Plastic Surgery For Your Feet

It is 8 o'clock on a serene blue morning in Beverly Hills and Dr Ali Sadrieh, a podiatrist, has just performed a 45-minute operation on a client, cutting a section of bone out of her toe to shorten it. She was awake during surgery, watching a film; next week Sadrieh will do the same thing to the second toe on the other foot. There was nothing medically wrong with the toes, but his patient didn't like the way they protruded over the lip of her high-heeled Manolo Blahniks.

Welcome to the wilder shores of La-La Land, where cosmetic surgery has finally travelled the full length of the female form. Down the phone line from California, Sadrieh's voice is upbeat: "Toes are the new nose," he tells me happily. "Just a little marketing phrase I've coined." His demographic in Beverly Hills, he explains, includes a high percentage of young attractive women who take care of their feet: they have regular pedicures, paint their nails and wear shoes that expose their toes, and they are unhappy if the second one hangs over the edge.

Is this a common complaint? "Surprisingly enough, it is!" says Sadrieh. "Since we've been offering this very cutting-edge procedure, which I have innovated, people are coming out of the woodwork saying, 'Gosh, I've always wanted to fix this'. Suddenly people have a footcentric perspective: celebrities see pictures of themselves on the red carpet and go 'Yeuk! Horrid ugly toes!'"