Chinese Foot Binding
“If you love your son, you don’t go easy on his studies. If you love your daughter, you don’t go easy on her footbinding.”
Foot Binding started in the Tang Dynasty (618-906), under the emperor Li Yu. He had ordered one of his slave girls to bind her feet and then dance for him. From that day on, foot binding began to become a regular tradition. It became increasingly popular to the upper class in the Song Dynasty (960-1297). Having tiny feet was a sign of beauty and wealth and men were attracted to women with small feet.
Foot Binding is an attempt to stop growing your feet and usually began between the ages of four and seven. A ten foot long bandage was wrapped tightly around the foot. This bandage forced the four small toes to go under the bottom of the foot. This made the foot become more narrow, but also shorter because it forced the big toe and the heel of the foot to become closer together by bowing the arch of the foot. An ideal foot should be no longer than three inches. The clef between the heel and the sole should be two to three inches deep. Finally, the foot should appear as an extension of the leg, rather than a stand for the body. To achieve the perfect foot, girls would walk long distances so their own body weight would crush the foot into its deformed shape. After two years of extreme pain, you would get a tiny pair of folded feet, but become unable to move normally. The tradition is carried out for ten years to make sure the toes stay in place.
The need to be beautiful took over the women's minds. In an essay written by Andrea Dworkin "Gynocide: Chinese Footbinding," she states...
"that the connection between beauty rituals and pain is not accidental: The pain, of course, teaches an important lesson: no price is too great, no process too repulsive, no operation too painful for the woman who would be beautiful. The tolerance of pain and the romanticization of that tolerance begins . . . in preadolescence, in socialization, and serves to prepare women for lives of childbearing, self-abnegation, and husband-pleasing."
The need and desire to be "beautiful" came with horrible consequences. The foot and nails had to be taken care of everyday otherwise infections would produce. Also, if the bindings were too tight, it would cause gangrene and blood poisoning.
Today, Foot Binding is just an ancient tradition, although there are some elderly women who still carry out the practice. In San Francisco, a device was recently invented called Fakirs Foot Bender, which forms the Metatarsus into a small, beautiful foot.
If you would like to learn more information about Chinese Foot Binding, visit these sources...
http://library.thinkquest.org/J0111742/footbinding.htm
http://bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A1155872
http://www.kidzworld.com/site/p2142.htm
THIS PAGE WAS CREATED BY KATIE AND ABBIE
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