Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 19, 1991 TAG: 9103190129
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E3 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: NATALIE ANGIER THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But for many women, the sexy little pumps of springtime demand that they play a modern version of Cinderella's stepsisters, as they patch their feet with corn pads, bunion cushions and moleskin bands to ease the pain from shoes that truly feel like ill-fitting glass.
As women will vigorously attest, any shoe more elegant than a sneaker or a moccasin courts foot disaster, and now orthopedic surgeons and podiatrists have come up with some unexpected reasons why.
In a new survey of 356 women conducted by members of the American Orthopedic Foot and Ankle Society, doctors found that 88 percent of the women wore shoes that were at least a size too small.
Not surprisingly, 80 percent of the women also reported chronic foot pain and problems like hammer toes, bunions, corns, callouses and pinched nerves.
Importantly, the discrepancy between a woman's shoe size and foot size was found to be not so much in the length - the difference between, say, a 7 1/2 and an 8 - but in the width.
"The average woman in our survey, when asked what her shoe size is, reported herself as a size 8B," said Dr. Carol Frey, an orthopedic surgeon at the University of Southern California's School of Medicine in Los Angeles.
"But when we measured her foot at the widest point, right at the ball of the foot, we found that she is actually an 8C."
Dr. Frey and her colleagues are presenting the results of the study this week at the annual meeting of the orthopedic society, the leading group of orthopedic surgeons, in Anaheim, Calif.
But the researchers said that women might not be able to solve all their foot troubles simply by asking for a wider shoe.
Apart from few stores stocking wide-width shoes, particularly in pretty styles, the great majority of women who need a roomier shoe for the front of their foot usually have a narrow heel.
C-width shoes, it turns out, are as broad in the heel as they are in the toe.
"The shoes end up slipping off the back of the foot," said Dr. Francesca M. Thompson, an orthopedic surgeon at Roosevelt Hospital in New York who is an author of the new report. "The problem is that most shoe manufacturers do not realize that those women who need shoes with a little more width in the front don't have 700 pounds of fat encircling their heel."
Because few women will wear dress shoes that flop around like beach thongs, they choose shoes that fit comfortably on the heel but pinch the ball.
The surgeons said most American and many European shoe designers used an improper shoe last, the wooden or plastic form around which the shoe is shaped.
Many shoe makers buy their lasts from Asian countries, where women often have narrower feet than women in the West. Nor do the shoemakers request wider lasts, because most of them believe that a slimmer shoe is more appealing to shoppers.
"Shoe manufacturers used to make what were called combination lasts, back in the 1960's," said Dr. Joseph I. Seder, a podiatrist at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.
"They had a narrow heel and a wide ball. Now all you get are narrow and medium lasts, and that's where the foot problems you see on women stem from."
by CNB