Young girls were compelled to go through the painful process of foot binding. For almost a thousand years, the Chinese thought that small feet were marks of beauty and desirability among girls.
This perception caused the Chinese men and women to intentionally restrict the girls’ feet from growing bigger by binding them. In the late 1940s, this tradition was stopped because of the debilitating experience that young Chinese girls suffered from.
Foot-binding is said to have been inspired by a tenth-century court dancer named Yao Niang who bound her feet into the shape of a new moon.
She entranced Emperor Li Yu by dancing on her toes inside
a six-foot golden lotus festooned with ribbons and precious stones. In addition to altering the shape of the foot, the practice also produced a particular sort of gait that relied on the thigh and buttock muscles for support.
From the start, foot-binding was imbued with erotic overtones. Gradually, other court ladies with money, time, and a void to fill took up foot-binding, making it a status symbol among the elite.
A small foot in China, no different from a tiny waist in Victorian England, represented the height of female refinement. For families with marriageable daughters, foot size translated into its own f
orm of currency and a means of achieving upward mobility.
The most desirable bride possessed a three-inch foot, known as a “golden lotus.” It was respectable to have four-inch feet a silver lotus but feet five inches or longer were dismissed as iron lotuses. The marr
iage prospects for such a girl were dim indeed.
First, her feet are plunged into hot water and her toenails clipped short. Then the feet will be massaged and oiled before all the toes, except the big toes, were broken and bound flat against the sole, making a triangle shape. Next, her arch was strained as the foot was bent double.
Finally, the feet were bound in place using a silk strip measuring ten feet long and two inches wide. These wrappings were briefly removed every two days to prevent blood and pus from infecting the fo
ot. Sometimes “excess” flesh was cut away or encouraged to rot.
The girls were forced to walk long distances in order to hasten the breaking of their arches. Over time the wrappings became tighter and the shoes smaller as the heel and sole were crushed together.
After two years the process was complete, creating a deep cleft that could hold a coin in place. Once a foot had been crushed and bound, the shape could not be reversed without a woman undergoing the s
ame pain all over again.
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