The Green Man did not know that such a thing existed but it does and women are risking permanent disability to improve it. But that's not all some women are having parts of their toes lopped off to fit into the latest Manolo Blahniks or Jimmy Choos. Both of which are, apparently, brands of shoes and it seems that their designers no longer feel constrained to construct shoes that hold a normal foot.

Dr. Rock Positano, director of the nonoperative foot and ankle service at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan said that his waiting room is increasingly filled with women hobbled by failed cosmetic foot procedures, those done solely to improve the appearance of the foot or help patients fit into fashionable shoes.

Dr. Suzanne M. Levine, an Upper East Side podiatrist who is an advocate of the procedures says, in response,

Some of these women invest more in their shoes than they do in the stock market,

Take your average woman and give her heels instead of flats, and she'll suddenly get whistles on the street,

The feminist movement has made so much progress hasn't it?

Read more on injuries from foot cosmetic surgery in The New York Times.