Quote Originally Posted by KnottedYet View Post
Oooh, this paper is a lot of fun! http://webh01.ua.ac.be/funmorph/kris...t_al_2009b.pdf

You can order it through a journal service ($$) if you have trouble getting the pdf above. Footwear Science vol 1 No 2 June 2009, 81-94

A fun stat mentioned in passing in that paper: 88% of healthy women in a USA study were wearing shoes smaller than their feet! (Frey, 1993)
.pdf came through fine for me.

That statistic is kind of "no duh" to me. Women's non-athletic shoes are made to stay on your feet by compressing them all around. Shoes that aren't too small, fall right off. Even when I was wearing athletic shoes that were two sizes smaller than the ones I wear now (which are just barely on the edge of being wide enough), I had to buy my dress and casual shoes a size or two smaller than that. Now that I'm not working, and living in pretty casual areas, it just isn't worth it to me to buy new shoes for the two or three times a year I need them, so whenever I do need to wear them, I feel like Cinderella's step-sisters. "Do I cut off my heels, or my toes?"

I wonder what the percentage would be if they limited the query to athletic shoes.