FOOT BINDING:BEAUTY IN A LIFETIME OF

PAIN Yizza Gonzales

05/07/2014

History 323

Final Presentation

FOR THE SAKE OF BEAUTY

• Woman for thousands of years have literally done anything and everything they could to become beautiful in their society.

• Parents, especially mothers to their daughters, have done what they can to ensure the well being of their children. Especially when society demands it of them.

• Mutilation was a common practice in many places of the world. China was no exception. All that mattered was that it was considered beautiful.

WHAT IS FOOT BINDING?

• Foot binding is a practice that literally binds the foot and forces it to stay small and into a crescent shape.

• The process behind it usually involves a small girl anywhere from the age of three to six to have her feet soaked and then broken. Her feet were forced into the shape by forcing her toes to meet the sole of her foot. Where the arch of her foot was to develop would also be broken and forced up to make the foot smaller. The feet were then bound tightly with some type of linen usually silk or cotton.

• The process of getting the foot into the perfect shape took years to do and while the bones may have healed it was common for them to break again multiple times.

• It was not uncommon for infections and death to result from this practice.• Warning next slide contains a not so pleasant images.

THE REASON BEHIND THE PRACTICE

• The reason behind it all lies in the thought of what beauty and status is.

• You had to afford to have your feet bound. To top that off your family would lose a worker because it was crippling.

• What do you think is beautiful a beautiful woman?

• During the time when foot binding was practiced a small foot was not only seen as beautiful. It was erotic.

• To a man it was not disgusting or horrifying it was beautiful. It made his wife perfect at least in her looks.

THE GOLDEN LOTUS:CONTROL AND SUBMISSION

• The term Golden Lotus refers to what the ideal length of the foot is. Four inches were called Golden Lotus.

• If they were five inches they were Silver Lotus. And anything bigger were termed Iron lotus.

• Not only was having a small foot deemed beautiful it was also a way to force woman to rely more on the men.

• Upper class men did not want girls with unbound feet. If they were to marry her feet had to have been bound and how they were bound was a big factor.

• In the time that it came into popularity woman had no power and could not even wander the streets freely.

• Using binding it was easy to control wives and daughters by keeping them in the house as walking was painful. It was also an easy way to enforce their submission.

THE SONG DYNASTY

• This is the dynasty that is responsible for the start of the practice of foot binding. Though it is said to have existed since Sui Dynasty.

• One of the stories behind its practice was that of the Emperor falling in love with a dancer with bound crescent feet.

• It was practiced mostly by the higher class and slowly moved into practice with all the classes.

• The higher class could afford to bind all their daughters feet because they didn’t need to work.

• Not every girl in lower class was subjected to it. Mostly only the oldest in hopes of marrying her up into society.

ALL THINGS MUST END.• It was at the end of Qing dynasty

that foot binding started to fall out of favor. Though of course efforts to try to stop it had occurred before with no success.

• In the 19th centaury when the practice was at it highest peak westerners started to move into the country. With the traders came the missionaries and the wives of these missionaries.

• These wives became strong activists against the practice. They received their support from nationals who had traveled abroad.

• They succeed except for small groups that continued the practice.

THE COMPLETE ABOLISHMENT OF FOOT BINDING

• In 1949 Mao Zedong took over China and it became then that foot binding was completely forbidden.

• By this point in time foot binding was completely out of fashion and not many were still practicing it.

• Western fashion had made its way into the markets and were now popular.

• Men also liked the sight of bare natural feet more than beautifully clad bound feet.

• Only a few remote regions were left.

• Unfortunately there were still many women with their feet bound and we can still see evidence of it today.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Blake, C. Fred. 1994. "Foot-Binding in Neo-Confucian China and the Appropriation of Female Labor." Chicago Hournals (The University of Chicago Press) 19 (No. 3): 676-712. Accessed April 26, 2014. http://www.anthropology.hawaii.edu/people/faculty/blake/pdfs/1994%20%20Foot-binding%20in%20Neo-Confucian%20China.pdf.

• 1998. Discover Foot Binding in Shanghai - the Culture of 4-inch Feet. Accessed May 1, 2014. http://www.chinahighlights.com/shanghai/article-discover-foot-binding.htm.

• images, all. n.d. Pinterest. Accessed April-May 2014. http://www.pinterest.com/orangetelephone/asian-footbinding/.

• Kam, Nadine. 1998. YMW. March 10. Accessed May 1, 2014. http://archives.starbulletin.com/98/03/10/features/story1.html.

• Linzey, Julia. n.d. Bounded Patriarchy. Accessed April 19, 2014. http://www.csuchico.edu/~cheinz/syllabi/fall99/linzey/where.html.

• SCHIAVENZA, MATT. 2013. The Atlantic. September 16. Accessed April 24, 2014. http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/09/the-peculiar-history-of-foot-binding-in-china/279718/.

• 2012. Scribol Anthropology and History. 1 04. Accessed 04 19, 2014. http://scribol.com/anthropology-and-history/chinese-foot-binding-in-pictures/1.