| Gruesome - Chinese footbinding - |
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dithers
 Posted:
Mon Sep 10, 2007 3:51 pm |
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Gruesome - Chinese footbinding
This is just impossible to fathom that any person or societal custom could commit this sort of mutilation.
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Pretty in Blonde
Joined: 17 Apr 2006
Posts: 3468
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| chance
Posted:
Mon Sep 10, 2007 4:36 pm |
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POOR Woman. I am surprised a cane is the only thing she needs help with walking.   Just to have little feet.
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Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 2784
Location: Deep in the heart of Texas
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| dithers
Posted:
Mon Sep 10, 2007 5:10 pm |
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At first one would think it to be quite painful but I wonder if she even has any feeling in her feet at all.
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Pretty in Blonde
Joined: 17 Apr 2006
Posts: 3468
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| pausebreak
Posted:
Mon Sep 10, 2007 5:28 pm |
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The Chinese pavillion at Epcot had a display of the shoes worn by women centuries ago. IIRC, the smaller the feet the more regal and beautiful the woman. The feet of the woman in the above photo are really quite large when compared to some of the adult women whose shoes were on display at Epcot. Grown women wore shoes the size of a baby's first shoes
The practice of foot binding began in the Sung dynasty (960-976 BC), reportedly to imitate an imperial concubine who was required to dance with her feet bound. By the 12th century, the practice was widespread and more severe — girls’ feet were bound so tightly and early in life that they were unable to dance and had difficulty walking.
By the time a girl turned three years old, all her toes but the first were broken, and her feet were bound tightly with cloth strips to keep her feet from growing larger than 10 cm, about 3.9 inches. The practice would cause the soles of feet to bend in extreme concavity.
Foot binding ceased in the 20th century with the end of imperial dynasties and increasing influence of western fashion, according to the UCSF study. “As the practice waned, some girls’ feet were released after initial binding, leaving less severe deformities,” Cummings says. “However, the deformities of foot binding linger on as a common cause of disability in elderly Chinese women
http://www.sfmuseum.org/chin/foot.html
In the Sung Dynasty, about 1100 AD, a fashion started at the emperor's court for women to bind their feet. Women thought that to be beautiful they needed little tiny feet, only about three inches long. They got these tiny feet by wrapping tight bandages around the feet of little girls, about five or six years old. The bandages were so tight they broke the girls’ toes and bent them underneath their feet and then they had to walk on them like that. The girls spent most of their time crying for two or three years and then the feet stopped hurting so much. Women with bound feet couldn’t walk very well at all, and when they had to work in the fields often they would crawl. The earliest versions of the story of Cinderella come from Sung Dynasty China. In these versions, the point of the story is that the Prince loves Cinderella because she has the smallest feet of any girl in the kingdom, so the slipper will only fit her.
http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/china/clothing/index.htm
more explanations and photos:
http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/OddPics/Bound.html
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Soopa Soopa Bitch !!
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 5550
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| dithers
Posted:
Mon Sep 10, 2007 6:43 pm |
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Thanks for that background info, Pause. Quite interesting and also quite horrific.
Perhaps this woman straddled that era where foot binding ended and that's how she wound up with larger feet. Although doesn't it look like a matchbook they are holding the shoe up against? That's one thing I couldn't figure out. Maybe it wasn't her shoe. Or else the photography might have been such that dimensions were skewed. Also, why is she still binding them or was that simply a demonstration of how it was done?
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Pretty in Blonde
Joined: 17 Apr 2006
Posts: 3468
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| pausebreak
Posted:
Tue Sep 11, 2007 8:32 am |
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| dithers wrote: | Thanks for that background info, Pause. Quite interesting and also quite horrific.
Perhaps this woman straddled that era where foot binding ended and that's how she wound up with larger feet. Although doesn't it look like a matchbook they are holding the shoe up against? That's one thing I couldn't figure out. Maybe it wasn't her shoe. Or else the photography might have been such that dimensions were skewed. Also, why is she still binding them or was that simply a demonstration of how it was done? |
The woman looks like she is of the age where foot binding was still going on when she was a child and/or her family was still holding on to those old traditions and put her into that position. I would think that unless she had some type of radical surgery on her feet that with the deformity of them she would still have to bind them in order to help with the pain. I can't imagine that after all those years of binding that if she took the bindings off that her feet wouldn't hurt even more.
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Soopa Soopa Bitch !!
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
Posts: 5550
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