No Mean Feet

“CBS News” reports: Foot Cosmetic Surgery Catching On

Cosmetic surgery for feet is gaining a foothold among women who want to look better in shoes.

But, reports Susan McGinnis in part two of The Early Show’s series on foot care, many doctors urge women to avoid the surgery.

McGinnis says some observers call the trend the ” ‘Sex and the City’ effect.”

Whatever it’s called, she adds, women’s love affair with their shoes is as hot as ever. And a growing number of women are taking their feet in for regular maintenance.

“I notice,” says podiatric surgeon Dr. Suzanne Levine of Manhattan’s Institute Beaute, “especially at this time of year, people are most concerned about how their feet look and feel. They’re wearing strappy sandals. They’re exposing their toes.”

Among the procedure Levine does on feet are “foot facials,” complete with a salt scrub, “mask,” peel and massage. Some patients get injections into the ball of their feet of a chemical called “Restylane” to cushion the blow of high heels.

Other women go even further to dress up their feet.

Danielle Maisano of Long Island, N.Y. had hammertoes and uneven toes. She says she’s been embarrassed by her feet for years: “I was cursed, because shoes are my thing, and I got blessed with ugly feet.”

But Maisano turned to Manhattan podiatric surgeon Dr. Stuart Mogul for help.”I’m gonna have my second toe shortened, so it’s gonna be level with the rest of my toes,” she said before her operation.

“The surgery,” explains Mogul, “revolves around creating a toe that is straighter, somewhat shorter, and a bit stiffer.”

Maisano’s hammertoes did cause her some pain, or they might have been out of bounds for Mogul, who says he’s against performing foot surgery for purely cosmetic reasons.

Other procedures doctors say patients are requesting include having toes lengthened, feet narrowed, foot and toe liposuction, and fat added to feet. Some are even said to be asking to have pinky toes removed, all in the name of fashion.

But, continues McGinnis, not all doctors agree that cosmetic foot surgery is a good step.

The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons says it sees too many patients suffer the consequences of botched procedures.

Baltimore’s Dr. Stuart Miller, who’s with the AAOS, says a large part of his practice is fixing other surgeon’s mistakes: “The complications can be devastating. Some women have had to go through five or six surgeries just to get back to walking on their foot, much less getting into their shoes.”

Try telling that to Maisano, who’s busy building a new wardrobe of shoes around her new, prettier feet.

“I’m going high heels and open-toed shoes from now on” she exclaims.

And the point of this “news report” is?

1. To foment discomfort and insecurity in women about their their feet.
2. To drum up “cosmetic foot surgery” business for podiatric surgeons.
3. To make women seem silly and superficial.
4. To remind readers that “beauty” requires suffering and substantial financial expenditures.
5. To reinforce the notion that body appearance is more important than functionality.
6. All of the above.

See generally: This post by Echidne of the Snakes (which references this post at I Blame the Patriarchy), excerpt below:

We are all little fishes swimming in systems which at best are post-patriarchal, and we are all affected by the water we cannot really analyze. Hence the need to analyze whether wearing high heels or make-up or engaging in poledancing is something women do voluntarily and autonomously, and hence also the impossibility of truly finding a solution to these questions.

On one level the questions look trivial from a feminist angle. Who cares if the suffragettes wore those long cumbersome dresses? They got us the votes. From that angle I don’t care if a feminist decides to walk around on stilts while wearing multiple neckrings. But that we seldom see feminists so attired suggests that there is a deeper significance in many of our seemingly-trivial (and not-so trivial) choices, and it’s the deeper significance that’s interesting: The messages we send about ourselves by these choices and the messages others receive and interpret; two processes which don’t necessarily match. For example, a woman gyrating around the pole might feel sexually powerful, but a man watching her might see a lobster with parsley behind its ear.

So on another level all such choices, even personal grooming choices and clothing choices, are political statements. Even choosing not to make a political statement this way amounts to one. It’s inescapable. But not all possible choices should be seen as feminist ones. The feminism-lite commercial versions sometimes seem to argue exactly that: that just making a choice in itself is a feminist act for women, that all choices should be celebrated, because they demonstrate that women now can choose, that somehow the act of apparently choosing means that the person has totally independently come to some conclusion.

My favorite counterexample to that is the one about a person being convicted to die and being offered the choice to die either by hanging or the guillotine. It’s my favorite, because it’s silly and because it’s crystal-clear on the wider societal constraints.

–Ann Bartow