Daily Mail
London
Most women leap at the chance to go shoe shopping - but for Paulina Charlikowska, it was torture.  As her friends cooed over the latest pair of strappy slingbacks or vertiginous mules, Paulina would lurk at the back, making excuses about why she wouldn’t try anything on.  ‘It sounds silly, but I’ve always hated my feet and felt too embarrassed to get them out in front of my friends,’ says the salon owner from Blackpool. ‘Even as a child, I thought they didn’t look normal. I was revolted by them.  ‘It didn’t help that my feet were a huge size eight, which meant shoes looked ungainly, and my second and third toes were longer than my big toes. I would squeeze my feet into shoes two sizes smaller, so my toes were always sore and covered in corns. I knew I was making my feet look even worse, but I couldn’t bear to wear big, ugly shoes.
‘Because I work in the beauty industry, I spend all day looking at people’s feet, which made me even more unhappy with my own.’  So Paulina, 30, hit upon a drastic solution: so-called ‘Cinderella surgery’, a range of controversial new cosmetic procedures that alter the shape and size of a woman’s feet to improve their appearance.  In recent years these operations - which include shortening or lengthening toes, shaving off excess bone to remove ‘unsightly lumps and bumps, and even sucking excess fat from big toes - have become popular in America.