Marital Therapy, 13, 207-210.

Milner, J.S., & Dopke, C.A., & Crouch, J.L. (2008). Paraphilia not otherwise specified: Psychopathology and theory. In D. R. Laws & W. O’Donohue (Eds.), Sexual deviance: Theory, assessment, and treatment (2nd ed., pp. 384-428). New York: Guilford.

Penix, T.M. (2008). Paraphilia not Otherwise Specified: Assessment and treatment. In Laws, D.R. & O’Donohue, W.T. (Eds.), Sexual Deviance: Theory, Assessment and Treatment (pp.419-438). New York: Guildford Press.

Persaud. R. (2003). From The Edge Of The Couch. London: Bantam Press.

Wise, T.N. (1985). Fetishism – etiology and treatment: A review from multiple perspectives. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 26, 249–257.

Shape and sighs: A beginner’s guide to morphophilia

Are you the type of person who finds people who are very physically different from you physically and sexually attractive? If you do, you may have be engaged in a sexually paraphilic behaviour known as morphophilia. According to a very simple definition provide by Dr. Anil Aggrawal in his 2009 book Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices, morphophilia refers to the gaining of sexual pleasure and “arousal from a person with a different physique” whereas a definition provided by the less academic Quipper website says it is simply the “love of odd body shapes”.  Dr. Raymond Corsini in his Dictionary of Psychology says that morphophiles are attracted to a partner with bodily characteristics that are different and/or prominent from one’s own.

This therefore suggests that there are various sub-types of morphophilia as it is the marked discrepancy that is the sexually arousing focus. For instance, anasteemaphilia refers to individuals that derive sexual arousal from individuals who are much taller or shorter than themselves (i.e., it is the large difference in height that is the primary source of sexual arousal). I would also argue that sthenolagnia (in which individuals are sexually aroused by very muscular people) may also be a sub-type of morphophilia). This is lightly expanded upon in the online encyclopedia Encyclo that states:

“[Morphophilia]…in psychiatry, a type of sexual perversion in which sexual arousal and orgasm depend upon some discrepancy between the partner’s bodily characteristics and the subject’s; that is, the partner must be markedly thinner or taller than the subject”

The online Gay Slang Dictionary is a little more blunt and describes the condition as a fetish in which the source of sexual arousal is “peculiar body shapes and sizes, such as obese persons, short persons, dwarfism, etc.” As Dr Joel Milner, Dr Cynthia Dopke, and Dr Julie Crouch note in a 2008 review of paraphilias not otherwise specified noted in the 2008 book Sexual Deviance: Theory, Assessment and Treatment:

“Morphophilia” (from the Greek, morphe, “form”; philia, “love” –Money, 1986) involves an erotic focus on one or more of the body characteristics of one’s sexual partner. Morphophilia appears to include partialism, which is defined as a focus on a single body part…It is unclear from the literature whether these two categories are unique paraphilias or different names for the same paraphilia. Both morphophilia and partialism are differentiated from fetishism, which involves a focus on ‘the use of nonliving objects’ (American Psychiatric Association, 2000).”

Finally, Dr. George Pranzarone’s Dictionary of Sexology has an arguably  more scientific definition and also takes the line that morphophilia is an umbrella term in that it is:

“One of a group of paraphilias of the stigmatic/eligibilic type in which sexuoerotic arousal and facilitation or attainment of orgasm are responsive to and contingent on a partner whose body characteristics are selectively particularized, prominent, or different from one’s own. [Alternative: the bodily characteristics of the partner are selectively particularized, prominent, or essential as a prerequisite to sexuoerotic arousal and the facilitation or attainment of orgasm]”.

As far as I am aware, the only time that morphophilia has been mentioned in the academic literature (outside of general definition) is in relation to feederism where individuals gain sexual arousal, gratification and stimulation through a person’s sexual partner being over-fed  (and which I covered in a previous blog). In my previous blog I mentioned a paper by Dr Lesley Terry and Dr Paul Vasey (both at the University of Lethbridge, Canada) who published an interesting case study of feederism in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. The paper claimed that feeders and feedees are individuals who become sexually aroused by eating, being fed, and the by the idea or act of gaining weight. Terry and Vasey noted in their case study of ‘Lisa’ that:

“Like many paraphilic sexual activities, Lisa’s pattern of sexual arousal was characterized by recurrent and intense sexual urges, fantasies, and behaviors that involved unusual activities. Given that much of Lisa‘s sexuality was focused on eroticizing body fat, the question arose as to whether it represented a form of morphophilia…Morphophilia is the peak erotic focus on a particular body characteristic. As such, it is similar to, but distinct from, partialism, which is the peak erotic focus on a particular body part(s) (i.e., legs, feet, breast or buttocks). Morphophilia is an appropriate descriptor of Feederism given that Feederism focuses on the physical characteristic of fat, which does not necessarily have to be associated with a particular body part. This is clearly demonstrated by Lisa’s description of her life-long sexual arousal to fat bodies, in general, as opposed to fat body parts. At the same time, however, Feederism appears to involve the integration of an erotic focus on usual activities (i.e., eating and/or being fed and/or gaining weight), in addition to, an erotic focus on particular body characteristics (i.e., fat). This raises the possibility that it might be a paraphilic form of sexuality that is taxonomically distinct from morphophilia…More research could also be done to ascertain if, and how, Feederism is taxonomically distinct from various forms of morphophilia”.

Personally, (and this is based on my watching of various television documentaries on fat fetishes and feederism), I have observed that most (male) feeders are substantially thinner than (female) feedees, and on this basis it could be argued that the males may also be morphophiles as they appear to be sexually attracted as much to the fat as they are to the feeding. Obviously research is needed to support such claims, as my own views are speculative to say the least.

Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Gambling Studies, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Further reading

Aggrawal A. (2009). Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices. Boca Raton: CRC Press.

American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., Text Revision). Washington, DC: Author.

Corsini, R.J. (1999). The Dictionary of Psychology. London: Psychology Press.

Milner, J.S. Dopke, C.A. & Crouch, J.L. (2008). Paraphilia not otherwise specified: Psychopathology and Theory In Laws, D.R. & O’Donohue, W.T. (Eds.), (pp. 384-418). New York: Guildford Press.

Money, J. (1986). Lovemaps: Clinical concepts of sexual/erotic health and pathology, paraphilia, and gender transposition in childhood, adolescence, and maturity. New York: Irvington.

Pranzarone, G.F. (2000). The Dictionary of Sexology. Located at: http://ebookee.org/Dictionary-of-Sexology-EN_997360.html

Terry, L.L. & Vasey, P.L. (2011). Feederism in a woman. Archives of Sexial Behavior, 40, 639-645.

Nose no bounds: A beginner’s guide to nasophilia

Many people are sexually attracted to particular parts of the human body but these usually relate to those body parts that are traditionally sexualized (e.g., genitalia, buttocks, breasts, etc.). When individuals have a sexual interest and/or sexually aroused by very specific and exclusive body parts it is known as partialism. It may additionally be described as a fetish if sexual arousal is only possible when the particular body part is present (e.g., viewed, touched) during sexual behaviour.

One of the more unusual forms of partialism is nose fetishism (or known as nasophilia if it is in the form of a sexual paraphilia). Nasophiles can be sexually aroused by the sight, touch, and/or the erotic sucking of human noses. Less common (although I have not seen any empirical evidence to back this up) are those who are sexually aroused by having their nose stroked, felt and sucked. Some nasophiles claim they are sexually excited by placing their nose into the closed eyes of their sexual partner (and may therefore have overlaps with oculophilia). In very extreme cases, it has even been claimed that some nasophiles are sexually aroused by the picking of noses.

Sigmund Freud famously interpreted the nose as a penis substitute. Although I personally have little time for Freud’s theories, the nose – like genitalia – has vascular (erectile) tissue, which has the capacity to become engorged during sexual arousal. There are certainly explicit links between sex and the nose in the scientific literature that I wrote about at length in a previous blog when I examined sex and sneezing (and the relationship between sneezing and orgasm) and sneeze fetishism. Maybe I have an unhealthy professional interest in noses as I also wrote a blog on nose picking and snot eating.

Nasophiles typically experience sexual attraction to very specific physical nose variations based on shape, size, nostril shape, etc. It is claimed that most nasophiles are extremely against rhinoplasty (plastic surgery on the nose) because it removes many of the features that they find sexually desirable Although there is little empirical research, it is believed behaviour can manifest itself in a desire for actual physical and sexualized contact and interaction with the nose of the person, and/or specific fantasies such as wanting to sexually penetrate the nostrils. In an article published on the Nose Network website it was noted that:

“Although most Nasophiliacs are men, there are some women out there who do enjoy the sight of big nostrils, well shaped wings, cute button noses or anything else that tickles their fancy. Most people will not admit to this fetish, however, due to it not being very acceptable to society. This is really due to a lack of understanding about the whole thing. No one knows exactly where this fetish came from or why it even exists. Some people will admit that they have fantasies about penetrating the nostrils (mostly men), while others have admitted to wanting to suck and lick the nose. As it turns out, the nose is a very erogenous zone, if for no other reason having the knowledge that the partner is very turned on by this act”. 

Nasophiles may also be sexually aroused by fantasies involving transformation the nose (i.e., a transformation fetish). These can also be varied such as the nose changing into the nose of another species as a form of sexual humiliation (e.g., the snout of a pig), or the nose growing in size very quickly. Such sexual fantasies can be facilitated via role-playing, the use of props, transformational fiction (e.g., Pinocchio-type stories), and/or animated or photo-shop transformation (e.g., modifying and morphing photographs). For instance, check out the ‘Big Nose Appreciation’ website that is “devoted to women who do not conform to the stereotypical ideal offeminine beauty and whose beauty is enhanced by their larger or uniquely shaped noses”. Alternatively, type ‘nasophilia’ into YouTube and see for yourself the kinds of things that nasophiles love (nostril faring seems to be a much liked activity).

In a previous blog on fetishism, I mentioned a study led by Dr G. Scorolli (University of Bologna, Italy) on the relative prevalence of different fetishes using online fetish forum data. Their results showed that body part fetishes were most common (33%), followed by objects associated with the body (30%). Feet (and objects associated with feet) were by far the most common fetishes. They also reported that some of the sites featured references to nose fetishes but that this particular fetish accounted for less than 1% of all fetishes

As with many other fetishes and paraphilias, treatment for nasophilia is generally not sought by the individual unless it becomes problematic for the individual in some way and/or they feel compelled to address their condition. It is thought that the vast majority of nasophiles happily accept their fetish.

Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Gambling Studies, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Further reading

Bhutta, M. F. & Maxwell, H. (2008). Sneezing induced by sexual ideation or orgasm: An under-reported phenomenon. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 101, 587-591.

King, M.B. (1990). Sneezing as a fetishistic stimulus. Sexual and Marital Therapy, 5, 69-72.

Love, B. (1992). Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices. Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books

Scorolli, C., Ghirlanda, S., Enquist, M., Zattoni, S. & Jannini, E.A. (2007). Relative prevalence of different fetishes. International Journal of Impotence Research, 19, 432-437.