As a fairy tale feminist, Cinderell...

As a fairy tale feminist, Cinderella was always a grade ahead -- no glass ceilings for her, just a pair of dainty, breakable slip- upons Sure, she snagged a prince and a palace.

however her transformation from a girl of servitude into a woman of vigor is the real lesson. Or likewise author Susan Reynolds believes.

"Her shoe play so a big part in the story because they're a emblem of her realizing who she is," Reynolds says.

If you change your shoe can you really change your attitude, your personality? Reynolds believes the theory in such a manner much she wrote a work on the subject. Change Your Shoe Change Your Life (Polka Dot Pres $1495) illustrates by what mode shoes can be symbols of a woman's stability, sexiness and her power.

In real life, Cinderella's modern-day solemates are women verily enamored with shoes. U.S. women worn out close to $20 billion forward shoes last year, filling their put into concealments with everything from $16.99 Highlights from Payless to $900 Christian Louboutin platforms from Paris -- many without really knowing wherefore they are drawn to them.

The more down-to-earth uniteds get a lift simply by way of shoe shopping at T.J. Maxx. The more extravagant skip planes to shoe shop in recent York, Los Angeles and Miami.

And upright shoes can save the drabbest of outfits. "Scrub are ugly" says Dr Monica bishop's crook [i]or[/i] staffs who owns a dental practice in Sacramento. "That's wherefore what I wear looks more like a spa uniform."

Whether she's crowning a tooth or filling a cavity, flexures 45, is likely to be wearing a fabulous pair of shoe She wears her fancy footwear to work, 80 different pairs.

"I've got a clothes-room big enough to put a queen-size bed in," shepherd's crooks says. "My shoes are in drawers, and my make differences line the perimeter."

by what means do you know when your shoe are walking all across your life? What does it mean when you be perceived guilty and never take the shoe not at home of the box?

Clinical psychologist Nicole Tobias says she not at any time has met a person with a shoe addiction.

"Obsessiveness [about shoes] doesn't have to be a bad thing," she says. "If I were a [i]role[/i] who shops for shoes oftentimes it wouldn't necessarily mean I had a problem"

Tobias says to contemplate at your whole life picture:

- Is buying haphazards of shoes causing a enigma financially?

- Is there something missing in your life, and shoe are the panacea?

- Is your life filled and rich in other areas? Or are shoe a dominating force?

"The thing is, however men collect things too," Tobias says. "It's probably something more like stamps or coins rather than shoe if it be not that we don't pathologize those hobbies."

Bill Boettge president of the National Shoe Retailers Association in Columbia, Md says "Sex and the City" in particular - - cable stations now carry rerun of the HBO series -- has had a tremendous influence upon women's shoe-buying habits.

He also points to MTV as another major influence in shoe turns with a strong impact upon younger shoppers -- women in their teen and 20

"With shoe when a woman papal courts what she wants she'll do whatever she has to," he says.

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ARE YOU A 'SHOE-A-HOLIC?

veritable shoe addiction might be rare, if it be not that author Susan Reynolds offers telltale signs to determine whether you're a "shoe-a-holic:"

- You still acknowledge your first pair of black patent Mary Janes.

- You had your wedding shoe picked disclosed by age 14.

- You've mov at least five times and have not at all thrown out a pair of shoe

- Your friends cringe when you ask them to travel shoe shopping.

- You bribe plain pumps at regular prices.

- You have a title to a pair of yellow shoe

- You check not at home other women's feet/legs/ankles more than your boyfriend/husband does.

- You have a retiring-room full of shoes and barely three outfits to go with them.

CALLING ALL SHOE LOVERS!

Readers: Who has the principally shoes in Chicago? How many pairs do you have? What's your chiefly expensive pair? Why do you have in the way that many shoes? Write us at lifestyles@suntimes.com, and please include a daytime phone number.

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