The History of Chinese Foot Binding

We should all be thankful the process of foot binding is finally over. But what is foot binding, exactly? Well, imagine bending (and occasionally, breaking) your feet to grotesque angles from the age of five - and that's just scratching the surface. So why would anyone want to mangle their own toes to look like a vacuum-sealed pack of cocktail sausage smokies?

#Footbinding #ChineseHistory #WeirdHistory

[Kiwiohkiwi]

My great great grandmother was the last person in our family who had her foot binded. My great grandma said her mother can't walk very far, she had this special chair where she would sit all day, commanding her children and servants to do all the work. She's a fierce woman, my great grandma said at that time she was so thankful that her mother can't run to catch them when they misbehaved. We still have a photograph of her in her tiny shoes, it was soo bizarre to me that her feet were almost the same size as mine when I was little. That story always fascinated me.

[carolynsilvers]

Its comforting to learn that people in leadership tried to end this child abuse.

[MithrilMagic]

My great aunt was a nurse and she had a patient at the nursing home she worked in who had her feet bound as a child. I was around 9 and my aunt introduced me to this woman. She was the sweetest lady and she showed me her feet and I remember feeling like I wanted to cry. We talked for a little while and I was telling her about how I played basketball and she said that she was envious of that. She came to America with her second husband. He worked with the Red Cross and that’s how they met. Her first husband died from some kind of illness. She said that her first husband was cruel but her parents basically forced her to marry him. But her second husband was her choice and she loved him so much. She ended up dying 3 months before her 100th bday. But at least the second half of her life with her second husband and his sister and other family loving her as much as she loved them. So sad. I’m so glad this isn’t in practice any longer.

[ShaynaNM]

I broke my left foot 11 months ago. One clean break of the metatarsals and one bad, shattered in 4 places break.
It STILL hurts every day and I had 7 weeks in a walking cast and crutches to let it heal.
I can't imagine the suffering these women endured.

[katiecaf]

Does anyone else notice most beauty standards throughout history are related to women being weak and immobilized? from the giant victorian skirts, Chinese foot-binding, to the "heroin chic" skinny of the 2000s

[wyndiahighwind]

I was also told that it prevented women in arranged and/or unhappy marriages from running away, as they physically could not.

[Animalay]

Makes me sad thinking about how painful it was for the little girls who didn’t know what was going on and them wondering why the people they loved were causing them so much pain, they would have had to be held down to do it 😞

[LorenzoEnzooey]

So basically it started because the "king" had a feet fetish

[elizabethabaya]

Author Lisa See has written several novels narrating the foot binding process. She's also written about how the golden lotus ideal was meant to entice potential husbands and raise a girl's value. It's astounding to think that little girls were mutilated for such a sick purpose.

[MayimHastings]

These girls did not choose to have their feet bound and broken. No 4y/o would do that, or even understand what it meant for them. The mothers and grandmothers forced them because they wanted them to marry well. Of course, being such a patriarchal system, the fathers sure could have ended it if they wanted to. Foot binding was just straight up torture and control. The slippers were beautifully embroidered, though 🤷🏻‍♀️

[theconqueringram]

I read an autobiography of a Chinese woman who was born into a wealthy family before the Chinese Communist Party took over the country. In the book, the author described with great detail about the bound feet of her grandmother. It was painful to read, even more painful to think about, but to actually live it must've been a constant nightmare.

The book's title was "Chinese Cinderella".

[baylorsailor]

But they don't look like a Lotus or any flower. It's interesting that it was ever compared to a flower except to make it sound more appealing. Looks like a goats hoof.

[LilyWangLoifavl]

I don't think it was the shape of the feet that men at that time were particularly into. It was the symbol of status it carried. Back then marriages were mostly arranged blind (meaning the 2 marrying especially the girl don't know the man and vice versa). Parents and relatives decide everything. And a factor that would be listed in the marriage profile would be the size of the feet. And the smaller the better.

Like some other comments have said, men were into the helpless women that even needed help to walk rather than the shape of the foot itself. Glad society has moved on to a better place.

[taopanda]

My Chinese language professor is a lady in her 70s.
She told me her grandma was the last one to have her foot binded.
I was so surprised to hear how RECENT this practice has been left.
A lot of things in history have been very recent and not far off.

[siaskies]

It was partially about fashion, but it was just as much a status symbol. "Look how rich I am, my wife doesn't have to work in the fields like a peasant! She can sit at home and be pampered because I can afford it." For families who did this to their daughters, the idea was "We can afford to just throw money out the window with this child. She can pay us back later, but right now, we don't need it." This was frequently not true at all, and many women with bound feet still ended up working if their families needed them to. In poorer families, only the oldest daughter would have her feet bound so she could "marry up" and join a higher class family.

As for the appearance of the feet, a lot of men actually never saw them uncovered at all! The ones showed in this video are, shockingly, not the worst ones you could see. Often the feet were necrotic or had pieces of bone sticking out. The draw was the little foot in the tiny shoes or wrapping. Some men felt that seeing the feet unwrapped "ruined" their enjoyment because they weren't nice to look at most of the time. The maintenance of the feet was a women's activity as a form of trauma bonding and so men wouldn't have to face the actual horrors of it.

So yes, it was kind of a fashion thing. But the more remarkable thing about it was how it made women status symbols for their husbands and families.

[chuzanmahammad]

As if the pain of child birth wasn't enough. My heart goes to all the women who endured this and more.

[aureliaaa]

A high school classmate of mine in Singapore had a grandma whose feet were bound. She was around 80 when i met her grandma and she had so much pain just walking across the living room. She came from China. Until her, i had never met any grandmum with bound feet cos majority of elderly women i knew were born in Singapore. I cant imagine the pain my friend’s grandma had to go through. All the suffering those girls went through for “beauty”

[aliencat]

I remember seeing pictures of these feet in the 1970s when I was in college. I still get that sick feeling now when I think about it. The most constricting thing I'll wear is a bra, and if they are fitted properly, they can be comfortable. Not crippling

[jesseleol]

Ironically small sized feet are still "superior" in China today. Girls who got big feet (if you got a size larger than US 7, congratulations your feet are big) usually got humiliated from family, friends or anyone, well at least once in life, it's inevitable. When girls purchase shoes one of the priorites is that the shoes shouldn't make feet look big. On shopping websites you can see a lot of people asking these questions about if the shoes make feet appear bigger in size. I used to buy samller sized shoes during my teenage days because I thought big feet is a shame. Some mothers even force their daughters to wear smaller shoes they believe it's a good way to control the foot size... what a mordern foot binding

[dodongai]

My great grandma was forced to bind her foot back then in China, but it was so painful she could not sleep at night so she took of the binds and let her feet grow. She still found a husband who accepted her big feet 🎉