What is eroticism? Are there erotic parameters to describe what is sexually attractive to us than what is not?
Erotic behavior does not exist by itself, but depends on the interpretation and intentions of the person who performs it and / or receives it. Whether or not society or the individual interprets a behavior as erotic (that is, capable of generating a sexual response) depends mainly on the context in which the activity occurs.
A kiss, for example, can express asexual affection (like a kiss between relatives), respect (a French officer kissing a soldier after awarding him a medal), or reverence (kissing the hand or foot of a pope), or it can be just an informal greeting or a social ritual. Even something as specific as touching the genitals is not considered sexual if it is done for medical reasons. In other words: the apparent motivation of a physical contact determines its interpretation, erotic or not.
Conveniently socialized, physical contact can result in sexual arousal. This contact, from kissing or caresses to another type of more intimate genital contact, is part of the human learning process and, ultimately, will determine the selection of a partner, which we consider convenient and suitable for reproduction, thus ensuring offspring. and the survival of the species.
And, given this social component of eroticism, it is to be expected that what is considered erotic will differ in different cultures.
British and South African researchers wondered what were the most erotic parts of the body according to science, in what they have dubbed ‘the first systematic survey of the magnitude of erotic sensations of different parts of the body’, published in 2016.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of this research was that the vast majority of the participants in this study, some 800 British and sub-Saharan citizens, did not find their feet attractive at all , to the point that three-quarters of them gave them an erotic value of zero . So little eroticism you will be able to achieve by massaging your partner’s feet. These results contradict the widespread idea that the feet are erogenous zones because the foot sensors in our brain are located near the area that receives nerve impulses from the genitals. In fact, these researchers point out, it is very possible that the fetishism that exists for legs in stockings and high heels has been confused with their erotic capacity.
Another of the most curious results is that most people assume that women have a large number of erogenous zones in their body while men only have one, the obvious one. Something totally wrong, although it is true that they have a greater number of erotic zones than they do .
Another surprise of this research is that no significant differences were found in the responses based on gender, nationality, age or sexual orientation. Only small differences between the sexes appeared, such as that men consider the hands more erotic than women or that for women the back of the legs is.
Now, the question that remains to be resolved is not where are the erogenous zones but why do they exist.
