Padaung – Figments of a DuTchess

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…

The border mountains between Burma (Myanmar) and Thailand. Exotic women with modest smiles, their heads floating on layers upon layers of brass rings, necks stretched out to impossible lengths. Meet the Kayan-Padaung women.

The Kayan people like beautifying their women in special ways. Apart from the brass neck rings, the Padaung also wear rings on the arms (wrist to elbow) and the legs (ankles to knees), but these are not quite as prominent.

Other Kayan tribes display their beauty by wearing carved elephant tusk in their ears. When a woman is married, her ears are pierced and an elephant tusk of one to four centimetres in length is inserted. The weight of the tusks gradually weighs down on the ear lobe and the ear gets larger and larger, and longer and longer. Each time larger tusks are inserted and the process repeats itself until the woman’s ears become extremely elongated and floppy.

Like already mentioned, the women of the Kayan Padaung villages wear multiple brass rings around the neck, the arms and the legs. Why do they submit to these practices?

The rings, or more exactly one coil of many turns weighs up to fifteen pounds in total. At the age of two to five the Padaung adorn their daughters’ necks with the first rings. Each passing year additional rings are added. Around the age of twenty, up to twenty three rings are nestled around their necks. A Padaung woman is known to wear thirty seven brass rings around her neck! Most women prefer to wear the rings constantly because the skin underneath is often bruised and discolored. And many, after ten years or more of continuous wear, feel the collar like part of their body.

Where does this custom come from? Might this legend be true?

Long, long ago, the headman of the tribe had a dream in which he was told that a tiger was going to kill one of the much-loved children in the village – a child that had been born on a Wednesday. As his own child had been born on a Wednesday and as tigers kill their victims by first breaking their necks, he there and then decreed that all children born on a Wednesday should wear heavy brass rings round their necks. As the tiger didn’t kill a child, it was presumed that the wearing of the brass rings worked, and over the years this custom became popular until it is now institutionalised as part of tribal life. Not only that, it is considered lucky. In fact, so much is this the case, that women try to arrange a mid-week birth so that if the baby is a girl, she will be a fortunate ‘Wednesday’s child.’

Source: East Asia Travel

Perhaps the goal was to make the girls unattractive to slave trade? Or is the origin founded in the belief that an elongated neck is an ideal of beauty and status?

What the rings do, is NOT elongate the neck, but they do push down the collarbone and ribs, creating the illusion of a long neck. The weight of the rings twists the collar bone and eventually the upper ribs at an angle 45 degrees lower than what is natural. Not what I would call comfortable. Removing the coils will not result in the death of the woman – that is a misconception – though their neck muscles will of course be atrophied.

Twenty years ago about five hundred Padaung fled Burma (Myanmar) as refugees. They now live in three villages in Thailand and earn their livelihood as a tourist attraction, selling their handicrafts. The alternative would be a life of slavery, or worse, under Burmese government forces and drug barons who are fighting over their land.

Village women who revolt against this way of life say that they are punished for doing anything modern, like using cell phones or computers. These actions ‘ruin the traditional image’ and tourists won’t pay. Nonetheless some young women are removing their coils in their fight for the right to lead a modern life. The Kayan refugees have been offered resettlement in New Zealand and Finland, but the Thai government won’t give them the exit permits.

Beauty or prison? It is up to these women to alter their appearance this way. But it should be the choice of an adult, not of or for a child. Every culture has its own way and I respect that. But choosing voluntary deformity in the name of beauty? NO!