I have been skiing for a number of years now and have the confidence to go almost anywhere on the mountain. This is not to say there isn't room for improvement. However I recently saw a video of myself skiing and was very surprised to see how far my legs were apart. I am very flexible (yoga, etc) but also quite short (5ft6in) and slightly bow legged. Should I start to force my feet closer together? When I tried recently I ended up with black toe? Any advice appreciated. Regards.

I am no expert in this matter but I found that as I developed my technique to relax my toes and ankles as I ski I began to ride more over my skis.  This allowed me to feel the edges of my skis and I was able to control the position of my skis closer together.  You may need canting of the boots as the other replier said but most people don't need to shave the bottom of their boots to ski well.  It just reinforces a bad habit of alignment that is conditioned rather than a true physical abnormality in most people.  This is the reason that so many people develop back strains and pains is due to poor standing and walking habits.  Try the following exercise and if you discover you do have a physical abnormality then cant your boot to their hearts content.   

 A lot has to do with relaxing and using your edges to bring the skis in.  Try this on a very gentle slope.  In a parallel stance, first relax your feet and ankles so that your shins of your legs are resting on the tongue of the boots.  Then roll both your feet toward your big toe side of each foot.  You can bring your knees closer together to accentuate this movement.  As you slide down slowly on the gentle slope the skis should come closer together.  Now roll both your feet toward the little toe side of each foot. You can bow leg your knees out a bit for this to get on the outside edges of your skis.   The skis should ski apart.    Practice this until you can form hour glass shape tracks in the snow.  As you get better at this your feet begin to develop control of the skis width apart but most of all you begin to ride over your skis more. 

What is really important is to keep relaxed at your toes, ankles and knees.  By keeping relaxed you push forward your knees and your feet are more likely to pronate (place more pressure on the big toe side of each feet.  By stiffing your joints you stand up straighter and you roll toward your little toe side of the feet (supinate).  So do not stiffen up but relax and let your ski boot do some of the work of holding you up.  This is why you paid so much for good ski boots, right!

I find this exercise wonderful to do off the snow on a revolving carpet ski deck.  If you can find one near you by all means practice on one before you go to the snow.  You can hold onto a safety bar as you develop the balance and feel the ski and its edges.  You may save yourself some boot cutting and grinding.  You know you have a harder time selling your boots at a ski swap once they are canted specifically to your feet. 

The most important thing you learn on the revolving ski deck is to relax.  I found relaxing to be the hardestthing  to do because I want to muscle and force my skiing but once I learned to relax it made a whole world of a difference in my skiing.  Now I let my skis doing the skiing and I just ride.  If you can not relax then everything else is just about impossible to do such as effortless carving and going through the bumps smoothly or floating on powder.   You can look up a Yahoo or google search for "revolving ski deck" or "endless slope" to find a website of theirs, I highly recommend it, it will shave off several seasons of skiing practice into just a few lessons on the deck. 

Good luck and I hope you find the exercise above useful in improving your ski stance and just relax!  

By the way most of this advice was from a ski instructor that taught me on a revolving ski deck and it helped me so I am just passing it on to you.