Cosmetic Surgery, From Head -- to Toe?

March 20, 2007 — -- Lawanda Moraldo, a reggae hip-hop singer who goes by the stage name Essence, says her feet used to be a source of embarrassment for her.

And as a performer, she says her less-than-pretty feet affected her stage act -- in short, when it came to her stage show, many toe-baring fashions were simply out of reach.

So, Moraldo -- like a growing number of women -- sought out the help of a podiatric surgeon to give her feet a surgical makeover.

She had her toes straightened and corns removed last year, and she says the reward outweighs any potential risks.

"I always said, the day I do my feet is the day I get rich, or where my career starts to pick up," she said. "And as soon as I did my feet, I started getting calls."

Moraldo isn't the only woman who has sought a cosmetic foot procedure for an extra confidence boost. But as the number of women seeking the procedures grows -- along with the number of doctors who offer these surgical tweaks -- many doctors are beginning to question whether some of these procedures are worth the risk.

Stuart Mogul, a podiatric surgeon at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, says that a growing number of women are seeking surgical solutions for such cosmetic worries as hammertoes, corns, crooked toes, and toes with erratic or unnatural lengths.

"Sometimes we'll see one toe that's extremely long," he said. "For example, a second toe that is a half-inch longer than the third toe."

"That's a foot that if 10 people looked at it, 9.5 of them would understand the patient's concerns," he said.

For this reason, Mogul says, many of the patients he sees are highly motivated to give their ugly feet a face-lift.

"It's not uncommon that a patient tells me that she is embarrassed to show her feet," Mogul said. "I don't think that is hyperbole -- I think that they don't take their shoes off."

"Often, their emotions are justified. They have deformed feet."

But it seems that far more people are concerned about the appearance of their feet than one might guess. New York City podiatrist Oliver Zong, who performs between 30 and 40 cosmetic foot surgery procedures every month, says cosmetic foot surgery is now the bulk of his practice.