The author says men acquire fetishes more regularly than females.

Question: Why are fetishes more common with men than with women?

Mary Roach: Fetishes... I did talk to a researcher who had... who got interested... Fetishes are something like ten times more prevalent than males and females. Somebody did actually tried--this was at UT Austin--tried to create a fetish by showing sexually stimulating images while the voice of the head of the psychology department was playing in the background. It was like... I think it was sort of an in-joke on campus. Like, they want to get the students also sexually aroused by the voice of the head, of the chairman. So they really tried... They did a study with, like, pictures of boots and shoes and they were, yes, able to create an arousal response to a boot. You can create fetishes pretty easily. It's much easier with men than with women for some reason. Anyway, but they try to get the...It was like, "hello, welcome to the psychology department" in this guy's voice. And they try very hard to get the situation... All the students, like, would follow him around, just sort of moonily.

Recorded on: April 6, 2009