Month: September 2011

Wooden floor boards, smoothed by years of patient polishing. On the table on the far side of the room an artful composition of flowers. You are wearing a stunning kimono and a painted demure smile, the tip of your Lotus shoes peeping from under your silk robe. A single petal floats down and lands on the wood. Fluently you glide towards the velvet white on tiny feet. Ultimate elegance…

… except every single step is killing you. Your toes – or what’s left of them – are curled under your foot soles, the bones fractured and ‘healed’ in a totally unnatural pose so your feet are about 7,5 centimetres = 3 inch: the ideal length for a bound foot in tenth until early twentieth century China. Foot binding. I must warn you about the photographs that will follow. Like the article about the Padaung, the Long-Neck Women, these practises are harsh. In fact they are much much worse.

Where the custom of foot binding originates from is not clear. The first to practise it were the upper class Han families in the wealthiest parts of China. The elite daughters didn’t have to labour in the fields but stayed at home to supervise their husband’s household. They were very limited in their mobility and dependent on their men and family. By the seventeenth century however, foot binding had spread to all classes and women had to work the rice field on their mutilated feet. Over the centuries two billion girls have been abused this way. Though it was possible to walk with bound feet, it was very painful.

I will now describe the way foot binding was done. Please do not read the next paragraph if you are over-sensitive. It made me nauseated, so I summarised the information for you from Wikipedia.

The process began between the age two and five, before the arch of the foot was fully developed. First they soaked each foot in a warm mixture of herbs and animal blood, and then massaged it. After clipping the nails as short as possible, the toes were then curled under the sole and pressed until they broke. Toes held tightly against the sole, they next drew the foot down straight with the leg and broke the arch. Tightly wound bandages held all in place, pulling the ball of the foot and the heel ever closer together. The girl then had to stand on her freshly broken and bound feet to crush them into shape. As the bandages dried, they became even tighter. Extreme unimaginable pain, that’s why the foot binding was generally done by an elder family member or a professional foot binder. The feet needed a great deal of care and attention: for the rich the process was repeated daily, including massaging, trimming and breaking again and again if needed!; for the poor twice or three times a week. Infection was a common problem, causing gangrene. Sometimes infection was caused deliberately by adding pieces of glass, so toes fell off entirely.

The extremely small feet were considered beautiful and created the Lotus Gait, because women avoided placing weight on the front of their feet and had to bend their knees slightly and sway to be able to walk. Men thought this was intensely erotic… as long as the feet stayed concealed. Too bad the feet had no Lotus fragrance.

In the twentieth century, foot binding was banned…

The reasons for treating your own daughter this way, are beyond me. All for the sake of beauty, while you condemn your child to a lifetime of suffering? Are you out of your freakin’ mind?! And YES, I realise it was tradition and a part of culture, but I just can’t find any justification in torture and mutilation. Ever. I’m so very sorry for the madness these little girls and women had to go through. The human body should not be tampered with for the sake of beauty only. You are great, just the way you are…