Is there an adult female who doesn't shudder at the story of Chinese women having their feet bound in childhood to conform to an idea of beauty that horribly deformed them?
Along with that story has always come the implication that we're more civilized because we don't do that.
Well, surprise.
Now comes a national survey by a group of orthopedic surgeons that charges we're not so pure after all. Its main finding: Shoes are responsible for the majority of foot deformities and problems that physicians encounter in women.
"It's a real problem; shoe wear has its impacts on women's feet," says Seattle's Dr. John E. McDermott, incoming president of the American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society, the study's sponsor.
It's also a problem that results in women being by far the majority of patients visiting orthopedists with foot complaints, McDermott says.
Some 80 percent of the study's 356 women reported foot pain. Count their agonies: bunions, hammertoes, pinched nerves, corns and calluses.
And all this from individuals, ages 20-60, who reported no previous foot trauma or surgery and no medical conditions that may affect foot health, like arthritis or diabetes.
"There's always been a lot of suspicions and accusations that women's footwear causes a lot of problems, but there were no studies to back up those accusations," says the report's primary author, Dr. Carol Frey, a professor at the University of Southern California School of Medicine.
Although Frey denies feminism was at work, she does acknowledge that the six physicians who took part were women and "biased from the start," she jokes.
The study found enough blame to go around, spreading it among shoe manufacturers, retailers, and women themselves.
To begin with, when doctors measured the subjects' feet, they found 88 percent were wearing shoes too small. But the problem wasn't in the length so much as the width. While the average woman in the study said she was an 8B, in fact she was an 8C.
The crunch comes when women try to find dress shoes that fit their heel snugly but leave room for their toes. Although most women have narrow heels, manufacturers commonly give wide shoes wide heels.
"For a shoe to give support or help, it has to give you heel control," McDermott says. To get this, many women buy shoes too tight across the base of their toes.
