AFTER years of trekking the streets of New York in super-fashionable stilettos and boots, 25year-old Brooklynite Zorana Richardson’s toes were looking bad. “One of them started getting really big,” Richardson says. “It was getting to the point where pointy shoes were rubbing on my toes, and it was causing me a lot of pain.”
Now, after having hammertoe surgery and toetucks on three toes, “I definitely don’t have the pain anymore, and I have regular feet.”
Yes, you read that right – toe-tucking, cosmetic surgery wherein an incision is made in a toe and excess fat is removed, is emerging as one of the most indemand elective procedures in New York.
In fact, according to Dr. Oliver Zong, surgical director of NYC Footcare in the Financial District, some women go so far as to request pinkie-toe amputations so as to fit into their favorite Manolos.
“Generally, they tend to be younger women,” Zong says. “Anywhere in their 20s and 30s. They’re concerned about the appearance of their toes – corns, too long, too crooked. Some say they’re so embarrassed that their boyfriends have never seen their feet and they don’t go to the beach.”
Other patients bring in photographs of their favorite painful shoes and request to have their feet molded to size. “And then there are older patients in their 40s and 50s,” Zong says. “They’ll tell me that they’ve been wearing these same types of shoes forever, and now their feet are all mangled.”
In a city of rampant body dysmorphia – a disorder in which women tend to believe they are uglier and fatter than they really are – Zong says he also sees plenty cases of footdysmorphia. “People who have that will have had everything done under the sun,” he says. “They’ve had breast augmentation, a nose job, and the only thing left is their feet. A lot of times there’s really nothing wrong, so you turn them away and sometimes they get mad.”
The 20-minute surgery, which costs approximately $1,250 per toe, is an outpatient procedure that patients “just walk out of,” Zong says. “We give them post-op anesthesia, but with almost any foot surgery patients can walk out of the office. For full recovery, after swelling, you’ll be back in your shoes in four to six weeks.”
As for risks and side effects, “The absolute worst thing that can happen to you is a bad complication happens and you lose a toe,” Zong says. “This is extremely rare – so many things would have to go wrong, you’d have to get such a bad infection and have terrible circulation.”
With toe-tucking, a procedure performed most often on the little toe, you’d run the risk of losing your pinkie. “This is going to sound pretty harsh, but the pinkie toe is really not that important of a toe,” Zong says. “Losing it wouldn’t affect you at all from a balance standpoint. I’ve had patients come in asking to have theirs chopped off. Of course, I don’t do it.”
Still, there is swelling and pain – “With foot surgery there is more swelling because you’re walking on it,” Zong says. “With a breast augmentation or a nose job you don’t go out there and walk on your breasts or your face.”
It all begs the question – does he ever simply tell his patients to get better footwear? “Sure, but, you know, this is New York.”