Women get feet reshaped to fit high heels

With celebrities these days tottering around in seven-inch Christian Louboutin and Jimmy Choo "limo heels", lesser mortals are trying to follow suit at the cost of their sole well-being. Cramming your tootsies into vertiginous death traps is not a good idea. The feet are especially delicate, with 26 major bones, 30 joints and a complex web of nerves and tendons.

Even at three inches high, heels increase the weight on the forefront of the foot by 110 per cent, displacing bones and tissue, according to a study in the Journal of the American Podiatric Medical Association.

But some women are taking drastic steps to indulge their fashion fetish, opting for surgical procedures to get their feet stiletto-ready. A report in T he Wall Street Journal described the menu of services at Beverly Hills Aesthetic Foot Surgery in Studio City, California as an example of how far gone the trend is: there's the trademarked "Cinderella Procedure" - a preventive bunion correction that makes feet narrower; the "Perfect 10! Aesthetic Toe Shortening" that invisibly trims toes that hang over the end of sandals or have to be crushed into tight shoes; the "Foot-Tuck Fat Pad Augmentation" that takes fat from the patient's abdomen and injects it into the balls of the feet to provide extra cushioning for long days on high heels.

A group of American orthopaedic foot surgeons has voiced their objection over these treatments. "Shortening a toe to get into a tight-fitting shoe should not be a standard of care in any physician's office," says Donald R. Bohay, an orthopaedic surgeon in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Collagen - a natural protein found in skin tissue - breaks down over time and can be replenished with injections, which "fill out" the skin. Requests for filler injections into women's toe pads, balls of the feet and heels have jumped 21 per cent in Britain, doubling last year's figure, according to the Daily Mail. The virtually painless procedure takes about 20 minutes and creates a pillow effect on the foot, eliminating the burning sensation associated with wearing high heels. Nicknamed the "Loub job" after Louboutin, it is administered by an experienced practitioner and costs from £320 (HK$4,000). It doesn't need to be removed or altered once it's been injected, and slight side effects tend to last fewer than 48 hours. Results are said to last up to six months.