PERSONAL HEALTH : Why Women Can’t Wiggle Their Toes

If the shoe fits . . . well, some women just won’t wear it.

In a recent survey by the USC School of Medicine and the American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society, 88% of women were wearing shoes smaller than their feet. Eighty percent said their feet hurt.

Is there a connection? You bet your booties, researchers say. Or, as Dr. Carol Frey of USC put it, “Most cases of bunions, hammertoes, corns and calluses in women are directly related to the shoes they wear. . . . They need to start wearing shoes that fit.”

Frey, the study’s principal investigator, joined the society’s women’s footwear committee in interviewing 356 women ages 20 to 60. The women were asked to bring a “typical fashion shoe” from their wardrobe to the researchers, who traced the shoes and the women’s feet.

When the tracings were measured, researchers found the great majority of shoes were smaller than the great majority of feet. In many cases, the feet were far wider than the “fashion” shoes. Frey notes that some companies do not make shoes in the C width many women need.

Sixty percent of the women said they believed their shoe size had grown since they were 20 years old, but 75% said they had not had their feet measured in more than five years.

Women, concludes Frey, need to be more discriminating--a lesson that men have apparently learned. “We didn’t study men,” says Frey, “because most men won’t wear shoes that don’t fit.”