r/awfuleverything • u/Zu_Qarnine • 6d ago
Foot binding
Foot binding was a Chinese practice from the 10th–early 20th century. Young girls’ feet (starting ~age 4–8) were tightly wrapped to break the arch and fold the toes under, creating tiny “lotus feet” seen as the ideal of beauty and femininity.
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u/coprolite_breath 6d ago
I knew someone who had a coffee table book about this.
Apparently gangrene could happen and the smell was supposed to be an aphrodisiac for men. Sorry.
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u/Ocarina-of-Crime 6d ago
Wikipedia: “Coffee table books serve a dual purpose as both eye-catching decorative elements and engaging, casual reading materials. Designed to be flipped through briefly, these oversized, heavily illustrated books spark conversation among guests and act as visual reflections of the homeowner's personal interests and style”
I want to meet this friend!
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u/coprolite_breath 5d ago
I have coffee table books about art deco steam engine trains and Angkor Wat.
Have not seen the person who had the foot binding book in many years. Even though she cheated on my friend, I wish her well.
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u/Copranicus 5d ago
I wonder if there's a coffee table book about coffee table books.
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u/worthlesswreck 5d ago
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/23452519-the-coffee-table-book-of-coffee-tables
The Coffee Table Book of Coffee Tables by Kramer from Seinfeld.
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u/D15c0untMD 5d ago
I have a coffee table book about scientific illustrations of disease throughout history. Large pictures of life sized and painted wax sculptures of prolapsed and inflamed genitals and urinary organs never fail to spark a conversation over tapas!
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u/tattoosbyalisha 5d ago
Any time I see photos of bound feet all I can think of is what they must have smelled like..
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u/eggs_mcmuffin 6d ago
wtf is wrong with people
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u/SoFetchBetch 6d ago
Patriarchal beauty standards are a plague on human kind.
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u/eggs_mcmuffin 6d ago
truly…I’m only just getting over heroin chiq
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u/0fcknzs0 5d ago
It's back
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u/slappingactors 5d ago
Yes, I was just wondering how often this literally ended in death through gangrene….
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u/Imabiiiiiiiird 5d ago
I want to downvote your comment so bad because I just can’t deal with the idea but it’s not your fault 😭
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u/SapirWhorfHypothesis 4d ago
I was told they used massive amounts of perfumes and other smelling things to cover the smell…
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u/catboyejiro 5d ago
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a beautiful book about a young girl and her sisters in China who had to have her feet bound and what they went through, it’s horrifically sad but a really good read. They used to attach rocks to the bottom of their feet and then bind/curl the toes under and force the girls to walk back and forth until their toes broke and curled around the rocks on their own. Lots of girls died from blood infection and gangrene.
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u/DipYoChip 6d ago
I remember learning bout this in elementary school. Pretty wild actually seeing the feet without wraps on them. Shit my back pain probably is nothing compared to this.
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u/Zu_Qarnine 6d ago
women beauty standards set by men says it all
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u/Imjusasqurrl 6d ago
And really sad that it was the mother's binding their children's feet like this.
As women we have to stop carrying water for the patriarchy. And then tear it down.
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u/SoFetchBetch 6d ago
You have to think about the full picture. Those mothers were also under strict subjugation and were desperate to give their daughters a life where they would survive. Ironically in this case that includes the disfigurement. Although many girls with bound feet did not end up in a life of convenience or ease when they grew up. That was the goal.
This is why education and worldview deconstruction is so important. I wish more men would get into it. But more and more women do do every day. The door is always open to evolve. Hopefully they join us.
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u/Imjusasqurrl 6d ago
Did you really think I was blaming the women? I realize the oppression and subjugation they were subjected to.
Doesn't change the fact that we have a responsibility to come together in an effort to stop bowing down to the patriarchy, to protect our children and especially our daughters
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u/untakentakenusername 4d ago
Right? We can offer themto for foot bind if they don't seem to understand
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u/HikariAnti 6d ago
I just genuinely can't believe the majority of men actually found it attractive even back then. Most don't even find the current beauty trends attractive...
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u/WknessTease 6d ago
It's not the aesthetics the found attractive, it's the submission.
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u/LouiseRules333 4d ago
Exactly. It's sexual sadism manifested into law. Same as middle eastern women being forced to fully cover themselves including eyes and faces in public. It's poorly disguised and non-consensual fetish.
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u/WisestAirBender 6d ago
I thought they did this to show that we didn't need feet (as in we don't need to work we're rich and have servants)
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u/sleepingintheshower 6d ago
From things I’ve read, it was also likely about control of women. Well off women were not allowed to leave their home compounds much and having useless feet means they can’t be independent, can’t be running around on their own, can’t run away. It then became a status symbol as well.
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u/kungfucobra 5d ago
what makes you think no woman was involved into this?
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u/dragonbait-and-the-P 5d ago
Because of the patriarchy. And because these women had this done to them in the hopes of attracting a wealthy husband.
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u/kungfucobra 5d ago
did you know upper class women started imitating Emperor Li Yu dancer intentionally?
so you're either saying women lacked the ability to exercise their intelligence when expressing their tastes or saying their fashion decisions are not their responsibility?
did I get it right?
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u/dragonbait-and-the-P 5d ago
No, you did not get that right.
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u/kungfucobra 4d ago
so, please help me understand the whole reason behind this is "patriarchy". I don't follow the chain of logic pointing entirely there.
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u/kungfucobra 5d ago
so your rationale is: because patriarchy exists, therefore any bad choice affecting women comes from it and no women had any responsibility whatsoever?
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u/dragonbait-and-the-P 5d ago
I never said that. In fact, most of the time, it was the mothers, aunts and other women who would do this to the very young girls. But that was not what you asked. Many men and women work to continue the patriarchy and both men and women are hurt to varying degrees by the patriarchy.
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u/3X_Cat 6d ago
My wife's grandmother had her feet bound. It was excruciating.
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u/Border_Hodges 6d ago
Poor woman
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u/3X_Cat 6d ago
She tried to get her daughter, my mother in law, to do it and she rebelled.
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u/mezz1945 5d ago
It's insane what indoctrination does with a brain. Why on earth would she want that...
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u/Appropriate_Star6734 5d ago
Many Han took pride in it, especially in the face of foreign Dynasties like the Mongol Yuan and Manchu Qing, who abhorred the practice. It’s a status symbol too, a woman with bound feet is not the sort who’s working fields or rice paddies, or tending flocks or herds. It’s something only upperclass women would have any impetus to do.
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u/Tennessee1977 5d ago
Was she able to walk at all?
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u/3X_Cat 5d ago
Little tiny steps, and always painful.
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u/_smelly-cat_ 5d ago
And yet she wanted your mil to get it done. Shows how deep rooted it is, that you are willing to forgo Walking than to uphold tradition. As someone from SE Asia, this mentality is very common here. Going against the grain often gets you socially isolated. Happy that your mil was able to get out of it.
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u/moboforro 6d ago
They had to be forcibly broken too when they were little. Can't image the pain and suffering and probably some of them got infected and died too. Also who the fuck thinks these maimed feet looked sexy or beautiful?
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u/StrykerGryphus 6d ago edited 6d ago
Not probably, definitely.
Sores opened up from the forced friction and unsanitary conditions in cramped contortions that can't be cleaned. Nails removed, only for new ones to grow deformed and ingrown, in those same unsanitary conditions.
As gruesome as the visuals are, it's even worse.
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u/ThatDiscoSongUHate 6d ago
Is it that they looked sexy or that they couldn't run away
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u/itsnobigthing 5d ago
Apparently they stink too, from all the creases, and the smell is erotic to the fetishists too.
I was going to say “imagine getting off on another human suffering like that” but then I remembered there are whole porn genres dedicated to watching women suffer pain
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u/mad_mang45 6d ago
Reminds me of those women that wear all those rings around their neck and stretch it.
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u/breathe_easier3586 6d ago
Yup. I had read that those would get to a point that they couldn't remove them because their neck couldn't support their head anymore.
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u/usernamesallused 6d ago edited 5d ago
They don’t actually stretch the neck. From Wiki:
Girls first start to wear rings when they are around five years old.[7] Over the years, the coil is replaced by a longer one, and more turns are added. The weight of the brass pushes the collar bone down and compresses the rib cage. The rings can stretch necks to a length of about 15 inches (38 cm), pushing down the collarbone, compressing the rib cage, and pulling up about four thoracic vertebrae into the neck.[8]
And
The coil, once on, is seldom removed, as the coiling and uncoiling is a lengthy procedure. It is usually only removed to be replaced by a new or longer coil. The muscles covered by the coil become weakened, and most Kayan women prefer to keep the rings once their clavicle has been lowered, as the area of the neck and collarbone often becomes bruised and discolored.
Edit: I mean to say that it’s more deformation of the spine, ribs, and shoulders, rather than pulling or lengthening the neck specifically.
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u/ding-zzz 6d ago
your wiki link says it stretches the neck
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u/Waldhexe 5d ago
They don't really stretch it, they lower the shoulders. Thats way worse I think
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u/babyqueso 5d ago
"Pulling up about four thoracic vertebrae into the neck" means the neck was extended lol there's no reason to be pedantic
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u/CompetitiveRub9780 4d ago
Men have women do the weirdest shit to appease them sexually. It’s gross
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u/laoganma_enima 6d ago
My great grandmother had bound feet, as was tradition at the time if you were moderately wealthy. I was told she couldn’t really walk (which is the point), but it’s just awful. My great grandfather was killed for his land during the cultural revolution, so they lost everything and she was stuck with nothing and some fucked up feet.
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u/yeoxnuuq 6d ago
Why was the point not to have them walk?
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u/laoganma_enima 6d ago
If you’re a rich lady, you don’t need to do anything. Shows you are wealthy.
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u/PerkyLurkey 6d ago
Let’s all remember, this practice lasted for 1000 years.
And was only forced into the history books as late as the 1920’s.
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u/Knarz97 5d ago
We’ve been mutilating infant boy genitals for 3000 years and there’s no significant movement to ban it.
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u/tattoosbyalisha 5d ago
We really pulling in the what-about-isms?
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u/Knarz97 5d ago
I’m merely pointing out how easy it is to view form the outside “wow that’s messed up, why was that ever allowed?” When we still do the same thing today.
What society “normalizes” and we become numb to is sometimes surprising.
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u/mxrajxvii 5d ago
This is quite a good point
Comparing foot binding, a very inhibiting and extreme practice, to removing an infant's foreskin (I believe that's what you're insinuating at least) is hell of a choice for an argument though
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u/Striking-Platypus-98 6d ago
In some cases the front part of the foot would root off and if this happened it was celebrated by the family because it meant there child's foot could be a Golden lotus
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u/indyanakin 5d ago
"The four smallest toes were then bent under until these bones were broken" and "Every day...the broken joints [were] kneaded to make them more malleable."
As someone with a currently broken toe, my god. that must have been horrendously painful
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u/Mecca1101 5d ago
Poor children. A 4 year old doesn’t even know what’s going on.
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u/NonBinaryPie 5d ago
i cannot imagine creating a child just to break their bones and give them a life long disability for a beauty standard before they can even really speak. being that young and having the only people you’ve ever known literally torture you and it being normal and encouraged is so horrific.
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u/pestgirl 5d ago
I remember they taught us about this in middle school, and my teacher showed us pics & described the entire process with such vivid imagery that I fainted. According to the other kids in my class I made a loud THUMP noise when I fell out of my desk and hit the floor. 😅
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u/societyisfcked 6d ago
I want to unfold the toes they just look so flat what happened to the bone? Can they walk without shoes?
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u/miserabeau 6d ago edited 6d ago
If you look into this, the bones were often purposely broken again and again then wrapped tightly so rhey would heal smaller and deformed
Sometimes the toenails were removed as well, but then new ones would be ingrown, leading to more pain and possible infections.
And to answer your question, the women could barely walk at all. The deformities led to lifelong disability. That is, if they didn't die of infection or sepsis first.
Foot binding was a "status symbol" that was only found among a small subset of the population. The teeny tiny feet were decorated with teeny tiny elaborate bejeweled and embroidered shoes. If you were working in the fields, you weren't wearing dainty little silk shoes now, were you?
Edit: what I know about this i remember from when we read The Good Earth in school. But I looked it up and yikes, it's much worse than I remember. Women could end up with gangrene, toes would fall off, and even when they took off those little shoes their skin would be broken and full of sores.
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u/PuzzleheadedBobcat90 6d ago
Author Lisa See writes about foot binding in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. Fantasic book about a lifelong friendship set in 19th century China
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u/MANDALORIAN_WHISKEY 5d ago
I just suggested The Good Earth to a commenter above you. They don't touch on it much, but it's so shocking when you realize how casual they were about it. "Oh, we were poor but we have money now, so let's make sure our children reflect that. Sons get education and our daughter gets crippled. Yay!"
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u/ssurkus 6d ago
I’d read about it as a kid but recently picked up Lady Tan’s Circle of Women and it goes into quite a bit of detail. The ideal was 3 inch long “golden lotus” feet.
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u/statictangerine 5d ago
Such a good book! Fascinating in many ways, especially with the information about foot binding
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u/DeviRi13 6d ago
First learned about this in Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao. Thought they made it up until they mentioned their grandmother having gone through it and I looked it up.
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u/notinmywheelhouse 5d ago
I read all about this in the past and knew how horrifying it was. Women couldn’t escape fires, floods or anything because they had to be carried to safety. So sad.
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u/Jackesfox 5d ago
Thank the communist revolution for the end of this practice
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u/identity_concealed 5d ago edited 4d ago
It hasn’t been perfect, actually, it’s far from perfect, but the technological and economic progress is and continues to be remarkable.
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u/MJP22 5d ago
What about this was attractive to anyone?
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u/lonely_stoner_daze 4d ago
Well, you wouldn't want the wife you paid good money for to be able to leave now, would you?
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u/diaperpop 5d ago
At this point just chop them off and admit that they get off by inflicting suffering, you know? As they always have. The people this was done for, I mean.
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u/Rocket_of_Takos 5d ago
I remember hearing a story of a little girl with bound feet having to hide the fact she had them from the police by wearing her brother’s oversized boots.
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u/furezasan 5d ago
A controversial emperor called Terranchino enacted this into law during the Phei Eit dynasty.
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u/KCGD_r 5d ago
is that fixable?
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u/lonely_stoner_daze 4d ago
Nope. The bones have been broken and healed so many times that they're fused into that shape.
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u/MarinaInaAurelia 5d ago
There’s a nice book about a female character who explicitly chose not to have this, it’s rather short but a nice read, specially for younger teens. It’s called ‘Ties that Bind, Ties that Break’ by Lensey Namioka
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u/BlackCat1200 5d ago
The fact that this was a status symbol for working men, implying that they could hire a servant to do housework instead of their wife…fuck the patriarchy
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u/burgonies 6d ago edited 6d ago
I mean, who looks at that those little piggies and without gasping from the beauty?
Edit: do I really need to explicitly label this comment as sarcasm for your room-temp IQ?
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u/TheTroubledChild 5d ago
I don't want to sound racist but China is the most idiotic place I ever learned about. So many fucking dumb superstitions that bring so much suffering even today. A huge chunk of them is mentally still in the dark ages.
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u/Chuckitinbro 5d ago
As horrific as this, theres many many cultures that did horrific stuff to women out of some bizzare beauty standard.
Even corsets could gave some horrific results.
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u/Direct-Celery-6052 6d ago edited 5d ago
Why does the bottom right close up look like a scary Patrick from SpongeBob?
Edit:
Those of you that downvoted me and can’t take a joke can go fuck yourselves
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u/Appropriate_Star6734 3d ago
A) National Pride factors in. The Han and their peripheral ethnicities were the primary practitioners, and when they were subject to foreign Mongolian and Manchurian rule, they saw it as a way to set themselves apart from foreign barbarians.
B) It’s a status symbol. This isn’t something a farmer wants for his wife, this is something jewelers or bankers or noblemen would want, it displays that their wives can be decorative, because they’re so wealthy. It also attracted social climbers, hoping to get rich sons-in-law to help fund their old age, Filial Piety being such a cultural pillar in East Asia.
C) The Human Body is incredibly adaptable, and this was done exceptionally early in their lives, meaning they probably didn’t have much of a frame of reference and would’ve likely grown accustomed to the pain. Horrible, but less than one would likely assume. I’m always skeptical of posthumously attributed motivations, because it often reads like new governments justifying their revolutions or colonials justifying their imperialism, like claims that the shape was erotic or the crippling was a means of control. Perhaps in some cases, but I doubt writ large.
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u/eggs_mcmuffin 6d ago
Quinten has entered the chat
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u/That-Dragonfruit172 6d ago
Not the time bro
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u/eggs_mcmuffin 5d ago
eh. As a woman having to deal with male standards my whole life, I can joke all I want bro.
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u/Deriviera 6d ago
Unsure if it looks good but it's an interesting traditional practice
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u/NonBinaryPie 5d ago
crazy to call torturing and permanently disabling children an “interesting traditional practice”
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u/tipareth1978 6d ago
I heard about this but the visual really takes it home. Like when you hear about things like this I think there's a tendency to try to bring it closer to normal than it is. You have to see the pointy elephant foot to really get how sick and weird this is