True shoe addiction might be rare -- if it exists at all -- but author Susan Reynolds offers some telltale signs to determine whether you're a "shoe-a-holic:"

Sure, she snagged a prince and a palace. But her transformation from a girl of servitude into a woman of strength is the real lesson. Or so author Susan Reynolds believes.

Where Cinderella's shoes were a gift from her fairy godmother, in real life, women in the United States spent close to $20 billion on shoes last year. Female footwear fanatics filled their closets with everything from $16.99 Highlights from Payless to $900 Christian Louboutin platforms from Paris.

"Cinderella is one of those archetypal images you can't forget. She appears in more than 700 cultures dating back to the ninth century in China," she says. "Her shoes play such a big part in the story because they're a symbol of her realizing who she is."

If you change your shoes, can you really change your attitude, your personality? Reynolds believes you can so much that she wrote a book on the subject. "Change Your Shoes, Change Your Life" (Polka Dot Press, $14.95) illustrates how shoes can be potent symbols of a woman's stability, pizzazz, sexiness and, yes, even her power.

Alison Rodney, an attorney from Birmingham, frequents her favorite Royal Oak shoe store called Sole Sisters or a department store shoe aisle almost weekly. She explains her shoe fixation in one phrase: They always fit.

"They always look good," she says. "Pants might not fit or might not look flattering, but the shoes always fit. I think that has a lot to do with it."

"I have a couple hundred pairs. And once a week, I usually get a new pair," says Warren, who works for a technology consulting firm and has been encouraged by friends to one day open a shoe museum.

OK, so clinical psychologist Nicole Tobias says she's never met a person with a shoe addiction. Tobias is director of counseling and disability services at the Art Institute of California in San Francisco where fashion design is a daily focus.

"Obsessiveness (about shoes) doesn't have to be a bad thing," she says. "If I were a person who shops for shoes often, it wouldn't necessarily mean I had a problem."

Fifty-four percent of single women (mostly in their 30s) surveyed by soundinvesting.org say they were likely to accumulate 30 pairs of shoes before accumulating $30,000 in retirement savings.

"The thing is though, men collect things, too," Tobias says. "It's probably something more like stamps or coins rather than shoes, but we don't pathologize those hobbies."

Women's adoration of shoes permeated the recent movie "In Her Shoes," based on Jennifer Weiner's novel. The plot revolves around two sisters who only have their love for stilettos (and their complicated love for each other) in common.

In the film, Toni Collette's character tells her slimmer, sexier sister (played by Cameron Diaz) that she buys shoes when she feels blue, because unlike the rest of her, her shoe size never changes. Plus, it's rather impossible to feel unattractive in a pair of strappy Manolo Blahniks.

But that shoe labels have become nouns, i.e., "Manolos" and "Jimmy Choos," must be credited to shoe-obsessed TV characters such as Carrie Bradshaw of "Sex and the City."

Bill Boettge, president of the National Shoe Retailers Association in Columbia, Md., says TV shows in particular have had a tremendous influence on women's shoe-buying habits.

The NPD Group, which tracks consumer spending, confirms women are spending more on fashionable footwear rather than sensible shoes. For example, sales of stiletto and kitten-heel shoes were up 18 percent and 9 percent, respectively, last year over plain old block-heeled shoes.

Not only did "Sex and the City" expand the shoe horizon for the average woman, it bolstered the careers of some of the world's best shoe designers. Their sales took off because somehow owning the shoes was more important than the fit, the comfort or the price tag.

"'I don't give a damn about the cost' is basically what women were saying," says Brandin Baron, also on the faculty at the Art Institute of California. "On that show, shoes were equated with a better way of life, with optimism, with success."

Carrie Bradshaw and her TV shoe collection transcend traditional fashion roles. "But I don't know how realistic that fashion lifestyle is," Baron adds.

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