More Weird Fashion Trends Throughout History

Fashion can be beautiful, it can be ridiculous, and sometimes, it can be downright dangerous. In this video we will explore some of the weirdest fashion trends throughout history including, teeth blackening, Macaroni, foot binding, and forehead plucking.

#fashion #history #fashionhistory #macaroni #footbinding

[westzed]

What amazes me is how long foot binding lasted. It started in the 10th century and lasted until the 20th century. A couple of Emperors tried to ban it but they did not succeed. A professor studying foot binding visited a secluded village in the mid 20th century, and found 85% of all girls had their feet bound. She revisited that village, I believe in the 1990s, and none of the children had bound feet. This professor met several elderly woman who lived with bound feet, and they all remembered the pain and torture they suffered as a young child during the process. They also endured some pain the rest of their lives. One of these women was married to a somewhat younger man, who wed her for her tiny feet.

[__seeker__]

I remember watching a documentary about foot binding. One old woman talked about when her feet were broken and bound at age 6, she was screaming and wailing and crying all night, begging her parents to unbind her feet. They tied her arms to her body so she couldn’t unwrap the binding, and told her the pain would pass soon. I’ll never forget that. I can’t imagine that happening to my daughter, let alone being the one who did it.

[ABerCul]

GEISHAs decided that dying their teeth black looked better than undyed teeth because ALL teeth look very yellow surrounded by Porcelain white (lead white) make-up.

[prapairatwotticharoenvong]

Black teeth used to be fashion in Thailand as well. People chew betel nut similar to modern people chewing gum. The nut will stain teeth to black color considered fashionable at the time.

[Shuang_Shuang]

I feel like modern trends like BBL, filler, Botox, eyelid surgery, nosejobs (I could keep going) are much much worse! Except for footbinding

[greenghoul]

Foot binding is horrendous I can't believe crippled feet was a beauty trend

[Itriedtakennames]

And the last generation subjected to foot binding got it worst….they had all the pain and discomfort of the foot-bonding, but by middle-age when it had died down bad the Cultural Revolution/Mao hit, many with bound feet were expected to join farm or iron collectives and do physical work, or be considered elitist, which could get you killed.

So they got the literal worst of both worlds…

[pdruiz]

Foot binding persisted in China for so long for two reasons. 1) It was a great privilege to marry a woman with bound feet. A man who had a wife with tiny feet meant that he had the wealth to hire an army of servants to both keep up the household and serve his crippled wife. Like a swimming pool in today's world, a crippled wife was a wildly popular, money-draining status symbol. 2) It was a proud symbol of Chinese culture. From the 10th century to the 20th century China was constantly invaded and ruled by "barbarians." To demonstrate "Chinese-ness" certain cultural attributes were lauded and held in high esteem. The foot-binding of women was a distinctly Chinese custom that was lionized. All the Chinese emperors who tried to outlaw foot-binding were "barbarian" emperors of either Mongol or Manchu ethnicities. In these groups, the crippling of women was rightly seen as an abomination. So these emperors tried to stamp out this heinous practice among their Chinese subjects. But the Chinese population resisted, in direct defiance of these foreign emperors telling them what to do. That's the other big reason foot-binding persisted until the modern day.

Foot-binding was violently stamped out as a tradition after 1949, when the Chinese Communists simply rounded up people who persisted and sent them to long prison terms. If they continued to persist in foot-binding their girls after a prison term, they were re-arrested and shot in the back of the head. This got especially nasty during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, when the last stubborn foot-binding holdouts were dragged out of their houses and publicly executed. Even people suspected of THINKING about foot-binding were publicly executed. This proved to be a highly effective solution to a long-festering problem. :)

[ccsymuv]

I can't believe that foot binding, horrific. These women must have suffered all of their lives with pain. Sick.

[helenredmond]

Im 80yrs old and story on foot binding reminds me of early s hool days..I was in about 4th grade attending catholic school and chinese boy started in our grade..I was fascinated as he was first Asian i had ever seen and after school we saw they had bought a houxe opposite the school and every afternoon his grandmother stood outside to greet the boy anc noticed how tiny her feet were..I cant remember who i asked about it but was later told about Chinese culture of footbinding womens feet...Ive never forgotten that and often over the years when Ive worn tight fitting shoe I recall how painful this must have been...

[Marskilius]

Damn, I would have been fashionable as hell during the renaissance! My forhead is high and my eyebrows are practically invisible naturally, no plucking needed 😂

[mattpipes]

One of the big reasons that the Macaroni trend ended was a crack down on homosexuals, which resulted in sting operations of Molly houses, arrests, public flogging and executions that created a lot of fear around appearances… because of the perceived effeminacy of the trend made men want to avoid it.

[sassisch]

Foot binding (裹腳) did not originate in the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE) but in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (907-979 CE).

[DaniHMcV]

Well, I’m off to pluck my hairline, blacken my teeth and squeeze my feet into the smallest pair of shoes I own! Ta ta!

[mostlyclear]

As today it boils down to dumb shit rich people do and the rest of us try to imitate to appear richer than we are.

[lesliearblaster]

I always thought that people who wore those big ruffs around their necks rather looked like their heads were on a platter...LOL!😅

[jaymartin]

Very interesting, I knew about most of these but the origins of "macaroni" was a surprise :=). Keep it up :=)

[angelsinger]

Blackening the teeth also became popular in the court of Elizabeth I. She had a notorious sweet tooth (as did her father, Henry VIII), and her teeth rotted as a result. Courtiers would blacken their teeth to look more like the queen.

[lath]

Chinese foot binding wasn't applied to working class women. They needed to walk and work.

[unknownmoon]

The macaroni trend were just men slaying