When a fetish site posted photographs of Gráinne Blumenthal, she refused to be embarrassed

During the ripe thickness of the pandemic, in 2020, when social life was largely suspended, Gráinne Blumenthal watched as a friend, a social-media influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers, recoiled in horror at what she’d just seen online: photographs of her feet that she found on a fetish website.

Blumenthal, who is a 29-year-old actor and director, decided she had better check what happened if she typed her own name into wikiFeet’s search bar. “Lo and behold...” she says with a wry laugh. “The way it works is that, when you type in letters, the suggestions get smaller and smaller. I noticed a few Gráinnes at first, and then it was just my full name. I clicked it, and there I was.”

She felt hotly ashamed – and violated. Her friend the influencer had shared on Instagram the photos of herself that she’d found, partly to spread the burden of the discovery and partly to highlight the underbelly of image-sharing online. Blumenthal decided to respond by turning her own experience into something positive, too; the result is Feet Pics Aren’t Free, her one-woman show at this year’s Dublin Fringe Festival.

[ Dublin Fringe Festival: Full coverage here ]

Blumenthal knows the topic it deals with remains within the realms of unseriousness. “It’s funny. Like, I get that,” she says. “But it’s also kind of horrifying. The funny thing really is that, whenever I tell people about it, they’re horrified but always have the same response: to check if they’re there, too.”

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Blumenthal’s image appeared online in a number of places: not just on her social-media accounts but also on Facebook pages, promotional posters and the Try Channel, an Irish comedy hub on YouTube that’s popular in the United States. “Of the six photos, two are from a video of me dancing that I put on YouTube, one is from the 2018 Fringe Lab, and one is from me hanging out, getting milkshakes with my friends – but you wouldn’t know that, because they’ve been cut out.”

The photos uploaded on to wikiFeet lean into sexuality in a way Blumenthal never intended them to, a bright sunny day with friends or an evening rehearsal quickly flipped into commodified, fetishised content. “I’ll be the first to say I’ve put up pictures of myself, like thirst traps or whatever, where I think I look nice, but these aren’t them,” she says. “The most recent one is a photo I haven’t seen of myself in five years.

“There’s also no way to take them down – there’s no option when you click into them. It sucks, because in the creative industries, where money is tight, people would often joke that they’ll have to sell photographs of their feet to survive. I’ll still laugh at that. But now, whenever I take photos, I want to either hide my feet or have them covered up.”

WikiFeet was founded in 2008 by Eli Ozer, an Israeli former computer programmer and animator who continues to run the site full time. It began as a place to share and rate photographs and videos of celebrities’ feet. Over time it became a hub for obtaining, sharing and selling images of other people’s feet, too, with features such as “feet of the day”, “feet of the week” and “Happy birthday to...” It reportedly attracts 10 million visitors a month.

In Ireland it’s a criminal offence to share intimate images of somebody without their consent. The law, part of the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act, came into effect in February 2021, after the suicide of Nicole Fox, a 21-year-old who had been bullied on social media. In March this year a 20-year-old man who posted intimate images of his ex-girlfriend on social media not long after the legislation came into effect was jailed for six months.

One in 20 Irish adults claims to have had an intimate image of themselves shared online without consent, according to research commissioned by the Department of Justice. This rises to one in 10 among 18- to 37-year-olds. “I know I’m not special and that this happens all the time with people’s nudes,” Blumenthal says, adding, “But I’m really enjoying bringing it to people’s attention.” She describes Feet Pics Aren’t Free as “part cabaret, part Ted talk, where my feet are hidden entirely until a key point in the show. Basically, to see my feet this time you have to buy tickets. The only way to see them is to spend a minimum of €12.”

There is a lot of discussion about how to protect yourself online. If something like this happens to you, the show is here to say that it’s never, ever your fault

Blumenthal, who’s also a former swimmer and ballet dancer, says her relationship with her body had never been challenged before. The process of creating Feet Pics Aren’t Free has been a release. “It’s kind of scary, because I strip down to basically underwear during it, but it’s also so incredibly validating. I’m reclaiming the images stolen from me and not allowing them to be embarrassing.”

Beneath the surface of Feet Pics Aren’t Free is a thesis about women’s role both online and in creative industries. Blumenthal sees nudity as an exciting challenge in her work that, one day, she hopes to explore – but only if it feeds the story she wants to tell. “I’ve worked with Ita O’Brien, the intimacy co-ordinator for Sex Education, Normal People and loads of other shows,” she says. “And I got so much out of that. She totally demystified the process, showing me it’s okay to say no and to shout when I’m not comfortable, which has happened before.

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“But the whole thing about being a woman actress is that so much of it feels so directed towards the male gaze. Like, I’ve seen casting call-out descriptions which say, ‘We’re looking for a woman to play a whore.’ Oh, and I’ve also been turned down from roles because I’m taller than the love interest,” Blumenthal says.

She describes the comedy in Feet Pics Aren’t Free as “so uncomfortable you have no choice but to laugh – otherwise you’ll cry. It’s highlighting how uncomfortable and unfortunate the situation is. It’s a black comedy but also based in reality. And while I don’t want to come across as preachy at all, there is a lot of discussion about how to protect yourself online. If something like this happens to you, the show is here to say that it’s never, ever your fault.”

If you have concerns about illegal online content, you can report it confidentially to hotline.ie, a service run by the Internet Service Providers Association of Ireland. Feet Pics Aren’t Free is at Smock Alley Theatre, as part of Dublin Fringe Festival, from Sunday, September 20th, to Wednesday, September 23rd, with a preview on Saturday, September 19th