This isn’t an epidemic or anything, but some women really go to extremes so they can fit their feet into the cutest and trendiest shoes on the regular. (BTW those painful looking toes above belong to Olivia Munn at the The Newsroom premiere.)
A lot of women get Botox on their feet to prevent sweating, which is a kind of run-of-the-mill treatment for sweating anywhere, including your armpits. It doesn’t seem too crazy, the only problem is that we still don’t know the long-term effects of Botox injection yet.
Then there are the women who want something more extreme: surgery. Some people feel they suffere from “toe-besity,” and elect to have fat, and even bone removed from their toes, but others are actually requesting to have their pinky toes chopped off so they can fit into those really narrow-toed (but super chic-looking) high heels.
Apparently most docs won’t actually remove the pinky, but Dr. Oliver Zong, surgical director at NYC FootCare, will perform something called a “toetuck,” that involves shaving down the pinky (or big toe, or what have you.)
He says a lot of business women who want to wear fashionable shoes every day like this procedure. It supposedly only takes 30 minutes to perform and sets them back about $2000 (the cost of a pair of shoes to some women.)
Dr. Zong is on the cutting edge of this new cosmetic procedure. When he and his clinic first started this, there was only toe-shortening, but now they’re reshaping. And it’s not just women. ABC News spoke with one of Dr. Zong’s male patients, who has always been unhappy with his big toe.
But still, is it worth the risk?
What are the risks?
Another surgical podiatrist, Dr. Hillary Brenner, doesn’t feel like these elective cosmetic surgeries for feet are ethical. Plus, they carry lots of risks:
“Anesthesia, infection, deformity of the toe if the surgery is not done right, a risk of re-occurrence and the risk of surgery in general. It’s trauma to the foot.”
It would truly suck if you got your toes shaved down and you hated the way it looked! It possibly less traumatic than a botched facelift because you can always just tramp around in sneakers for the rest of your life, but that would be a pretty awful outcome.
On the other hand, it might just turn out well, and if it makes your shoes fits better, maybe it’s not such an awful choice.
Would you ever shave your toes down to fit more comfortably into shoes? Are you one of the women who has had this done?
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