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.
The universal human drive to achieve impossible standards of fashion and beauty across all cultures (lip plates, corsets, head binding and other extreme body modification) is incredibly fascinating indeed! Thank you for sharing!
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.
And he said about 10% of the girls died from it. And it went on for 1000 years. There is something sick with a society that intentionally cripples half its population.
I broke my right talus and little toe in a fall in 1978. The orthopedic doctor told me I would have arthritis in that foot within 10 years. It took 30. Hope your foot does better.
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.
My dad is Chinese and he used to have a relative (I don’t remember who 😓 I think she was his grandma or great aunt) he told me about how she was in constant pain from the foot binding and he had to help her with walking by carrying her.
A lot of elderly women have bound feet. Foot binding fully fell out of favor in the 1920s and 1930s. Women with bound feet had a hard time finding work in factories during WWII; a lot of older women couldn't find work. Elderly women that have bound feet have a lot of foot and back problems.
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.
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.
The worst part is that it was often a girl's only option, as we see in See's books (her book, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, introduced me to the concept for the first time). Bound feet came to be so highly valued that if a woman didn't bind her feet, she wasn't likely to receive any marriage prospects at all, leaving her with her only option to be a life of servitude, as women were so restricted at the time that they had to rely on their husbands and thus needed to not just secure a match, but the best match possible for them. Mothers often had to do it for their daughter's future, even though it was painful and caused disability and sometimes death. They believed they were helping their daughters. It was a horrific vicious cycle.
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
Just like an abuser would do. Make it as difficult as possible for a woman to leave you. Try to put her in a position where she is dependent on the man for everything. Good way to exert control over a woman.
Corsets and victorian skirts didn't make women weak and immobilized. There has actually been newspapers about women' s corsets saving them from men trying to stab them because of the corset's boning. Many women used those giant victorian skirts to hide weapons and other things under it during the American Civil War. Not to mention that around the victorian era women -owned fashion businesses began and flourished. Not all of women's fashion in history is about women being weak and helpless.
@@bagel1612 with respect, you’re not correct. The fact that women tried to incorporate some measure of control into the confines of an apparatus which is basically debilitating does not mean that the fashion was freeing. There has been freeing fashion, like in the early 20th century when hemlines went up and corsets went out of style. Don’t be ignorant. This is all researchable.
Uh no it didn't. The king only commented that one particular woman who had small feet danced gracefully. Her feet were naturally small and there was no evidence she did anything to make them small. It was women who decided foot binding was a good idea and forced other women to do it. Men actively discouraged the practice, but as usual women thought they had all the answers and refused to listen to basic common sense.
@@dhrgkbqxtjr2743 well its kinda started because the kind had a fetish and woman began to mutilate their feet in hopes of getting a wealthy man, so everyone is right apart from people who crush their feed into swollen disgusting sausages of that look more like hooves, in order to be more attractive, I hope they were just that desperate instead of actually believing in this bullshit
@@dhrgkbqxtjr2743 all things women do to look better for men stem from the pressure placed on them in a patriarchal, capitalist society. In matriarchal cultures, women are embraced for their natural beauty/gifts and it is the men who modify themselves (not that this is good either). In a society where a woman must marry or starve, she enters a competition w other women the moment she is born. It isn't "other women" doing this, it is mothers binding the feet of daughters to ensure her success as a bride. And it worked, or the practice wouldn't have gone on for centuries. Paternalistic notions of property and ownership are the root cause of this evil.
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 😞
@@KAT-dg6el it is the old Grandmothers and Aunties that cut the little girls . They could stop . They don't because the are getting paid . Men may accept it and claim to want it but , it is grown women who cut the girls .
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.
I read a book called The Wild Swans (I think that was its name) - an autobiography by a Chinese woman whose grandmother endured the binding. The book explained it as a normal part of life forced on almost all women because they were worthless if they couldn't be given away in marriage, and men would only marry women whose feet were bound. Women were literally just property and often weren't even given names (just numbers) and also the binding meant they couldn't run away or escape no matter what hell they endured within the marriage. Many still had to work and do agonizing labor for hours every day on their brutalized feet. Based on that book and others like it, we in the West seem to have quite an inaccurate idea of what it was actually like and why it was done. It was forced on little girls and often mothers would weep as they broke their children's feet, but they knew a girls life would be more hell without it when she grew up if she couldn't be married (she would starve to death, pretty much) The author of the book remembered her grandmother hobbling around in agonizing pain carrying water in heavy buckets etc, while weeping and saying ''why wasn't I born a man?'' over and over and over. So I found it pretty frustrating that the opening of this video said ''little girls did it to themselves for fashion'' Y_Y
@@katrinaolsen2444 it was more that a woman could almost certainly not be married without it (for a very long time) so for any girl to have an even vaguely bearable life (life was hellish for an unmarried woman, lower than a dog) her feet had to be as small as possible. Women were commodities, not really human. Girls from lower and middle-class families often weren't even allowed to be given names, just numbers (girl one, girl two, girl three) etc. Mothers would weep while binding their daughter's feet because they knew the pain and didn't want to do it, but there was literally no other choice up until the late 1800s/early 1900s which is when some women began defying tradition and refusing to bind their daughter's feet. Men actually f3tishized the feet, and poems were written about the smell they'd get in the folds and things. Mostly the "allure" and "necessity" came from the fact that a woman could not run away or escape, and hard labour (which many still had to do) became and endless agony as they aged. For the wealthy of course they could be carried, but it certainly wasn't only the wealthy who had it done to them. I got this info from an autobiography called Wild Swans written by a Chinese lady who was in the Red Guard as a teen in the 60s. She speaks extensively about her mother and grandmother's brutal histories which were totally normal for women in those days. Her name is Jung Chang, but any biographies written by Chinese women from the time discuss the same horrors.
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 🤷🏻♀️
@@ClickClack_Bam you don't have to be a " topple the patriarchy" person to point out that the men held enough away that foot binding could have been ended at anytime by them. Just because you have an issue with feminist theory doesn't mean it never has a point
@@ClickClack_Bam Men couldve totally prevented and gotten rid of such a system. i mean men drank out of cups shaped like the lotus shoe or from the shoe itself for god's sake. They proved they could with 1912 campaigns, they used didnt want to even try before.
I don't know why men are assumed to be exempt to societal pressures? I mean sure, the whole purpose of this practice was to look appealing to men, but it also could have been equally promoted by women themselves, to enhance their 'sexual prowess'. It's not as if a group of random dudes could just announce for foot binding to stop and it would. Even the emperor, the ultimate power in China at the time, failed. I guess there must be fathers who did refuse to have their daughters' feet bound, but it has either of the following consequences - 1. Daughter grows up, but has no suitors because she doesn't have the ideal feet. She resents her father for making such a choice for her and she can't have her feet bound at older age without severe risks. Could have fit right in with other women if only her father let her suffer a bit as a kid. She won't have even remembered it once an adult (or so she would think, I guess. You can't ever forget something like that). 2. Daughter grows up, has no suitors, but understands and agrees with her father's reasoning. But it ends with her as she has no kids to pass down her beliefs to. These are the general consequences. Even rarer, if a girl with unbound feet found a suitor who's against foot-binding too or her brother learns from their dad and saves his own daughter from the pain... Over the course of centuries, social norms will triumph and such exceptions will end up fading into obscurity.
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".
My school made us read that when we were 12/13 years old. It was horrific - really dark moments in there that stayed with me forever. I remember her pet chick being mauled by a dog, it was absolutely horrible.
I ahve also read it. It is a heart breaking story by Adeline Yen Mah who worked hard and became an independent woman despite of being an unwanted child or a bad luck.
I think i had heard that, isn't that the story when she is sooo unwanted by her step mother, hated by her older siblings and her father practically forgetting her until she do something recognizeable at public newspaper or something?
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.
And even today illegally. they still do horrible things to. little girls. Then demand they wear veils and other. restrictions Don’t see men being made to do this
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 🎉
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”
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.
most marriages of the upper classes. however the feet binding was prevalent in the entire society..... also, if the male was also a child he wouldn't be into the feet binding, only older men.
@@FlyingTigersKMT Same as being pale as a beauty standard. Having pale skin and tiny feet meant you didn't work in the fields, so you were a rich, upper class woman.
I heard from my grandma that not all ladies will be in this trend. It's likely happened in big cities like Peking (Beijing). Our family is in Shantow, Guangdong, where has agricultural living style, so ladies in here didn't bind their feet like that. Both my great grandma and her daughters (including my grandma) had normal feet. But for men whom need to keep long braid in Manchurian style, this tradition comes to end in my grandpa period. All of my grandma's brothers still had long braid until the WW2 ended.
It is likely the agricultural lifestyle that saved your grandma from this crippling torture. But from history, the practice is widespread all over China. It is likely to be more widespread beyond your grandma's hometown.
@@yivunqp963 I'm not so sure whether this trend was widespread across my grandma's area or not, but as far as I know from my grandma, she said all people in same village didn't go through this trend. They all have normal legs.
@@yudeesaetang7468 you know I am not disputing you and your grandma's story. I have already stated that it is widespread outside your grandma's village in my earlier comment. Also, China is huge so your grandma's village and a couple of villages don't follow it, probably hardly make a dent in China's overall trend. History stated that it is widespread all over China. You are really over-reacting.
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
My little sister's feet is size 43 (I think it's size 9 or 10 in USA) and she could barely found shoes her size. Most women shoes are size 37 to 40 here. When we enrolled to cabin crew academy and had to wear heels, she had to import from USA. I'm on the other spectrum, my feet is only size 35 or 4.5, but at least I can stuff my shoes with insoles to make it fit better. 😥
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
When I was a little girl I lived next to the Chin family. I adored them but their grandma most of all. She would play checkers and jacks with me and give me Hersey bars. The family told me her feet had been bound but not as severely as previous generations. I was so angry anybody would hurt her and noticed it caused a lot of sitting. That is not a full life to be mobility impaired. Later in Women's History I discovered part of the binding was to keep women from running away in an unhappy arranged marriage. When they took her away in an ambulance (she was almost 100) I stood on the corner like a loyal puppy praying she'd come back. I stayed until it was dark. I miss her even 45 years later. I'm white and I consider it a huge blessing that one either side I enjoyed a Chinese family and a Mexican family on the other side. This was the 70s and we kids explored everywhere.
My great-great-grandmother was among the last generation of Chinese-Filipinos who engaged in this practice. My great grandmother kept her mother's shoes and passed them down to the generations. We still have them :)
Wow. Im filipino and i didn't know until today that even Chinese Filipinos used to practice this. I came to know about lotus feet after seeing the horror movie Feng Shui lol! You'd think they wouldn't practice this in the Philippines because Filipino culture would think someone is tamad because they sit all day but what do i know 🤷♀️
Made me very grateful for being born in another culture. All of my ancestors would have thought of this practice as ridiculous because how can you work, play, take care of your children or dance? It's just mind blowing and sad.
As somebody who studied the skeletal and muscular anatomy of the foot recently... Aw, hell nah! No! Why?! That is terrible! Why?! No!!! The bones and ligaments of the feet aren't supposed to go that way. Respect the talus! Respect the calcaneus!
I horribly broke my leg/ankle in multiple places in a freak rock climbing accident. Of course, i have received immediate medical care, multiple surgeries and extensive physical therapy multiple times a week for two years. I can walk! It's close to a miracle. But this whole thing has altered my gate and i have now constant neck and back pain, post trauma arthritis and so many other issues from this. I can't imagine having to have kept my foot in it's broken state, walk on it and keep living like that for the rest of my life.
My parents told me about seeing an elderly woman in San Francisco's Chinatown with bound feet in the early 1960s. She was very old and walked with tiny steps. She had people on both sides helping her walk. My parents were not Chinese, but they said it was evident that she was being treated with great respect.
The first time I saw someone with their feet bound was when I was living near DC back in 2003, and I was at this Chinese restaurant. She was an elderly lady, and she stepped into the dining room as my sister and I were waiting on our food. I didn't notice at first, until my Sister elbowed me, and then pointed down to her feet. I was like, holy crap! I made sure to keep my reaction masked, but yeah, that poor woman (women).
They don't let the men see the naked feet. So the men only saw that small shoes which is elaborately decorated. Probably the woman herself is the only one to see her own feet when she cleans them. But I heard they don't use water since they have to wear the shoes all the time and the folds in the feet will have moisture caught in. So they just apply flea powder to the feet.
Considering the elite were the ones to start this trend it was not coin practice for some time. The lowest class women would have been spares this for most of history as they needed to work Not all women of the upper class practices this beauty trend. The Hans dynasty started the practice but the Qing dynasty saw this trend pick up. One concubine had a clubbed foot so she asked the emperor to require all the concubines to have bonded feet, also the rank of a concubine gave more leverage to her requests. A favorite may have her requests granted while a lower concubine may have been dismissed. Women really set this trend being they wanted to be the favorite they would do insane thibgs to their bodies to be noticed and gain power. It really was a rough environment
I remember learning about foot binding in elementary school, but I thought they just wrapped them. I forgot all about it until hearing about it recently so I had to look it up. I was absolutely HORRIFIED to see the extent of this terrible ABUSE!!!!!
Are tiny hoof-like feet still something some men are into? It's always seemed weird to me this was ever considered "desirable." Are standards of female beauty universal, or socially constructed? This seems to be strong evidence for "socially constructed."
This is definitely socially constructed. Glad this trend didn’t make outside China. Also I don’t see a lotus flower in the shape they bound these poor girls feet.
You are pretty much right that it is socially constructed. In those days in China, the rich Chinese men who study in the Western countries will write letters back home to tell their female family members that the western women have "big flippy" feet. And they will all laugh about it, because big feet is considered uncultured to them
@@abubarrie88 Foot binding didn't thank God. However, the thought of small feet being attractive persisted well into the 70's in western fashion. My mom couldn't accept that my feet were a large 7.5 LOL. By the by, In no way am I oriental. That "idea" has also gone away.
@@danielleciribassi4199 actually during pregnancy the feet receive less blood supply and similarly the lymphatic drainage gets reduced too. The feet get swollen. So she might be talking about the added complications of pregnancy in these women.
My grandmother had partially bound feet before they swore off the practice due to the excruciating pain she suffered and the shifting social attitude during the time.
My great grandma mentioned she was forced go do this but got away with it by wearing the small shoe on tiptoes and extremely long pants. My great grandma just gave up after a while and let her be. 😅
I cannot for the life of me understand. The agony of this must have been unbearable and would have also caused some pretty severe nerve damage. Just absolutely horrific.
Same here. I just work out and diet is as far as I will go and I am happy with how I look at a healthy weight. If a man expects me to get plastic surgery or do anything insane to be beautiful, he can just go get f*cked.
@@Jason.cbr1000rr Nah, I make my own money. I'm also too old to be a gold digger. That's for the young, blonde, airheaded, and stupid. I've learned in my life finances change in the blink of an eye either way. I've been comfortable in my finances and I've been homeless living out of my car. Its best to choose a partner with personality, that doesn't change. Seriously, choosing a partner on looks or money is stupid. Booth can disappear in the blink of an eye.
This almost made me lose my lunch. Even worse is the fact that it stopped being common not because the Chinese had a moment of sanity, but because the CCP made it illegal as part of efforts to erase traditional Chinese culture in general.
@@GosuTenshi who shamed those with bound feet? The redguards? Really? They shamed them instead of feeling sympathy? Those girls didn't have a choice when their feet bones were crushed while they were little.
"Imagine a young girl who purposefully bands and occasionally breaks her own feet..." Uhh these little girls did not do that to themselves, they were forced.
This is definitely a 13 on a 1 - 10 fashion victim scale. Right next to the neck elongation and lip disks. Definitely makes you appreciate just how different beauty standards can be among different cultures...though not being able to walk or talk definitely puts some of them in a league of their own.
This isnt fashion. Its literally actually clinical lunacy disguised as fashion. Body mutilation cant ever been seen as fashion. If it is? theres psychosis and brainwashing happening that began with plain evil somewhere along the way.
The impracticality is the point. A woman with bound feet isn’t doing heavy housework. Very pale skin meant you weren’t working outdoors, There are certain aesthetics today the great majority of people aren’t going to fit without plastic surgery, a personal trainer and nutritionist, regular dermatology procedures, etc. all of which are $$$.
Really bothered by the narration at the beginning. Girls did NOT choose to break and mutilate their own feet. Foot binding began at the age of 2 and continued until adulthood.
And, whoa, whoa, whoa, usually there were "professional" foot binders for rich girls, the poorer girls, other women in their family would do it. So, the little girls didn't just decide one day I'm going to break my feet and smush them into three inch long shoes, the people around them decided that. They were straight up abused. That is abuse.
I read a book titled Chinese Cinderella where the author's grandma had bound feet. She said her feet had always been painful and they would soak her feet in warm water to relieve the pain and they would have to clip off the dead skin and nails every night.
Given that the European version of Cinderella has the sisters cutting off their toes in order to fit into the glass shoe it does bare a incredible resemblance to the Chinese tale involving bound feet and the incredible lengths that they went to to achieve such small feet.
The first time I ever heard of this was when I was a child, I heard it from my great-grandma who was a Russian woman that lived in northern china when she fled communism in Russia. She said she remembered the blood curdling howls of the girls in the middle of the night. It sent a shiver down my spine when I heard her talked about it. After 7 decades she still remembered in vivid and terrifying detail.
To read more about this tradition and have a more personal experience with it, read the fiction book, Snow Flower and the Secret Flower by Lisa See. It shows both the dark sides, the traditions, and how it could open up marriage prospects by following two friends who go through foot binding.
Aound 1995-1997 when I was in early elementary school in Sichuan, China I would walk to the community school everyday and would see a short, hunchbacked grandma toddling along in tiny steps carrying her baby grandchild on her back!! She was the only person I remember seeing with bound feet. My great grandmothers born around 1900 did not have their feet bound because their parents were Christians. When others asked their parents would they be worried that nobody would want to marry their daughters, their parents said “no”. Their daughters married wonderful caring husbands. It helped a lot because during WWII there were a lot of air raids in Sichuan and being able to run to air shelters was life saving. My grandma told me some women who had bound feet didn’t feel like running to air shelters and died from the bombings.
Idk how much truth is in it, but according to my great grandmother, who suffered from foot binding, it makes women appear taller, and their legs look longer, and that's what made women with bound feet desirable, not their deformed feet. If this is true, then in some way, foot binding is still being practiced nowadays via the less painful and damaging alternative, high heels.
They don't force a 5-year-old to wear high heels. Besides, those 'reasons' don't make sense at all. Bind feet makes women shorter outright (the damage to the feet and the damage to the development of her body (e.g. legs) as the girl can't walk properly). Somehow it makes women 'appear' taller and their legs 'appear' longer? What kind of twisted perception is that? It's much more likely that foot binding makes women shorter, their legs thinner and their body weaker. All of these makes women more like children. Perhaps a bunch of paedophiles invented foot binding.
@@starrsmith3810 they are pretty comparable IMO, sure high heels are a lot less damaging, but in both scenarios, women are getting pressured to do something harmful to their body for the sake of being "attractive"
@@rayzhang7591 High heels: a woman makes decision to wear them or not BY HERSELF when she has grown up. Foot binding: it was forced upon a girl when she was just a few years old and wasn't even aware she needed to be 'attractive' to men. You yourself overeating vs someone force feeding you excessively, do you think these two are comparable?
I'm size 5 in shoes and can hardly find nice shoes my size unless it is at the kid's section 😒 But actually being in toddler size shoes would be insane. I think those guys were creepy liking baby shoe size feet 🙄
The girls definitely did not do this to their "own feet" as you describe in the intro... It was done against their will often at a young age and was very torturous...
My biggest quandary about the many grotesque mutilations to young girls' bodies around the world lies with the perpetrators. It is the mothers, female relatives, and other women who force these customs on innocent young girls. Knowing the incredible pain and life long disfigurement, how can women take part? 💔
I think about this in the same way I do with modern circumcision. It's not needed, it's brutally painful, and yet we do it for cultural reasons. Parents feel they need to (and not just the religious).
When you hear something enough times, it begins to sound like truth. Victims of gas lighting and other forms of emotional abuse are an example of this. Add centuries of it being normalized in your community/culture, and in this case something that if not done, would likely mean that the woman was never married (with the implications of this), and it would seem extreme to NOT do it.
@@ItsJustMe0585 bruh you dont remember anything as a baby. In the long run, it helps clean your junk easily. Why is everyone so crazy about a minor thing?
I first learned about foot-binding in high school when I found a book my art teacher had on it. I couldn't believe anyone would want to go through that, or put someone they love through it. It's literally torture.
The famous English missionary Gladys Aylward helped to stop footbinding in the area of Yangcheng in the Shanxi mountains where few foreigners were known. Her true story was immortalized in the Holywood movie The Inn Of The Sixth Happiness starring Ingrid Bergman and Robert Donat as Gladys and the Mandarin and in the book The Small Woman by Burgess.
@@4FYTfa8EjYHNXjChe8xs7xmC5pNEtz Yes, indeed. I travelled to her village of Yangcheng in China a few years ago travelling by minibus the route where she took the children over the Shanxi mountains to the Yellow River. I also got permission to see her grave in a small cemetery in Taipei overlooking the lough towards her beloved China and on her tomb was the red insignia of Chiang Kai Shek.
Not gonna lie, my family was watching tv when a segment with this topic came on and my parents threatened to do this to me if I didn’t stay sitting in my desk at school and study.
And this fashion deformity was ultimately started by an empress born with a foot deformity and other women decided to replicate it on their daughters. 😭
Plausible, I am also inclined to leave 'Emperor's Kink' on the table to.... Nothing like a Royal Court to spread really terrible fashion ideals faaaaar and wide.
What blows my mind the most is that it last 9-10 centuries!!!!! How can a painful practice last SO LONG? 🤯 How there weren't enough women out there that would stand for their daughter and say NO, ITS ENOUGH in 10 centuries???? HOW?
Women had to obey their mother-in-laws and husband. Woman not obeying could be returned to her birthfamily, without her children, and bringing shame to her parents.
@@zairagutierrez7538 in that case feet of the girls were left alone. But every family who could afford to bind feet of their daughters did it, because bound feet could lead in better marriage for the girl aka family.
@@shepherdboy9692 Funny how these things die out when the society gives women the opportunity to work and provide for themselves. Almost as if women needed to marry in order to survive to old age. Almost as if they wanted a future for their daughters as well.
Um for cultural beauty? Some cultures flatten or lengthen their heads into a cone, elongate their necks, dye their skin, etc all in the name of beauty. I mean look at the practices in Western cultures like circumcision, inflating buts, removing ribs, splitting their tongues, etc.
Absolutely nightmarish and heartbreaking and grotesque. I'd heard of foot binding but I never knew the true shape the feet would take. Horrible. Senseless.
Making my Sunday Roast. Don't know how to feel, impressed as ever by the research and delivery of the video, or sick as I look at my joint of pork shaped oddly like a lotus 😂
I have watched all your videos, very educational. And has anyone ever told you that your voice narration is very relaxing. After a rough day I like to watch these videos for the interesting content and this helps as a form of meditation, relaxing and educational. Also for the subtle humor sometimes.
@@cafezo87934 nah, that’s like saying America is evil. Can’t generalize that many people. Especially not for things that happened in the past. I see the ccp try to do the same thing on their official Twitter accounts to us. They say much worse on their state run television and social media as well about stuff that happened in the past. Sorry but every civ in history has skeletons in its closet, so to speak, and I will not parrot the same type of rhetoric that an authoritarian regime tries to push.
My older brother told me about this when I was a kid and I thought it was fake because it sounded so traumatic. And he said they would rip their feet apart while they were awake.
@@lakeblackBLM .. it raised the standard of living for more than 1% of the population. that 1% doesn't care what Govt system runs the masses .. they're above it.
@@lakeblackBLM Each system to it's place, none given priority over another. Capitalism works very well at the national level, quite horribly if you try to apply it every aspect of your own family.... Fascism is still the backbone of a military, but never attempt to apply it's use to solve a social problem.... Technocracies... okay, those are my bias so they have no problem, if applied at any level you will always prosper! (Serious, be careful with these too, as they can create dystopia!)
I have a photo of some shoes that I took thru the window of a shoe store in Shanghai when we lived there. It was one of those VERY PRICY Western malls that hawked 'authentically traditionally-inspired' apparel at 5000% the price of what locals bought/wore. I'll have to find it, but I remember I took the photo because I thought "Who the f's feet would even FIT in such a weirdly-shaped shoe?" I'm a Karen-ic moron for not remembering 'foot binding' was a Chinese thing, and that the elements of that social dynamic were EVERYwhere around me. I was embarrassingly oblivious as an expat. But I'll see if I can find the photo. I feel like #WeirdHistory has suddenly explained what I saw to me, and ten years later is better than never understanding, so... thanks? :)
Kind of reminds me of tightlacing, where you wear a corset too tight in order to get an extreme hourglass body shape. There is one woman who has the smallest waist measurement at 15in! It obviously comes with risks including breaking ribs that then puncture the lungs, spine issues, and damage to organs. You also have to learn to breathe differently using muscles around the stomach. Instead of expanding, the stomach pulls in and the chest rises slightly. If you have ever wondered about the phrase "heaving bosoms", this is where it's from.
It was way less common than you think. The woman who had these extreme small waists were actors of some sort, or just liked small waists. The average woman thought it was stupid. It was male propaganda that made corsets seem like an evil that must be defeated.
Also just to add, a lot of those photos were edited, simply by painting over those images (and many even use strategic padding and other techniques to make the waist appear smaller than it actually is). It's easy to spot once you get the hang of it. Actual tightlacing was rare, and as long as you wear a well-fitting corset, all it does is give you a better silhouette and support. (to emphasize the latter, there's a LOT of singers who do opera wearing a corset, and the ones I've talked to say it's more comfortable because it gives proper posture and aids in breathing)
@@KalafinaBTS Why do human beings require support? In those times ladies didn't exercise much, so their back muscles and their abdominals got weak. But normally, we have a spine and a muscular system to support us, we don't need any external device for that. We are not molluscs. The idea of the corset was to give the hourglass figure and also probably so that there wouldn't be ready access to actual flesh. My great-aunt's husband demanded that she wear a corset because she went to work with the bus and he hated the idea that other men might accidentally brush and feel her flesh without an extra barrier layer.
Yeah but remember this was the way that those same daughters could possibly marry into a decent family meaning out of poverty etc. Some who has it done to them believed this was what it meant to be a good mother. Shame really that type of situation . Hurt your daughter now or hurt her later when she can’t eat well. 😣
Why blame the victims of this nasty custom! Blame the men who made the rule that in order for a girl to be even considered for marriage, she had to have bound feet. The practice of foot binding was desired and enforced by the men!
1. Im not in the mood the argue, so I will not reply to any further comments 2. It wasn’t much of a rule as it was a societal norm. It was never truly required to get your foot bound, but just basically the one way to get a decent life. Imagine if you were extremely ugly (by everyone’s standards, theoretically). It would be incredibly hard to find a person who would want to marry you (not including other factors). This would be the same case as having your foot bound. It isn’t inherently a rule for that to happen, just something that society heavily, heavily, prefers.
Regarding the One Child policy in China and subsequent preponderance of male births, I replied to someone, that it was due to Patriarchal Prejudice, similar to foot binding. I thought it may have ended in 1911. That's what brought me to your channel.
Mothers were responsible to bind their own daughters' feet and small feet represented wealth and social status. Only peasant girls had natural feet and it was a shame. This was what happened to my great grandmother 👵 😢 😔
You have to look at it from her perspective, not be sad for her. She clearly did this to herself and it clearly meant that she enjoyed a privileged status in society. It would be like someone feeling sorry for us for wearing a diamond necklace. They wanted it and valued it. Don't feel sorry for them.
@@ivareskesner2019 yea i’m sure a little girl had all the control in this situation, totally not forced upon by parents telling them it’s good when they don’t know any better
@@ivareskesner2019 it was more like nowadays body shame, u dun bind your feet u bring shame to your family = women need to stay skinny skinny, it takes a lot of courage to say no, and your parents might beat u to death in the old days
I used to experienced that when i was small. The shoes given to me were small and hard like metal. My elders said it is to keep my feet small, because they believed that small feet is good luck, aswell as having small hands( which i have also). The metal shoes didn't stay with me for long, and avoided becoming twisted. So my feet looks normal but small. Today i couldn't find shoes that fits my feet in women's shoes, so every time i go to the mall i find myself every time in children shoes corner.
High heels make the foot look smaller too without the binding. But they can cause a lot of pain and foot problems too. Things aren’t that different even now!
watching this made me feel sick. I would never be able to fully imagine the amount of pain those women had to suffer all for the beauty standards of the time. Absolutely awful.
This 'tradition' has brought so much pain to chinese families. I knew of a great grandmother (friend's). She didnt fully complete the process, so she ended up with 4 inches. But she needed a walking cane at 30 years old, felt embarrassed because she needed help cleaning her feet (which she did only once a week), and the fact that it smelt like 'rotting flesh' (she said it). She hated it so much and would always have tears in her eyes watching me dance as that used to be her favourite activity. I am so grateful that my great grandfather escaped china during world war II.
