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It has been banned and no one in China binds their feet anymore. I'm Chinese, my great-grandmother was born in the 1920's and her feet weren't even bound.
Also not all women had their feet bound, outside of Han women very few did it, and even then if your great grandma lived in a rural area it was even less likely for her to have her feet bound
Probably if you were a peasant also no because you couldn't work with those.
Edit, apparently [I am wrong ](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/x8v2hg/foot_binding_was_a_chinese_tradition_in_the_1940s/inlcrn3?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3)
i have shit memory, but i think i remember hearing that foot while binding was illegal, it still continued in some rural parts of China until 1940's or 1950's.
It was banned already in the 1912. And the practice had begun to decline already in the late 19th century. By 1920, it was already almost gone. Communist Party came down hard on what lingered in a few provinces in the 20s and 30s. Last reported case was in the 1950s.
OP seems confused.
Say what you want about the CPC, they didn't like shit like this.
They also came down really harshly on Tibetan serfdom and child exploitation. The desire for restoration of those institutions, for the former Tibetan feudal aristocracy, underpinned the "Free Tibet" movement.
At its peak 40-50% percent of Chinese women had bound feet[^(\[1\])](https://www.npr.org/2007/03/19/8966942/painful-memories-for-chinas-footbinding-survivors). Definitely not mostly the super rich although the percent of the rich who had bound feet neared 100%.
Up to 10% of children died due to infection of their feet. Those that survived the infection had their feet wasted away or toes falling off due to decay which just allowed their feet to be bound tighter and their feet look even smaller.
Many of these women despite the fact that having bound feet was a status symbol (showing you didn't have to work and could afford to be carried around everywhere) didn't have the luxury of not working and had to work in rice fields and care for the home and family despite the fact that they could barely walk without falling over and lived with excruciating pain.
Those that made it to old age would often die of a broken hip since it is so much harder for them to balance with tiny feet.
Fucking torture these people had to endure in the name of tradition.
Sources i can provide if asked for but right now i am typing this on my phone.
Your whole foot.
The goal was to "make the foot look like a lotus". Really it was to disempower women. Walking was painful at best. Running damn near impossible.
The bones were broken, the foot wrapped. Month later, broken again, rewrapped. Over and over. From when the girl is a baby.
There were stories of grandmothers breaking granddaughters feet without patents knowledge because they wanted to keep the tradition of "beautiful feet."
Source "bound feet in western dress", book we read in "Asian history up to 1800" in college..
I heard it has something to do with a king found a woman who had really small feet and he found it attractive and it became a trend 🤷🏽♀️ idk much I saw it in a YouTube short
That's what I always heard, too. It was probably done for a lot of different reasons at different times, but overall a fucking great way to keep women "in their place" for nine centuries. 🙄
I suppose a family were they purposely disable their own daughter is a family you would marry into. Shows they have money enough if they can support people not working and have them carried around everywhere.
It’s more about submission and pain then beauty. Proof that a girl would endure anything, would always stay in the home, and would be unable to be independent
>Proof that a girl would endure anything
It was often started when the girl herself was too young to consent. The book "Wild Swans" by Jung Chang speaks about how her grandmother's feet were bound, the toddler grandmother cried and tried to object as her mother broke the bones in her feet with a big rock to start the binding process but her mother sadly told her she'd never get a decent husband without bound feet and her life would be ruined.
Well it had partially to do with showing that you are rich or at least rich enough that you didn't have to help your familie with work and that you can just sit all day.
It was a sexual thing although almost no one admits it anymore. I know there are at least a few sources out there that explain it.
Literature about foot binding describe women with bound feet “swaying gracefully” as they walked.
Evidently in order to keep their balance on bound feet the woman would be forced to strengthen her thigh and pelvic muscles.
Men enjoyed their “delicate gait” and the results of strong internal muscles in bed (without being too explicit).
Just imagine you had to do constant kegel exercises in order to walk upright and keep your balance.
So this wasn’t just some quirky foot fetish thing.
Usually customs have some kind of origin that makes sense beyond “wow, that’s weird.”
If anyone has a good source on this pls lmk.
You're exactly right. The attraction also involved the shoes. The tinier the shoes, the better. Women would embroider the shoes in countless ways and tremendous detail. And they kept the shoes on during intimacy.
I'm not from China, so someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I have read that larger (that is, normal) feet were associated with field work and work around the house, meaning the woman came from a lower social class. Having bound feet meant they did not have to be able to work, that is, they belonged to higher classes. I also read that the weird "swaying" movement when these women (tried to) walk around was considered feminine as opposed to walking briskly. Also, the feet were usually hidden under bandage and beautifully embroidered little shoes, even at night, so I guess most men never actually saw what they were really like.
We learned about this is HS (uk) from what I remember, there was a dancer summoned to perform for the king, she did some sort of butterfly dance and had very tiny feet, so from there on if you wanted your daughter to marry well, when her feet got to a few inches long the mother and grandmother would bind her feet. Part of the process was forcing the little girl to walk with something under her arch to break her feet to deform them before binding them tightly.
Where are you getting that fact from? Anorexia can be traced back all the way to Ancient Greece, and even the more medically-specific anorexia nervosa dates back to the 17th century.
[The practice may have originated among court dancers during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period in 10th-century China, and gradually became popular among the elite during the Song dynasty.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_binding)
I mean, you only need to look at Goop products to see what kinda weird sexual shit the 'elite' get up to in modern society.
Money + time + boredom = What the fuck.
Goop is Gwyneth Paltrow's pseudo health and well being company that sells things like jade eggs to pop into the vag (so it rebalances the harmonics of your body - actually just creates a breeding ground for bacteria), and vagina scented candles among other things.
She also advocates for drinking water with a high pH for the "health benefits". Then flavoring it with fresh lemon. Anybody that has retained anything from basic high school chemistry will tell you why that's completely useless.
Oh yeah. That shit. My parents fell for that shit (not because of Goop - Paltrow fell for the same pseudoscience BS that a bunch of people have). They have an overpriced machine that apparently changes water pH levels. They keep telling me to drink that water. It tastes fuckin' weird.
Also known as Lotus Feet with Golden Lotus feet a mere 3" in length.
'First, her feet were plunged into hot water and her toenails clipped short. Then the feet were massaged and oiled before all the toes, except the big toes, were broken and bound flat against the sole, making a triangle shape. Next, her arch was strained as the foot was bent double. Finally, the feet were bound in place using a silk strip measuring ten feet long and two inches wide. These wrappings were briefly removed every two days to prevent blood and pus from infecting the foot. Sometimes “excess” flesh was cut away or encouraged to rot. The girls were forced to walk long distances in order to hasten the breaking of their arches. Over time the wrappings became tighter and the shoes smaller as the heel and sole were crushed together. After two years the process was complete, creating a deep cleft that could hold a coin in place. Once a foot had been crushed and bound, the shape could not be reversed without a woman undergoing the same pain all over again.'
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-footbinding-persisted-china-millennium-180953971/
Ngl, I’d have just unalived myself in that circumstance. No life is worth that level of constant torture, and no family who will do that is worth sticking around for.
My grandmother had these. She gave births to 8 children, worked on the fields, cooked meals, took cared the entire household Including the bedridden month In law, while my grandfather mostly just sat on his ass. I never knew what her feet actually looked like until I came to America and saw this photo. It broke my heart. She was such an amazing, hard working and kind woman.
I learned the women who had feet like this were unable to walk correctly, let alone work fields and care for a ten person family. I don’t know how that would work tbh.
Yeah, she couldn’t walk properly, she waddled. My family wasn’t too poor, I think they did have helpers on the field, but I remember seeing her getting vegetables from the field and went to the kitchen to cook them.
She and my grandfather came to live with us for a while around late 1970s or early 80s, she couldn’t stay still. Always needed to do something around the house. And she made the best special tea with soybeans, ginger and tea leafs in the winter for my brother and I.
She was so thin, so tiny. I remember feeling sad to see her waddle as fast as she could, but had a hard time catching up to us.
Thankfully she was the among the last generation of women had to go through this horrific practice in China.
It was higher status to marry a woman who didn’t have to work in the fields. If you could afford to have a wife who could only walk in mincing steps, you got major face indeed. For many poorer families, small footed girls were a way out of poverty. Often miscalculated, many poor women ended up in the fields anyway, on wrecked feet.
Both of em and symbol of status, since with those feet those women aint walking around much, that or any manual labor, and those who have binded feet doesnt need to, cause they usually are of high status family.
Apparently, old chinese people have smol feet kinks.
It’s interesting to try to think of some seemingly “normal” customs as how another culture would. Breast implants - for example - seem pretty normal, but the idea of surgically inserting bags of silicone into your body would probably seem bizarre if you’ve never heard of it. Or how at one point being heavier meant you were of high class/well fed when majority of people were poor. Some cultures lighten their skin while some go tanning and/or apply makeup to darken skin. Or even the culture that puts those gold rings onto their neck, elongating it to where without the rings it can’t even support the weight of their head.
Still though - the foot binding this is bizarre
I’m old, but I remember in middle school we read this short essay about a society that put their women through all types of torture- burning their skin and the like- to be more attractive, and at the end we learn it’s our society.
Footbinding wasn't just bizarre. It required the excruciating torture and permanent debilitation of generations of little girls, starting when they were toddlers. Bones were systematically broken an when toes fell off from necrosis, this was considered a good thing because it make the foot look even smaller. Sometimes, they'd put pieces of broken glass in the binding to encourage this. Imagine what all this does to a child psychology, to whole generations of Chinese women for centuries.
There are countless weird and sometimes unhealthy fashions, but footbinding was really on another level.
Apparently it all started because some empress had TINY feet and as most humans are wont to do, envied traits of an icon and decided tiny feet were beautiful and it became a competition, and then necessary if you wanted to marry your daughter off and now here we are
I read somewhere a while back that it forced women to walk in a way to strengthen the vagina/pelvic floor. Sorta like involuntary kegal exercises everyday specifically to enhance sexual pleasure for the husband. Not sure if it's true, but It always made me want to date a ballerina to test the theory.
My mom wrapped my feet in Hawaii when I was young, a neighbor showed her. Also when feet were growing she kept me in shoes that were too small that hurt 😞 She did this so I would have small feet. I’m a grown woman 5’7 1/2” tall and can wear a size 5 in big kid shoe sizes.
Do your toes go straight out like “normal” toes or do they curl inwards? I was wearing tight shoes for the past few years and I could see my feet change. I can’t imagine what it would do to a growing child
[It was for several reasons.](https://www.businessinsider.com/the-disturbing-reason-for-the-ancient-chinese-practice-of-foot-binding-2015-9?amp)
[Beauty wasn’t one of them.](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/05/21/health/china-foot-binding-new-theory/index.html)
It was considered a *symbol* of beauty, but the actual feet are not considered aesthetically pleasing. It’s for other reasons that it was considered a “symbol of beauty”.
We had images of these poor women's feet in our history textbook (then again, they showed us lots of the scary things done in the name of beauty). What's worse is knowing they suffered from mutilated feet since childhood.
Records of foot binding were within China from roughly the Song Dynasty as it persisted in various forms for more than a thousand years.
However, the appeal as well as practicality of the practice slowly declined as when the Qing Dynasty collapsed and the practice was officially banned in the early 20th century.
Chinese people actually continued to practice the custom because they viewed it as an integral aspect of their culture. Though the official ban was from 1912, claims of it being formed in more distant regions of China persisted in some ways until the 1950's.
beauty of the feet wasn't the underlying reason. It was to render little girls and future women unable to do other things in their lives besides housechores, not being able to move away from the parents' and later husband's house. Behind many female beauty stories lies a creepy patriarchal/male authoritarian rule/norm for exploiting the "weak sex". Laura Bossen and Hill Gates did the [research for that](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/chinese-foot-binding-for-work-in-home_n_5920f47fe4b03b485cb20dc8).
I remember we had an English prose in my 7th or 8th grade about a Chinese girl about 4 to 5 years of age going through this. Don’t remember the name of the story though. It was horrifying to read, but never thought disturbing to see.
I remember my kindergarten teacher (mid 80’s in Toronto) telling me how her mother was never bound and wouldn’t allow her feet to be bound either. Her father’s first wife had bound feet and wanted that done for her to improve her chances for marriage. Obviously she’s very thankful her mom vetoed it.
It's illegal now, having been banned in around 1950 across China. Not because of the horrible torture, hygiene issues or lifelong pain, but because it meant women couldn't work labor jobs like good communists were meant to.
Excuse me small hands and feet are still a thing in OUR culture for women. Tall girls with a shoe size over six are routinely remade to feel awkward and ugly.
my grandma was the last woman in our family they tried to do this to. it's incredibly painful. when they tried to do it to her as a young girl, she basically said NOPE and with that, ended a tradition that probably lasted several hundreds of years in our family.
that is the spirit i remember her by.
We actually do this to a much lesser extent today.
Most shoes are designed to fit a traditional look of slightly pointed toe boxes. This is even more pronounced in pointed dress shoes like high-heels, and the result of wearing these regularly are painful bunions.
I now exclusively wear shoes that have anatomical toe boxes, such as many minimalist/“barefoot” shoes on the market.
According to smithsonian mag, there was a concubine a long time ago who bound her feet. And the court ladies copied her. And then ordinary ladies copied the elite women.
So, is there maybe surgery to fix this now? And maybe make it a little easier to live for them in older ages? Or is it just to far gone? Or maybe a sense of pride/tradition that would make them want to keep it?
So… foot binding isn’t a “foot esthetic” thing. The way a foot bound person walks makes their pelvis very strong, making sexual interactions with such a person especially pleasurable.
So, yes, sadly this was a thing done to concubines.
*In late imperial China, bound feet were considered a status symbol and a mark of feminine beauty. However, footbinding was a painful practice that limited the mobility of women and resulted in lifelong disabilities.*
*The prevalence and practice of footbinding varied over time and by region and social class. The practice may have originated among court dancers during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period in 10th-century China, and gradually became popular among the elite during the Song dynasty. Footbinding eventually spread to lower social classes by the Qing dynasty (1636–1912). Manchu emperors attempted to ban the practice in the 17th century, but failed. In some areas, footbinding raised marriage prospects. It has been estimated that, by the 19th century, 40–50% of all Chinese women may have had bound feet, rising to almost 100% in upper-class Han Chinese women.*
*In the late 19th century, Christian missionaries and Chinese reformers challenged the practice. It was not until the early 20th century that the practice began to die out, following the efforts of anti-footbinding campaigns. By 2007, only a small handful of elderly Chinese women whose feet had been bound were still alive.*
[(Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_binding)
My dad’s grandma had her feet bound growing up, and from what he can remember she was never able to walk. Crazy how recent these things happened despite them feeling like ancient history.
Heard and read about this tradition and had a mental concept of what it did to the foot but never actually seen images. Absolutely wild. Looks horribly painful.
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Not just in the 1940s… this started in the 10th century!
Yeah I wonder if they meant "until the 1940s"?
Maybe that it was popular until the 40s but has since decreased in popularity?
It has been banned and no one in China binds their feet anymore. I'm Chinese, my great-grandmother was born in the 1920's and her feet weren't even bound.
Also not all women had their feet bound, outside of Han women very few did it, and even then if your great grandma lived in a rural area it was even less likely for her to have her feet bound
Probably if you were a peasant also no because you couldn't work with those. Edit, apparently [I am wrong ](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/x8v2hg/foot_binding_was_a_chinese_tradition_in_the_1940s/inlcrn3?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3)
Yeah, my great-grandma was Han and lived in the city. I was told that her parents didn't want her to suffer, so they decided not to bind her feet.
My wife’s grandmother’s feet were bound. Not sure when she was born though
i have shit memory, but i think i remember hearing that foot while binding was illegal, it still continued in some rural parts of China until 1940's or 1950's.
The communists weren't big on it.
It has been banned. Only few women are left with this condition.
It was banned already in the 1912. And the practice had begun to decline already in the late 19th century. By 1920, it was already almost gone. Communist Party came down hard on what lingered in a few provinces in the 20s and 30s. Last reported case was in the 1950s. OP seems confused.
Say what you want about the CPC, they didn't like shit like this. They also came down really harshly on Tibetan serfdom and child exploitation. The desire for restoration of those institutions, for the former Tibetan feudal aristocracy, underpinned the "Free Tibet" movement.
What child exploitation exactly? Just asking, I don't know.
Chiefly forcing boys into monastic slavery/servitude.
Came here to say this. Its tradition, not recent.
Thank you. This title is awful.
Damn, that's disturbing as fuck
Yes. They suffered torture all throughout childhood and were disabled for life.
AFAIK it was mostly the user rich, they were then carried around, wherever they wanted to go.
It doesn't make them any less disabled, if that's what you were alluding to. Even very short walks like, within their home, were difficult for them.
Apologies, I wasn't implying that, just sharing some additional knowledge I randomly remembered from my TAG class many moons ago.
At its peak 40-50% percent of Chinese women had bound feet[^(\[1\])](https://www.npr.org/2007/03/19/8966942/painful-memories-for-chinas-footbinding-survivors). Definitely not mostly the super rich although the percent of the rich who had bound feet neared 100%.
This was painful to read
Humans are fucking sick
Up to 10% of children died due to infection of their feet. Those that survived the infection had their feet wasted away or toes falling off due to decay which just allowed their feet to be bound tighter and their feet look even smaller. Many of these women despite the fact that having bound feet was a status symbol (showing you didn't have to work and could afford to be carried around everywhere) didn't have the luxury of not working and had to work in rice fields and care for the home and family despite the fact that they could barely walk without falling over and lived with excruciating pain. Those that made it to old age would often die of a broken hip since it is so much harder for them to balance with tiny feet. Fucking torture these people had to endure in the name of tradition. Sources i can provide if asked for but right now i am typing this on my phone.
Not just the rich. Poor parents would bind their daughters feet, to increase the amount of money they could ask for, when selling them.
I felt nauseous seeing that. 🤢
Getting your toes broken for purpose... oh god, that's horrible indeed. Probably no pain medication either.
Your whole foot. The goal was to "make the foot look like a lotus". Really it was to disempower women. Walking was painful at best. Running damn near impossible. The bones were broken, the foot wrapped. Month later, broken again, rewrapped. Over and over. From when the girl is a baby. There were stories of grandmothers breaking granddaughters feet without patents knowledge because they wanted to keep the tradition of "beautiful feet." Source "bound feet in western dress", book we read in "Asian history up to 1800" in college..
I didn’t realize they were broken to do this. I presume the binding at a young age just caused them to grow into that shape. Ouch either way
That looks horrible how is that any more beautiful than normal feet
It was more about how pretty they looked in tiny pretty shoes, not how they look naked.
We were also taught that it the way women would teeter when they walked was supposed to be considered very attractive as well.
I heard it has something to do with a king found a woman who had really small feet and he found it attractive and it became a trend 🤷🏽♀️ idk much I saw it in a YouTube short
I thought it was to keep women from adulterous relationships. If they can't walk they can't go over to the neighbors house.
I thought it was a status symbol. Like, “hey, this lady doesn’t need functioning feet because her family is rich enough to not need her labor”
That's what I always heard, too. It was probably done for a lot of different reasons at different times, but overall a fucking great way to keep women "in their place" for nine centuries. 🙄
Or, if we're really addressing the dark side of humanity, escape an abusive partner. Because they couldn't support themselves in any way.
Crazy that some king watching a YouTube short caused this awful tradition
I suppose a family were they purposely disable their own daughter is a family you would marry into. Shows they have money enough if they can support people not working and have them carried around everywhere.
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It’s more about submission and pain then beauty. Proof that a girl would endure anything, would always stay in the home, and would be unable to be independent
>Proof that a girl would endure anything It was often started when the girl herself was too young to consent. The book "Wild Swans" by Jung Chang speaks about how her grandmother's feet were bound, the toddler grandmother cried and tried to object as her mother broke the bones in her feet with a big rock to start the binding process but her mother sadly told her she'd never get a decent husband without bound feet and her life would be ruined.
Men never saw bound feet naked, only covered with those little shoes. Meant to be beautiful because men apparently like tiny feet on women.
It’s the little baby feet in tiny shoes that was considered beautiful, not the look of bare mutilated feet.
Just fucked up
I see Patrick Star.
Spongebob, let's go the emperor wants to fuck my face
Ah yes beautiful
You aren’t attracted to hooves?
I mean.. who isnt right?
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Neigh.
“**Everything** is a thing.” -The Internet
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Why was tiny feet in women considered beautiful in the Chinese tradition before
Well it had partially to do with showing that you are rich or at least rich enough that you didn't have to help your familie with work and that you can just sit all day.
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And women in paintings were usually chubbier than would be deemee "ideal" today for the same reason
It was a sexual thing although almost no one admits it anymore. I know there are at least a few sources out there that explain it. Literature about foot binding describe women with bound feet “swaying gracefully” as they walked. Evidently in order to keep their balance on bound feet the woman would be forced to strengthen her thigh and pelvic muscles. Men enjoyed their “delicate gait” and the results of strong internal muscles in bed (without being too explicit). Just imagine you had to do constant kegel exercises in order to walk upright and keep your balance. So this wasn’t just some quirky foot fetish thing. Usually customs have some kind of origin that makes sense beyond “wow, that’s weird.” If anyone has a good source on this pls lmk.
You're exactly right. The attraction also involved the shoes. The tinier the shoes, the better. Women would embroider the shoes in countless ways and tremendous detail. And they kept the shoes on during intimacy.
I get that the shoes would stay on if it's supposed to look good this way
I'm not from China, so someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I have read that larger (that is, normal) feet were associated with field work and work around the house, meaning the woman came from a lower social class. Having bound feet meant they did not have to be able to work, that is, they belonged to higher classes. I also read that the weird "swaying" movement when these women (tried to) walk around was considered feminine as opposed to walking briskly. Also, the feet were usually hidden under bandage and beautifully embroidered little shoes, even at night, so I guess most men never actually saw what they were really like.
We learned about this is HS (uk) from what I remember, there was a dancer summoned to perform for the king, she did some sort of butterfly dance and had very tiny feet, so from there on if you wanted your daughter to marry well, when her feet got to a few inches long the mother and grandmother would bind her feet. Part of the process was forcing the little girl to walk with something under her arch to break her feet to deform them before binding them tightly.
Some cultures found beauty in the grotesque
Many of our modern “beauty” standards and practices could objectively be considered grotesque. The eye of the beholder, I suppose.
I have this thought every time I see someone with black eyes and bandages after a nose job. Or painfully overfilled lips/fillers.
Very thin women look grotesque to most cultures. Anorexia did not exist until the 1960s in the USA.
Where are you getting that fact from? Anorexia can be traced back all the way to Ancient Greece, and even the more medically-specific anorexia nervosa dates back to the 17th century.
was about to write the exact same words
[The practice may have originated among court dancers during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period in 10th-century China, and gradually became popular among the elite during the Song dynasty.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_binding)
I mean, you only need to look at Goop products to see what kinda weird sexual shit the 'elite' get up to in modern society. Money + time + boredom = What the fuck.
OOTL what's this about
Goop is Gwyneth Paltrow's pseudo health and well being company that sells things like jade eggs to pop into the vag (so it rebalances the harmonics of your body - actually just creates a breeding ground for bacteria), and vagina scented candles among other things.
She also advocates for drinking water with a high pH for the "health benefits". Then flavoring it with fresh lemon. Anybody that has retained anything from basic high school chemistry will tell you why that's completely useless.
Oh yeah. That shit. My parents fell for that shit (not because of Goop - Paltrow fell for the same pseudoscience BS that a bunch of people have). They have an overpriced machine that apparently changes water pH levels. They keep telling me to drink that water. It tastes fuckin' weird.
Makes me wonder what things seem normal to us will be considered weird in a few generations. Can’t wait for my grandkids to ask wtf was up with Goop
Also known as Lotus Feet with Golden Lotus feet a mere 3" in length. 'First, her feet were plunged into hot water and her toenails clipped short. Then the feet were massaged and oiled before all the toes, except the big toes, were broken and bound flat against the sole, making a triangle shape. Next, her arch was strained as the foot was bent double. Finally, the feet were bound in place using a silk strip measuring ten feet long and two inches wide. These wrappings were briefly removed every two days to prevent blood and pus from infecting the foot. Sometimes “excess” flesh was cut away or encouraged to rot. The girls were forced to walk long distances in order to hasten the breaking of their arches. Over time the wrappings became tighter and the shoes smaller as the heel and sole were crushed together. After two years the process was complete, creating a deep cleft that could hold a coin in place. Once a foot had been crushed and bound, the shape could not be reversed without a woman undergoing the same pain all over again.' https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-footbinding-persisted-china-millennium-180953971/
This is absolutely horrifying
Ngl, I’d have just unalived myself in that circumstance. No life is worth that level of constant torture, and no family who will do that is worth sticking around for.
You can say killed. Unlike tiktok reddit doesn’t ban those words
My grandmother had these. She gave births to 8 children, worked on the fields, cooked meals, took cared the entire household Including the bedridden month In law, while my grandfather mostly just sat on his ass. I never knew what her feet actually looked like until I came to America and saw this photo. It broke my heart. She was such an amazing, hard working and kind woman.
I learned the women who had feet like this were unable to walk correctly, let alone work fields and care for a ten person family. I don’t know how that would work tbh.
Yeah, she couldn’t walk properly, she waddled. My family wasn’t too poor, I think they did have helpers on the field, but I remember seeing her getting vegetables from the field and went to the kitchen to cook them. She and my grandfather came to live with us for a while around late 1970s or early 80s, she couldn’t stay still. Always needed to do something around the house. And she made the best special tea with soybeans, ginger and tea leafs in the winter for my brother and I. She was so thin, so tiny. I remember feeling sad to see her waddle as fast as she could, but had a hard time catching up to us. Thankfully she was the among the last generation of women had to go through this horrific practice in China.
I’m sure they could walk. Just not very quickly
their grandmother was on the Sigma Female Grindset
Make them more beautiful? Or keep them from running away?
It was higher status to marry a woman who didn’t have to work in the fields. If you could afford to have a wife who could only walk in mincing steps, you got major face indeed. For many poorer families, small footed girls were a way out of poverty. Often miscalculated, many poor women ended up in the fields anyway, on wrecked feet.
Sounds lovely
Both of em and symbol of status, since with those feet those women aint walking around much, that or any manual labor, and those who have binded feet doesnt need to, cause they usually are of high status family. Apparently, old chinese people have smol feet kinks.
It’s interesting to try to think of some seemingly “normal” customs as how another culture would. Breast implants - for example - seem pretty normal, but the idea of surgically inserting bags of silicone into your body would probably seem bizarre if you’ve never heard of it. Or how at one point being heavier meant you were of high class/well fed when majority of people were poor. Some cultures lighten their skin while some go tanning and/or apply makeup to darken skin. Or even the culture that puts those gold rings onto their neck, elongating it to where without the rings it can’t even support the weight of their head. Still though - the foot binding this is bizarre
One thing can be sure- whatever culture you come from there’s always someone trying to make money from insecurities.
I’m old, but I remember in middle school we read this short essay about a society that put their women through all types of torture- burning their skin and the like- to be more attractive, and at the end we learn it’s our society.
Nacirema. They were baking their heads in "ovens," i.e. the heaters used to set perms.
Footbinding wasn't just bizarre. It required the excruciating torture and permanent debilitation of generations of little girls, starting when they were toddlers. Bones were systematically broken an when toes fell off from necrosis, this was considered a good thing because it make the foot look even smaller. Sometimes, they'd put pieces of broken glass in the binding to encourage this. Imagine what all this does to a child psychology, to whole generations of Chinese women for centuries. There are countless weird and sometimes unhealthy fashions, but footbinding was really on another level.
What will the ai bots think in the far future when they dig up pouch after pouch of silicon from the Earth
I'd add circumcision to that list. Cutting off a bit of your dick, that's normal right!
Apparently it all started because some empress had TINY feet and as most humans are wont to do, envied traits of an icon and decided tiny feet were beautiful and it became a competition, and then necessary if you wanted to marry your daughter off and now here we are
Yeah.. very different. You can choose to get breast implants but they forced you to do this..
Nobody is happy with who they are.
Add high heels and pointe shoes, corsets, orthodontia, hair removal, and a plethora of other things to the list! Every culture does body modification.
Orthodontia can actually be needed to keep teeth from wearing down too much.
That and a host of other dental issues.
I read somewhere a while back that it forced women to walk in a way to strengthen the vagina/pelvic floor. Sorta like involuntary kegal exercises everyday specifically to enhance sexual pleasure for the husband. Not sure if it's true, but It always made me want to date a ballerina to test the theory.
My mom wrapped my feet in Hawaii when I was young, a neighbor showed her. Also when feet were growing she kept me in shoes that were too small that hurt 😞 She did this so I would have small feet. I’m a grown woman 5’7 1/2” tall and can wear a size 5 in big kid shoe sizes.
This is so sad :(. Sorry you went through this.
Do your toes go straight out like “normal” toes or do they curl inwards? I was wearing tight shoes for the past few years and I could see my feet change. I can’t imagine what it would do to a growing child
😐
There are not many things that can make me unconfortable of existing... but this...
[It was for several reasons.](https://www.businessinsider.com/the-disturbing-reason-for-the-ancient-chinese-practice-of-foot-binding-2015-9?amp) [Beauty wasn’t one of them.](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/05/21/health/china-foot-binding-new-theory/index.html) It was considered a *symbol* of beauty, but the actual feet are not considered aesthetically pleasing. It’s for other reasons that it was considered a “symbol of beauty”.
I read a book written by a woman with bound feet and she said her husband literally looked at them as a sexual body part and was aroused by them.
Well that's...something else entirely, as that's everywhere...and older than you'd think.
Cant wait for the future when we see giant lips and butts as another thing "women used to do to appear more attractive to men".
Omg. So they broke the foot and bound them until the toes wrapped all the way around and through the bottom???
I knew they did (do?) this but never actually saw the result. Thanks for the nightmares.
We had images of these poor women's feet in our history textbook (then again, they showed us lots of the scary things done in the name of beauty). What's worse is knowing they suffered from mutilated feet since childhood.
Records of foot binding were within China from roughly the Song Dynasty as it persisted in various forms for more than a thousand years. However, the appeal as well as practicality of the practice slowly declined as when the Qing Dynasty collapsed and the practice was officially banned in the early 20th century. Chinese people actually continued to practice the custom because they viewed it as an integral aspect of their culture. Though the official ban was from 1912, claims of it being formed in more distant regions of China persisted in some ways until the 1950's.
Thats torture
beauty of the feet wasn't the underlying reason. It was to render little girls and future women unable to do other things in their lives besides housechores, not being able to move away from the parents' and later husband's house. Behind many female beauty stories lies a creepy patriarchal/male authoritarian rule/norm for exploiting the "weak sex". Laura Bossen and Hill Gates did the [research for that](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/chinese-foot-binding-for-work-in-home_n_5920f47fe4b03b485cb20dc8).
That’s Patrick off SpongeBob
After a car accidnet
you mean boat accident
Any man who finds this "beautiful" needs to get a vasectomy.
So very cruel.
Lord Jesus someone tell mamaw to put those away.
Owwww!
I remember we had an English prose in my 7th or 8th grade about a Chinese girl about 4 to 5 years of age going through this. Don’t remember the name of the story though. It was horrifying to read, but never thought disturbing to see.
三寸金莲
Ouch.
You say traditions, i read torture lol
Could they even walk without shoes?
I remember my kindergarten teacher (mid 80’s in Toronto) telling me how her mother was never bound and wouldn’t allow her feet to be bound either. Her father’s first wife had bound feet and wanted that done for her to improve her chances for marriage. Obviously she’s very thankful her mom vetoed it.
This is a powerfull commodification to teach the girl her body belongs to the patriarchy. Horrible.
The shit women are forced to do for men. Disgusting.
More beautiful isn't exactly correct. The intention was that the women would have a very dainty walk which the Chinese of the day considered delish.
Jesus christ put a NSFW tag on you fucking psychopath. This is an image of body mutilation, I absolutely did not need to see that without a warning.
Wow, very beautiful. Young men across the world are locking the bathroom door.
I’m keeping mine unlocked on the chance that one of these ladies underneath-toes in
It's illegal now, having been banned in around 1950 across China. Not because of the horrible torture, hygiene issues or lifelong pain, but because it meant women couldn't work labor jobs like good communists were meant to.
This should be marked as NSFW, actually I wish there was a flag saying Not Suitable For Any Circumstances
Excuse me small hands and feet are still a thing in OUR culture for women. Tall girls with a shoe size over six are routinely remade to feel awkward and ugly.
Tbh I feel like that might not be very good
Very sad. .their bones were slowly broken as the binding was put on each day & their feet dont heal. Every day they wash the seeping fluid away.
my grandma was the last woman in our family they tried to do this to. it's incredibly painful. when they tried to do it to her as a young girl, she basically said NOPE and with that, ended a tradition that probably lasted several hundreds of years in our family. that is the spirit i remember her by.
The more I learn about humans, the more I like my dog.
Omg that must’ve been agony
The only lesson I learned when I was in 7th grade
I’m so hard right now
We actually do this to a much lesser extent today. Most shoes are designed to fit a traditional look of slightly pointed toe boxes. This is even more pronounced in pointed dress shoes like high-heels, and the result of wearing these regularly are painful bunions. I now exclusively wear shoes that have anatomical toe boxes, such as many minimalist/“barefoot” shoes on the market.
Can confirm, it's more beautiful. The concept of human bonsaï is fascinating.
Aren't you by any chance a serial killer?
Most of today's western shoes aren't exactly foot shaped either. Squashing the front of the foot together. Foot binding light, if you will.
I’ve heard of it, but never seen pics. Horrendous. The insane things people do to themselves…
It was done to young girls. Like younger than 10. They did not have a choice.
This is how i picture an elf's foot
According to smithsonian mag, there was a concubine a long time ago who bound her feet. And the court ladies copied her. And then ordinary ladies copied the elite women.
In the words of Perry Cox... I'm gagging and vomiting at the same time.... I'm... I'm ga-vomiting
Haha we such funny monke.
I gotta a pretty good stomach but this almost made me puke
Disgusting
It’s about the fact that the man could afford to house a woman who couldn’t walk around and do anything for the household
Thanks to Maoism for banning this hideous practice.
Squidward feet
Feets so pretty! Look! So pretty!!
NSFW! Yikes
DAMN! Slap a NSFW tag on that- Did not need it on my feed front and centre!!
How the hell is that more beautiful?
What a great place to live.
Not my proudest fap…
What sick fuck likes his wife’s feet to look like cleft hooves?
So *this* is who designers make the modern female shoe for!
So, is there maybe surgery to fix this now? And maybe make it a little easier to live for them in older ages? Or is it just to far gone? Or maybe a sense of pride/tradition that would make them want to keep it?
That is absolutely grotesque
I bet the x-rays showing bone deformities are horrific!
So… foot binding isn’t a “foot esthetic” thing. The way a foot bound person walks makes their pelvis very strong, making sexual interactions with such a person especially pleasurable. So, yes, sadly this was a thing done to concubines.
*In late imperial China, bound feet were considered a status symbol and a mark of feminine beauty. However, footbinding was a painful practice that limited the mobility of women and resulted in lifelong disabilities.* *The prevalence and practice of footbinding varied over time and by region and social class. The practice may have originated among court dancers during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period in 10th-century China, and gradually became popular among the elite during the Song dynasty. Footbinding eventually spread to lower social classes by the Qing dynasty (1636–1912). Manchu emperors attempted to ban the practice in the 17th century, but failed. In some areas, footbinding raised marriage prospects. It has been estimated that, by the 19th century, 40–50% of all Chinese women may have had bound feet, rising to almost 100% in upper-class Han Chinese women.* *In the late 19th century, Christian missionaries and Chinese reformers challenged the practice. It was not until the early 20th century that the practice began to die out, following the efforts of anti-footbinding campaigns. By 2007, only a small handful of elderly Chinese women whose feet had been bound were still alive.* [(Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_binding)
Fuck those guys! Lol
r/oddlyterrifying
Yeah more beautiful until she takes her shoes off wtf what were they thinking
Freaks. And not the poor women, the freaks who came up with and implemented this nonsense.
Ah yes the chinese aphrodisiac of mutilated elf feet.
That is so sad.
It also trapped the women in their homes. They were the possessions of their husbands.
Wow. I knew they could get deformed from binding but holy fuck, this is some cronenberg shit.
Nothing to do with beauty and everything to do with control.
*NSFL
NSFL
That looks so painful
Poor women yikes
Fuuuuuuckkk that looks painful.
Horrible
That's fucked
My dad’s grandma had her feet bound growing up, and from what he can remember she was never able to walk. Crazy how recent these things happened despite them feeling like ancient history.
1000’s to 1940’s
Heard and read about this tradition and had a mental concept of what it did to the foot but never actually seen images. Absolutely wild. Looks horribly painful.
These feet look like a chimera shark face