--- title: "Cinderella Surgery" Can Make Your Shoe-Dreams Come True description: Some affluent women in the U.S. are having the size of their feet altered, just to fit perfectly into designer shoes, with the so-called “Cinderella surgery” that can lengthen or shorten toes, remove bunions and even inject fat into soles canonical: https://time.com/74121/gross-cinderella-surgery-can-make-your-shoe-dreams-come-true/ author: Charlotte Alter article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-04-24T21:24:54.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:55:11.056Z og:title: Women Are Getting "Cinderella Surgery" To Make Designer Shoes Fit og:description: Some affluent women in the U.S. are having the size of their feet altered, just to fit perfectly into designer shoes, with the so-called “Cinderella surgery” that can lengthen or shorten toes, remove bunions and even inject fat into soles og:url: https://time.com/74121/gross-cinderella-surgery-can-make-your-shoe-dreams-come-true/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta6a849e37988562c/69868c1b13c79fd304191c2c/154278180.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2000 og:image:height: 1125 og:image:alt: Disney Parks Builds A Giant Ice Castle In Times Square To Announce "Limited Time Magic" For 20113 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Women Are Getting "Cinderella Surgery" To Make Designer Shoes Fit twitter:description: Some affluent women in the U.S. are having the size of their feet altered, just to fit perfectly into designer shoes, with the so-called “Cinderella surgery” that can lengthen or shorten toes, remove bunions and even inject fat into soles twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta6a849e37988562c/69868c1b13c79fd304191c2c/154278180.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Gross 'Cinderella Surgery' Can Make Your Shoe-Dreams Come True > Sponsored content. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays to 40,000 subscribers as of August 2026. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters.  by [Charlotte Alter](https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/)  ## Charlotte Alter Senior Correspondent Apr 24, 2014 9:24 PM UTC  Disney Princess Cinderella poses Oct. 17, 2012 in front of a 25-foot-tall ice castle sculpture in Times Square in New York City. ( David Roark/Disney Parks via Getty Images) Disney Princess Cinderella poses Oct. 17, 2012 in front of a 25-foot-tall ice castle sculpture in Times Square in New York City. ( David Roark/Disney Parks via Getty Images)Handout—Getty Images  by [Charlotte Alter](https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/)  ## Charlotte Alter Senior Correspondent Apr 24, 2014 9:24 PM UTC It’s like something out of a fairy tale: a New York princess can’t fit into her Louboutuins, so she calls her fairy godmother plastic surgeon and he snips little pieces off her feet until her shoes fit like magic! And then she and her shoes live happily ever after. As much as this might sound like a plot point in some horror-themed installment of _Sex and the City,_ elective foot surgery is actually a thing that more than a few women are choosing to do. You can get your toes shortened or lengthened, your bunions removed, and even get fat injected into the bottoms of your feet so you have a permanent Dr. Scholls made of flesh, according to the [New York Times](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/fashion/foot-surgeries-so-women-can-wear-designer-shoes-in-comfort.html)‘s report on the surgery-for-shoes phenomenon. Apparently women get surgery to correct “high heel foot” (when your foot is stuck in the shape of a high heel) or “hitchhikers toe,” (when your big toe sticks out.) Some doctors have even gotten requests for toe liposuction, which they’ve denied. Dr. Oliver Zong, who founded [NYC Footcare ](http://www.nycfootcare.com/)and coined the term “toebesity,” once had a woman ask him to remove her pinkie toe (he didn’t do it.) “Cinderella surgery” is just the latest in a long line of gross things women do to fit into clothes. Some women elect to have [botox injected](http://www.lavedo.com/laser/treatments/botox%5Fcalfthin%5Feng.html) into their calves to slim them down for certain boots and skinnyjeans (although the process is dangerous, because of the major arteries in the legs). People get [butt implants](http://www.nycsurgical.com/brazilian%5Fbuttlift.html) to channel Beyonce and J.Lo. Even guys are getting [beard implants ](http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20140225/williamsburg/facial-hair-transplants-growing-amid-hipster-beard-craze-doctors-say)so they can participate in the lumberjack fad. Let’s just take second to remember that in the original Grimm’s fairy tale, the evil stepsisters cut off their heels and toes to try to fit into the glass slipper. Then they got their eyes pecked out by pigeons for being shallow. Just saying. \[[NYT](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/fashion/foot-surgeries-so-women-can-wear-designer-shoes-in-comfort.html)\] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/74121/gross-cinderella-surgery-can-make-your-shoe-dreams-come-true/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/74121/gross-cinderella-surgery-can-make-your-shoe-dreams-come-true/"},"headline":"Gross 'Cinderella Surgery' Can Make Your Shoe-Dreams Come True","datePublished":"2014-04-24T21:24:54.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:55:11.056Z","description":"Some affluent women in the U.S. are having the size of their feet altered, just to fit perfectly into designer shoes, with the so-called “Cinderella surgery” that can lengthen or shorten toes, remove bunions and even inject fat into soles","url":"https://time.com/74121/gross-cinderella-surgery-can-make-your-shoe-dreams-come-true/","keywords":["Living","beauty","plastic surgery","health","Culture","shoes"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta6a849e37988562c/69868c1b13c79fd304191c2c/154278180.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Charlotte Alter","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta6a849e37988562c/69868c1b13c79fd304191c2c/154278180.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Disney Parks Builds A Giant Ice Castle In Times Square To Announce \"Limited Time Magic\" For 20113","caption":"Disney Parks Builds A Giant Ice Castle In Times Square To Announce \"Limited Time Magic\" For 20113","creditText":"Handout—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-living/","name":"Living"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/74121/gross-cinderella-surgery-can-make-your-shoe-dreams-come-true/","name":"Gross 'Cinderella Surgery' Can Make Your Shoe-Dreams Come True"}}]}] ```