Women Have Surgery So Designer Heels Fit Better

When Hitchhiker's Toe and Christian Louboutins clash
By Catherine Straut,  Newser User
Posted Apr 27, 2014 3:35 PM CDT
Women Having Surgery So Designer Heels Fit Better
Would you get a "foot face-lift" in order to fit into these?   (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)

How far are women willing to go for fashion? According to the New York Times, pretty far. The newspaper walks a mile in the shoes of a handful of LA- and NYC-based podiatrists who perform procedures specifically designed to help women fit comfortably into designer heels. What types of surgery are women undergoing for the sake of their Manolo Blahniks? Aesthetic toe-shortening, fat-pad augmentation, and toe-lengthening procedures, by way of one Beverly Hills podiatrist, who brands his procedures with names like "the Cinderella" and "Perfect 10!"

A Park Avenue podiatrist, who recommends Prada and Michael Kors for women looking for a wider shoe, offers injectable fillers for cushioning and other injections to tame profuse sweating; another NYC practitioner corrects what he calls Hitchhiker's Toe (a case of an outsize big toe) but drew the line at one patient's request: amputation of a pinkie toe to allow for a better fit. And it's not a new trend: The Times checked in on it in 2003, focusing on the "perils on the procedures"—an elective bunion removal, for instance, that ended up saddling the patient with serious foot pain. Time points out that woman are doing other "gross things" for fashion's sake, like Botoxing their calves to make them skinnier, and thereby better suited for skinnyjeans and slim boots. (And then there are these 7 people, who went under the knife in an attempt to look like a celeb.)

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