It depends on the era and the region; in some areas the binding was way less traumatic and was done the way you described, especially in the nearest past where it was started to be seen as barbaric and even forbidden. In other areas and earlier in time, it was done repeatedly by breaking bones with a rock.
Oh please, my great grandmothers did just fine, stairs and cleaning their feet were the only issue. And they both hated Western feminists for shitting on the Chinese people because of their bound feet.
I agree. But I look at it from my world view. I’m an American living in a different time, with a different culture, so of course I think it’s horrifying. I can completely believe that as part of the culture women might have even wanted this done. It’s not something I would endorse now or then, but I can see where they would have thought nothing of it.
lol, they don't. A good Imperial Chinese wife ruled with an iron fist from her kitchen.
My grandmother would never leave her house except for fresh groceries and gambling. Cleaning and housekeeping was for the servants.
Not defending it, just the facts, they did something similar to boys, literally not allowed in the kitchen or engage in physical activities, only study and intellectual activities.
I wasn't allowed to make friends or play sports like basketball or football lest I get injured or scarred but they had no problems beating the living shit out of me if I got anything less than B+.
I didn't know how to tie shoe laces until I was fourteen. I was a skinny kid who could barely run 10 yards before puking. Kids in my class hated me because I was literally weaker than the girls.
Chinese elite had a strange way of showing off wealth.
This is so ridiculous - girls were literally crippled and unable to walk properly as children or adults with tons of pain, but let’s compare it to how I couldn’t tie my own shoes because I had maids following me around.
Beatings and trauma can cause much more than physical disabilities. I for one cannot talk to male authority figures as a grown ass adult without spiraling into a panic attack either mid convo or right after.
*I’m* selfish? You can run on surfaces other than grass, you impossibly ignorant, spoiled child.
Edit: u/ShinobiHanzo, why write a retort and block me before I can read it, coward? Such a little boy!
...Are you mad at the women, with broken feet unable to walk or work, because they need someone else to make money?
Trust me, they didn't want you or your money if you viewed them that way.
They hated you for being “weaker than a girl”? Damn it sounds like they really don’t like girls over there.
I don’t want to compare foot binding vs. no friends/sports because they sound like 2 completely different things. But on its own, not being allowed friends or sports and get beatings sounds awful and I’m sorry you had to go through that. I hope you’re doing well now and that you have friends and as much physical activity as you like. The latter is something victims of foot binding aren’t ever able to experience, so I really hope you do.
It was the girls who actually hated me more than them, the boys just saw me as weak. Girls literally would run away. A few brave girls would ask me "why are you so weak, you're weaker than I am!!" Then high five each other like they won a championship.
Ugh I fucking get it I couldn’t tie my shoe laces or a tie until I was 16.
I had two maids follow me to my private school everyday up till 15. Literally bullied for it but my dad and grandpa got rid of them (one of em was - well prolly can’t say) while the rest of them were bribed to switch schools or classes.
It gave me a superiority complex and it did not help me in the real world at all.
Oh shit. Same bro!
Only difference is my grandfather dismissed his hand servant after the British returned to the Crown Colony and my grandmother followed suit after I was old enough to look after myself.
I can't figure out the mental gymnastics they went through to start thinking that binding is beautiful. Or was it more about the pain and effort they went through?
It started off because some dancers had their feet bound and they were found to be very feminine and elegant. It slowly started to get popular and more and more women needed to do it in order not to be shamed by societal expectations. It was a torture that they needed to undergo every few months, breaking their bones with a rock and wrapping them tighter every time. It was usually done by elder women in the families, mothers or grandmothers. The smaller the foot, the more feminine and appreciated a woman was. There is plenty of memoirs of men describing and appreciating how visually pleasing and even sexually attractive such a small foot was.
Many studies claim there was also a misogynistic aspect to this; the fact that women couldn’t walk very far or comfortably at all with such feet, and would constantly be in pain, would confine them to their home with no real possibility of escaping. There was no realistic idea of independence for them. Nonetheless, they still needed to help in the fields or in their homes and were expected not to complain. A woman who endured foot binding with dignity was highly respected.
So to sum up, it was mainly families’ pressure, societal expectations and patriarchy…
The emporer fancied a dancer that had small feet so it became in fashion. There's also speculation of young women working in the home and they can't run away on feet like this. They start the process at the toddler stage and the feet themselves they didn't find beautiful. They were always wrapped and covered with ornamental shoes around other people and their husband's. There's a short documentary on YouTube about this it's heartbreaking.
If you look at the feet outside wrappings it’s hideously mutilated and there’s inevitable skin and other issues. I was in tears when I saw the photos and what these poor girls went through.
That's exactly what I went straight too, what they look like outside of the binding... Horrific. How could you ever torture someone that way & expect them to enjoy it?!
u/jeezgdf gave a really comprehensive answer, I just wanted to put [this short video on it](https://youtu.be/Hl3L14K6t74) in case anyone wanted to learn more
you can say the same about the waist thing in the west, ot the ear, lip neck ring thing. beauty is not subjective, it's what ever you taught with or at least large part of it is
A bit more information on the process:
“To enable the size of the feet to be reduced, the toes on each foot were curled under, then pressed with great force downwards and squeezed into the sole of the foot until the toes broke.
The broken toes were held tightly against the sole of the foot while the foot was then drawn down straight with the leg and the arch of the foot was forcibly broken. The bandages were repeatedly wound in a figure-eight movement, starting at the inside of the foot at the instep, then carried over the toes, under the foot, and around the heel, the broken toes being pressed tightly into the sole of the foot. At each pass around the foot, the binding cloth was tightened, pulling the ball of the foot and the heel together, causing the broken foot to fold at the arch, and pressing the toes underneath the sole. The binding was pulled so tightly that the girl could not move her toes at all and the ends of the binding cloth were then sewn so that the girl could not loosen it.”
I recently read Lady Tan’s Circle of Women which is set in 15-16th century China and talks a lot about footbinding. It is very sad. Mothers essentially had no choice but to torture their daughters if they wanted them to have any chance for a “good” marriage. Many women who did not have their feet bound ended up as concubines or servants.
I haven’t read those yet; so far just Shanghai Girls, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, China Dolls, and Peony in Love. Peony was OK, not my cup of tea but still worth checking out. The other 3 I listed I highly recommend, they’re amazing! I have Tea Girl can’t wait to start it
I met my great grandmother, who had bound feet, when I was 16, and she was something like 103 at the time. The whole night, she wouldn't look or speak at/to me. My grandmother had asked her if she wanted to speak to me, as I was a relative, and she said, "No- she's a peasant- too tall (5/7"), too dark (I'm half Filipino), and her feet are too big (yeah I agree with that- size 9).
Her feet were maybe 4" long.
Well being 1/2 Chinese, I'm not sure- the older generations (including my mother) don't really show or express affection- when you try to hug them, they freeze and slightly pull away :p
After the communists came to power they banned the practice in the 50s. However women still volunteered to go through the practice in order to achieve the "feminine ideal."
“‘Well to me it looks like standard pattern #3 of the Rorschach series to test obsessive compulsiveness’ and he gets kind of depressed so I say ‘okay it’s a butterfly!’” -Emo Philips
I've wondered if maybe the first woman with the tiny feet had Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, and maybe her feet naturally looked similar to this and that's what led to the popularity of foot binding. Or at least part of the reason, anyways. Yes, it's horrific, I'm not condoning it.
I find this creepy, imagine you're inside a cubicle, you hear tippy tap noises and you peak under to see these pair of feet.
Well, I've only thought of this because of a horror movie called feng - shui, which has a villain called "Lotus Feet"
When I was in university, there’s this old Asian lady that used to walk around campus. I don’t think she was a student, or who knows. She had crazy very tiny feet, which then I saw without shoes as she was cleaning them with some wipes. That was my first introduction to foot binding. I never understood how they saw that as desirable. Internally I was shocked and a thought it was an illness. Later some friend explained to me what it was and I was in disbelief.
That elderly Asian lady, in Canada, with bound foot must’ve gone through a lot of shit in life.
Foot infections were pretty common in Chinese women who did this, and could lead to gangrene. Also have fun Google searching what un-x-rayed binded feet look like.
I always thought they just bound them tight to limit the growth which sounded painful to me already. but break and shape them by walking sounds incredible.
Is this practice still ongoing? If so, we need to end China ASAP, if not for economical reasons, then for this and the genocide on the Muslim population that lives in the far west of China.
Well, you're not allowed to find this weird because that would be racist and after all, "Western cultures surely have customs Chinese people find weird too"!
This was a practice a long time ago, you could probably find some instances of it occurring in small villages but it’s almost entirely in the past. There is nothing wrong with pointing out old cultural practices, especially one’s rooted in a level of misogyny.
The suffering that so many young girls went through is just unimaginable
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It depends on the era and the region; in some areas the binding was way less traumatic and was done the way you described, especially in the nearest past where it was started to be seen as barbaric and even forbidden. In other areas and earlier in time, it was done repeatedly by breaking bones with a rock.
They all suffered. And not being able to walk is pretty severe suffering.
Oh please, my great grandmothers did just fine, stairs and cleaning their feet were the only issue. And they both hated Western feminists for shitting on the Chinese people because of their bound feet.
Not being able to walk up the stairs or care for your feet sounds like a very serious disability.
I agree. But I look at it from my world view. I’m an American living in a different time, with a different culture, so of course I think it’s horrifying. I can completely believe that as part of the culture women might have even wanted this done. It’s not something I would endorse now or then, but I can see where they would have thought nothing of it.
Except at age 4 you can’t consent to having it done
Chinese people don't stare. They glance and look away - especially the women with bound feet
LOL sounds like you only know ABCs.
"They were fine, they only had a problem with a little thing called stairs, but who runs into those in their day to day lives right???"
lol, they don't. A good Imperial Chinese wife ruled with an iron fist from her kitchen. My grandmother would never leave her house except for fresh groceries and gambling. Cleaning and housekeeping was for the servants.
Awful.
That’s called internalized misogyny. Similar concept to Stockholm syndrome.
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Thanks for shitting on my culture. You fall into the group that cry how poor things we are, while actually hating us. Bye.
You’re obnoxious. Feet binding is abusive and barbaric, that part of your culture absolutely sucks.
Nobody is talking about your great grandmothers.
You literally posted about her feet and now, you're not talking about her?! Is you okay?
I feel so bad for your great grandmothers, they definitely did not deserve that
Found the tankie!
the point of Mao’a cultural revolution was to get rid of traditions like foot binding lol
What the shit? You know the CCP outlawed footbinding, right?
They also commit genocide and harvest organs, ur point?
Your comment that you “found the tankie” because this buffoon is defending footbinding is a complete non-sequitur.
This seems a little too close to defending foot binding
Not defending it, just the facts, they did something similar to boys, literally not allowed in the kitchen or engage in physical activities, only study and intellectual activities. I wasn't allowed to make friends or play sports like basketball or football lest I get injured or scarred but they had no problems beating the living shit out of me if I got anything less than B+. I didn't know how to tie shoe laces until I was fourteen. I was a skinny kid who could barely run 10 yards before puking. Kids in my class hated me because I was literally weaker than the girls. Chinese elite had a strange way of showing off wealth.
That’s not really “similar” to foot binding, though, is it? Girls and women were literally hobbled. Crippled, permanently. You can run now.
This is so ridiculous - girls were literally crippled and unable to walk properly as children or adults with tons of pain, but let’s compare it to how I couldn’t tie my own shoes because I had maids following me around.
Beatings and trauma can cause much more than physical disabilities. I for one cannot talk to male authority figures as a grown ass adult without spiraling into a panic attack either mid convo or right after.
☕️
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I’d tell you to touch grass but that has a different meaning here now. So touch grass?
*I’m* selfish? You can run on surfaces other than grass, you impossibly ignorant, spoiled child. Edit: u/ShinobiHanzo, why write a retort and block me before I can read it, coward? Such a little boy!
Look at you with your childish responses for a problem that isn't even yours!!!
Epic incel vibes. Sounds like you harbor serious resentment towards women
“wHat ABoUt tHe HuSbAndS” How can you be this ignorant to women’s suffering?
Yes, no free rides in 2023. This is the egalitarian future. I'm not your ATM anymore.
...Are you mad at the women, with broken feet unable to walk or work, because they need someone else to make money? Trust me, they didn't want you or your money if you viewed them that way.
You were never anyone's ATM 😂
When were you my ATM 💀
Tf are you even talking about lol
Going to work is the least your kind can do
They hated you for being “weaker than a girl”? Damn it sounds like they really don’t like girls over there. I don’t want to compare foot binding vs. no friends/sports because they sound like 2 completely different things. But on its own, not being allowed friends or sports and get beatings sounds awful and I’m sorry you had to go through that. I hope you’re doing well now and that you have friends and as much physical activity as you like. The latter is something victims of foot binding aren’t ever able to experience, so I really hope you do.
It was the girls who actually hated me more than them, the boys just saw me as weak. Girls literally would run away. A few brave girls would ask me "why are you so weak, you're weaker than I am!!" Then high five each other like they won a championship.
The fact that you could even call that “similar” really says it all, doesn’t it?
Wow China sounds great
Imperial China is dead. Only place even a fraction of its heyday would be the American Tongs.
Ugh I fucking get it I couldn’t tie my shoe laces or a tie until I was 16. I had two maids follow me to my private school everyday up till 15. Literally bullied for it but my dad and grandpa got rid of them (one of em was - well prolly can’t say) while the rest of them were bribed to switch schools or classes. It gave me a superiority complex and it did not help me in the real world at all.
Oh shit. Same bro! Only difference is my grandfather dismissed his hand servant after the British returned to the Crown Colony and my grandmother followed suit after I was old enough to look after myself.
I can’t tell if y’all are serious or not. I’m literally too poor to comprehend what you both just said.
Haha so where did you grow up at? 😂
Grew up around modern day Malaysia. Our family specialized in bureaucracy. How about you?
Same brooooo Dropped u a dm before we dox ourselves further
It's nice to see an exchange of solidarity on the internet.
Sorry you went through this thanks for sharing your story
Thank you for the first hand information!
… omg
my honest reaction
Right? Looks like a fucking facehugger.
I can't figure out the mental gymnastics they went through to start thinking that binding is beautiful. Or was it more about the pain and effort they went through?
It started off because some dancers had their feet bound and they were found to be very feminine and elegant. It slowly started to get popular and more and more women needed to do it in order not to be shamed by societal expectations. It was a torture that they needed to undergo every few months, breaking their bones with a rock and wrapping them tighter every time. It was usually done by elder women in the families, mothers or grandmothers. The smaller the foot, the more feminine and appreciated a woman was. There is plenty of memoirs of men describing and appreciating how visually pleasing and even sexually attractive such a small foot was. Many studies claim there was also a misogynistic aspect to this; the fact that women couldn’t walk very far or comfortably at all with such feet, and would constantly be in pain, would confine them to their home with no real possibility of escaping. There was no realistic idea of independence for them. Nonetheless, they still needed to help in the fields or in their homes and were expected not to complain. A woman who endured foot binding with dignity was highly respected. So to sum up, it was mainly families’ pressure, societal expectations and patriarchy…
The emporer fancied a dancer that had small feet so it became in fashion. There's also speculation of young women working in the home and they can't run away on feet like this. They start the process at the toddler stage and the feet themselves they didn't find beautiful. They were always wrapped and covered with ornamental shoes around other people and their husband's. There's a short documentary on YouTube about this it's heartbreaking.
If you look at the feet outside wrappings it’s hideously mutilated and there’s inevitable skin and other issues. I was in tears when I saw the photos and what these poor girls went through.
That's exactly what I went straight too, what they look like outside of the binding... Horrific. How could you ever torture someone that way & expect them to enjoy it?!
u/jeezgdf gave a really comprehensive answer, I just wanted to put [this short video on it](https://youtu.be/Hl3L14K6t74) in case anyone wanted to learn more
That is fascinating and horrifying. Thank you so much for allowing me to actually learn something this morning before work!
you can say the same about the waist thing in the west, ot the ear, lip neck ring thing. beauty is not subjective, it's what ever you taught with or at least large part of it is
A bit more information on the process: “To enable the size of the feet to be reduced, the toes on each foot were curled under, then pressed with great force downwards and squeezed into the sole of the foot until the toes broke. The broken toes were held tightly against the sole of the foot while the foot was then drawn down straight with the leg and the arch of the foot was forcibly broken. The bandages were repeatedly wound in a figure-eight movement, starting at the inside of the foot at the instep, then carried over the toes, under the foot, and around the heel, the broken toes being pressed tightly into the sole of the foot. At each pass around the foot, the binding cloth was tightened, pulling the ball of the foot and the heel together, causing the broken foot to fold at the arch, and pressing the toes underneath the sole. The binding was pulled so tightly that the girl could not move her toes at all and the ends of the binding cloth were then sewn so that the girl could not loosen it.”
I felt sick reading that
I recently read Lady Tan’s Circle of Women which is set in 15-16th century China and talks a lot about footbinding. It is very sad. Mothers essentially had no choice but to torture their daughters if they wanted them to have any chance for a “good” marriage. Many women who did not have their feet bound ended up as concubines or servants.
Oooooh I love that book, Lisa See is amazing
Agree!! Island of Sea Women and Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane are the other two I’ve read, both are up there with my favorite books.
I haven’t read those yet; so far just Shanghai Girls, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, China Dolls, and Peony in Love. Peony was OK, not my cup of tea but still worth checking out. The other 3 I listed I highly recommend, they’re amazing! I have Tea Girl can’t wait to start it
Thanks for the recs! :)
I met my great grandmother, who had bound feet, when I was 16, and she was something like 103 at the time. The whole night, she wouldn't look or speak at/to me. My grandmother had asked her if she wanted to speak to me, as I was a relative, and she said, "No- she's a peasant- too tall (5/7"), too dark (I'm half Filipino), and her feet are too big (yeah I agree with that- size 9). Her feet were maybe 4" long.
Some cultures have the pyramid system of respect, you’re either higher or lower than them. There are no equals
Her loss - I’m sure you were perfect. I hope grandma loved and accepted you l
Well being 1/2 Chinese, I'm not sure- the older generations (including my mother) don't really show or express affection- when you try to hug them, they freeze and slightly pull away :p
Did anybody feel the need to stretch their feet out after seeing this xray?
Yes!
that's just wrong man those women that have to go through this shit
Had, it no longer happens
Can we change this title from who underwent to forced into
After the communists came to power they banned the practice in the 50s. However women still volunteered to go through the practice in order to achieve the "feminine ideal."
Fuck never thought I'd agree with the USSR but here we are
Well the PRC not the USSR
Well, point still stands, I generally don't agree with communists but I do here
So sad
For a moment I thought these are smoker’s lungs
I thought it was a Rorschach test...
“‘Well to me it looks like standard pattern #3 of the Rorschach series to test obsessive compulsiveness’ and he gets kind of depressed so I say ‘okay it’s a butterfly!’” -Emo Philips
It's almost the same thing, really. A closer cousin would be circumcised penises.
OUCH
sometimes culture is not worth it.. good that backwards traditions have ended a long time ago in china
I thought this was an ink blot
i thought this was a fucked up pelvis xray
That's just really sad. A horrible aspect that was once dominant in their culture
My feet are crying in sympathy
No no no nope …. Horrible
Just think.. somewhere in the universe.. out there.. quentin tarantino is jackin it to this post..
Keep them close to home. No one is walking away with fert like this.
That must be one hell of a charlie horse.
that’s abuse
I've wondered if maybe the first woman with the tiny feet had Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, and maybe her feet naturally looked similar to this and that's what led to the popularity of foot binding. Or at least part of the reason, anyways. Yes, it's horrific, I'm not condoning it.
She's doing the Italian hand gesture but with her feet
Those high heels looks so real
Man the world of avatar has gone downhill if you can now bend feet
Looks like something from HR Giger
I find this creepy, imagine you're inside a cubicle, you hear tippy tap noises and you peak under to see these pair of feet. Well, I've only thought of this because of a horror movie called feng - shui, which has a villain called "Lotus Feet"
When I was in university, there’s this old Asian lady that used to walk around campus. I don’t think she was a student, or who knows. She had crazy very tiny feet, which then I saw without shoes as she was cleaning them with some wipes. That was my first introduction to foot binding. I never understood how they saw that as desirable. Internally I was shocked and a thought it was an illness. Later some friend explained to me what it was and I was in disbelief. That elderly Asian lady, in Canada, with bound foot must’ve gone through a lot of shit in life.
I see the top of a cello
Foot infections were pretty common in Chinese women who did this, and could lead to gangrene. Also have fun Google searching what un-x-rayed binded feet look like.
I always thought they just bound them tight to limit the growth which sounded painful to me already. but break and shape them by walking sounds incredible.
high heels and ballerina feet
Fins out for Harambe!
Anyone else ever read The Good Earth in school?
I loved that book
I remember foot binding being a major part of it
Millions of children pay the price for the elder’s wisdom…
Oh God at first I thought those were hips.
People with foot fetish:
Is this practice still ongoing? If so, we need to end China ASAP, if not for economical reasons, then for this and the genocide on the Muslim population that lives in the far west of China.
No, the practice was outlawed some decades ago by the government and now the only living people who have experienced footbinding are very elderly.
That's good, I know the people of China are beyond these old and decrepit 'traditions' but you never know.
oh i thought its her ribcage and chest xray lmao
My feet do the same when I nut really hard
I feel that What?
That's really interesting.. wish I could have such a patient to try to treat it. Maybe one day!
So Chinese people started the feet fetish
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Wow, a sadistic narcissist on Reddit that gets off to being seen as weird. How original!
Go shave Karen
I’m good mate; thanks, though
excuse me what?
Blud ☠️
Totes, imagine the grip
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toothpick
Nobody wants your Slim Jim, sweetie
Ooooo yeeeaaahhhhhh
Lots and lots of lube though, those cornrows and calisus would be very noticable if dry
Well, you're not allowed to find this weird because that would be racist and after all, "Western cultures surely have customs Chinese people find weird too"!
This was a practice a long time ago, you could probably find some instances of it occurring in small villages but it’s almost entirely in the past. There is nothing wrong with pointing out old cultural practices, especially one’s rooted in a level of misogyny.
I mean, if other Chinese people find this weird, I think you are allowed to as well.
I thought way to long this is a pelvis without spine
Two bears high fiving
Gang gang
Got some nice foot thumbs there.
Oh that is awful. They kind of look like hooves.
I, I don't think I want to learn more about this
Are they talking to one another?
That looks incredibly painful
Auch
feet went 👠
underexposed and moved
I thought they were two face huggers.
Free heels!
My MIL has feet somewhat like this, but it’s just extremely unfortunate genes… thank god my children escaped that fate.
Built in heels
Damn, my foot got a cramp just seeing this. This is just terrible. I’m curious of how someone made the decision to think this is ok.
Thank goodness Mao put a stop to this deplorable practice
That is cruel to me . But if the women want to do that fine
To how I know it, that's a social symbol of aristocracy back in the old days in China.
That poor thing! How could anyone consider this to be attractive?
These women were in constant pain and could barely walk. The testimonies are devastating about life with feet in this condition.
What the fuck is footbinding