I really want to like mesh feet, but...

I keep doing this. I really like the idea of mesh feet. Miss Vila has them (and hands too) and they seem to work really well for her. For me though.... either I'm just missing something or they just don't work for me (and, really, they should be dead easy to get going for me because I wear ankle cuffs pretty much 24/7 -- no seam issues!)

Here's my problem: they seem to sit too low (or my shape's too odd, perhaps?). Take this image of some demo rigged mesh feet. I'm stood on a semi-transparent prim and I've made a point of not wearing the alpha:

Notice how much lower the mesh foot is than my "normal" foot? Now, okay, sure, they come with a shoe base to wear, so I wear that:

And still the problem persists. Okay, fine, perhaps I need to give things a nudge, so I fly and then drop down. While there's a small change, it's still not much:

The whole point of me buying these would be so that my feet look good when I'm barefoot (which I am around 25% of the time). But based on what I'm seeing with the demo the main reason for buying them -- toes that actually look like toes -- will be buried in the landscape, or the floor, etc.

The only obvious solution I can work out is that I should edit the shoe base and increase the platform size. That seems to do the trick (as you can see here, with the alpha worn):

...but now my ankle looks a bit freakishly long and I'm a good bit taller than I'd normally be.

I can't help but wonder if I'm missing something here.