PORTLAND, Maine — From fall to spring, boots are in almost every shoe store, however, for some women, they’re not the easiest to put on. Women with wider calves have told CBS13 it’s nearly impossible to fit into many boots on the shelves. Some women are even going as far as getting surgery to make them fit.
“You don’t see people — girls — not wearing boots anymore. [Boots are] everywhere,” Maine Mall shopper Kara Grant told CBS 13.
“I’ve tried on I-can’t-even-tell-you-how-many pairs of boots,” said fellow shopper Claudia Getchell. “Apparently I have huge calves, which I never realized until I tried to find a pair of boots.”
Getchell isn’t the only one in fact many people CBS13 spoke with have the same problem. Some women are even going as far as getting surgery to reduce the size of their calves.
“Having slimmer calves or being able to just have them so ski boots fit even is something we’ve done frequently over the years,” said Dr. Verne Weisberg of The Plastic Surgery Center in Portland.
Dr. Weisberg said he’s performed more than a few dozen calf reduction surgeries, even performing the surgery on a skier so she could fit into ski boots. He said the most popular method is liposuction.
“Just a thin tube with some small holes on one end and some suction on the other and it’s passed back and forth through the fat to suck out the fat but protecting the nerves and the blood vessels,” said Weisberg.
Weisberg said surgery is an option for women, but it isn’t cheap. The cost of calf reduction surgery ranges from $1,500 to thousands of dollars. The easier and less expensive option is looking for boots that come in a wide-calf style.
And, of course, surgery of any kind carries some health risk, including the potential for infection.
Sale associates at Lamey-Wellehan Shoes in Scarborough told CBS 13 many customers come in asking for wide-calf boots. One of the store’s buyers, Erica Dube, said vendors are responding to the high demand. Dube said 2015 fall lines are showing about 80 percent more wide-calf styles.