Quote Originally Posted by nscrbug View Post
Hmmm...I guess that means that I fall into the "Irish-hammertoe" category. I have long toes (when forceably straightened), but in their natural state they curl downwards.
Irish feet often end up with toe deformities due to a lifetime of being forced into shoes designed on the Roman foot model.

80-90% of feet are Roman feet, so that is what shoe companies use as the model for mass produced shoes. Back when cobblers made shoes based on the need of each individual, this was less of a problem.

Nifty story of a podiatrist in England during WWII who suddenly had an influx of folks with foot problems. They'd almost all moved from one small town in Ireland to her city in England and suddenly no longer had shoes made for "their" feet (the classic English foot is Roman structure) and developed foot problems from buying mass produced shoes that weren't right for them.

The whole foot thing fascinated her, and she ended up going into paleontology where she categorized burials as Celtic vs Roman based on foot structure rather than artifacts.