Feb 23
Ricky Martin Talks Dating Apps, Foot Fetish in New Interview
Kilian Melloy READ TIME: 3 MIN.
Ricky Martin opened up his home, and his life, to GQ Magazine for an in-depth profile, sprinkled with sizzling photos. The gay music icon let his foot fetish flag fly, aired his regrets about having been closeted, and revealed his status on hookup apps: He doesn't use them.
The article described Martin's home life – he's a busy dad with four kids, including a pair of 15-year-old twin boys, who balances his dual careers in singing and acting with family time – and relayed his appreciative comments regarding feet, which, for him, are an erogenous zone.
"I love feet," Martin enthused when GQ asked him about his fetish. "I have a foot thing. I love foot massages, and I would kiss your feet like crazy for hours."
Asked about his fans' reciprocation – he posts pics of his own feet on his Insta account – Martin shared, "I have fans that can draw my feet like a piece of art. They write to me: 'Ricky, I can recognize your feet a mile away.'"
"Imagining the Ricky Martin of 1999 coming close to this candor is not possible," the GQ article noted, "and there's something gratifying about a star who once kept important truths locked away feeling so wide open he leans into oversharing."
Indeed, GQ also recalled an earlier time in the Puerto Rico-born star's career when he was being counseled from all sides to stay closeted. That included a man Martin was in love with at the age of 20 – a man he said he's have been willing to walk away from fame in order to be with."
"I told him I'm going to quit everything," Martin recalled. "Let's move to Europe and just be. I don't care about this."
But his sweetheart saw too clearly that Martin had a different destiny. "He goes, 'Your path is evident. I see your future,'" Martin recollected. "'I love you, but we can't.'"
The pain of the closet lingers still.
"There's no light in the closet," Martin confided to the magazine. "Every time I see an adolescent coming out, I'm like, You're so lucky, because you don't have to deal with this ever again."
He went on to say – "his eyes crowning with tears that never quite fall," the writeup noted – that his regrets about having been closeted extend to having involved his family in keeping the truth about himself a secret from the world at large. "I brought them into this," Martin lamented.
But the time came when he finally freed himself – and them – from the suffocation of inauthenticity. "He published a letter on his website in 2010," GQ recalled, saying it was his step into parenthood that finally propelled him into the light.
"I'm proud to say that I am a fortunate homosexual man," GQ recalled Martin's open letter saying.
"It felt amazing," Martin told GQ, 14 liberated years later. "I wish I had done it before." But, he added, "Yesterday is forever beyond our control. There's nothing you can do about what we've lived."
Even so, Martin did acknowledge that coming out sooner might have detailed, or at least diminished, his career. The writeup flashed back to the way the media treated his private life for years before he came out.
"In a Barbara Walters interview in 2000, he gave a defeated nonresponse when asked if he was gay," GQ recalled. "Walters later said she regretted asking the question, but the damage was done."
Lookin back, Martin said, "I felt violated. That gave permission to every journalist to ask, 'Are you gay?' I was like, I don't want to talk about this. I don't want people to know."
"I don't know if it's internalized homophobia, but it was not my moment," the singer continued, before adding that, if he had come out earlier, he doubts his career "would've been the same."
Noted Martin: "There is a force that is coming with heavy hate."
Still, the best way to live is in light and love. Single again after his six-year marriage ended amicably, Martin seemed ready to embrace the future – but without the help of hookup apps when it comes to meeting someone new. GQ relayed that "whereas once he tried to hide his private life, now he surprises in how open he is. He's enjoying being single. He's not on Tinder or Grindr, he says, but is having fun meeting guys at parties."
It sounds like he's living a vida that's just loca enough – at least for now.
Have a look back on some of the thirsty photos and videos Martin has shared on his IG:
Kilian Melloy serves as EDGE Media Network's Associate Arts Editor and Staff Contributor. His professional memberships include the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, The Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association, and the Boston Theater Critics Association's Elliot Norton Awards Committee.
