It's a good thing Cosmetic Foot Surgery wasn't around during the writing of the 1950 Walt Disney classic Cinderella. If it had been, the Prince may have ended up with the wrong girl. For a shot at happily ever after, I certainly would have paid a top doc oodles of cash to shorten my toes and narrow my feet while Cinderella was locked away in the closet.

At a cost of roughly $2,500 per toe, one of the most common cosmetic foot surgeries is toe shortening, or bone removal from the toes, to ready the squared-shaped foot for pointed toe footwear. To restore padding lost from years of wearing high heels, many women have collagen injected into the balls of the feet, despite the risk or irreversible nerve damage. The cost of that procedure is one pair of Prada four-inch stilettos (roughly $500 per injection). According to many podiatrists and orthopedists, some are also risking permanent disability for the sake of better 'toe cleavage,' "the partial exposure of a woman's toes in shoes that are cut low enough at the vamp," as defined by Wikipedia, "similar to how low cut tops reveal breast cleavage."

The American Orthopaedic Foot & Ankle Society (AOFAS) is against any type of cosmetic surgery on the foot, saying the inherent risks far outweigh the benefits. As reported in a December 7, 2003 article in The New York Times, "If Shoe Won't Fit, Fix the Foot? Popular Surgery Raises Concern," few patients realize that "the foot is a complex network of 26 bones, 33 joints, 107 ligaments and 19 muscles that must support more than 100,000 pounds of pressure for every mile walked. Even small changes can unexpectedly undermine the foot's structural integrity and cause crippling pain."