Chinese Foot Binding

Chinese Foot Binding

by Liv | Published on August 9th, 2008, 4:10 pm | Life

Holy mother of Pong. I can't even imagine how one manages to do such a horrendous act just in the name of beauty.

After she received a foot massage, the four smallest toes on each foot were broken (Chinese Foot Binding 2) This was not even the worst of the pain. The mother soaked silk or cotton bandages in the same liquid the girl's feet were soaked in. The bandages, which were ten feet long and two inches wide, were wrapped around the smallest toes and pulled tightly to the heel. Every two days, the binding was removed and rebound. This part of the process went on for two years. By this time her feet were three to four inches long. To assure the feet staying small, the ritual continued for at least ten more years (Hwang 1)

Liv, it's like you have some kind of power to find all the "things-that-have-creeped me-out-and-tried-to-forget" things in my brain and post them! :cry:

Aren't our feet are supposed to be in proportion to the rest of our body for the purpose of evenly distributing our body weight when we walk?

I also remember how a podiatrist pointed out (no pun intended) that women's dress shoes are shaped so badly for proper fit, squishing the toes into a point.

Yeah this one creeps me out too....

And yes... alot of the shoe's I use to wear actually bent my feet smaller. Luckily I rarely have to wear business attire these days....

But nothing like this.

Were the girls able to walk during the years their feet were being reshaped- were they carried around or what.
Honest to mud, this hurts just thinking about it. And those feet are not pretty and I cannot imagine a culture which found them so.

My guess is after the initial brutality of the breaking of the toes, and the first few foot bindings.... You could probably walk. Not walk well, but walk.

C. Alice wrote:Were the girls able to walk during the years their feet were being reshaped- were they carried around or what.
Honest to mud, this hurts just thinking about it. And those feet are not pretty and I cannot imagine a culture which found them so.

Foot-binding was generally for the nobility and they were typically carried in public. Beats me. I don't get why women continue to wear high heels when they know it's the worst possible thing for their feet and backs either. But hey, it's their choice, right? Like my personal decision to smoke cigarettes. :wink:

High Heels aren't so bad if you're skinny, and you have a quality pair.

Gain some weight like I have, and walking across the parking lot in them is murder.