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Post by kathleen34 on Sept 22, 2007 17:39:10 GMT -5
Foot binding began late in the T’ang Dynasty (618-906) and it gradually spread through the upper class during the Song Dynasty (960-1297). During the Ming period (1368-1644) and the Ching Dynasty (1644-1911) the custom of foot binding spread through the overwhelming majority of the Chinese population until it was finally outlawed in the 1911 Revolution of Sun Yat-Sen. I'm reading " Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" There is an extremely graphic description of footbinding. This prompted me to do some GOOGLE searching. There's a great deal of information. An ideal was to have a foot no longer than a THUMB! Based on the above statement, would we be led to believe that the Empress's feet were bound? Little girls between 4-7 went through this torture to assure a good marriage and proper status. ... and I'm thinking how uncomfortable I was in the early days of healing broken ankle. And I'm way over 7 years old.
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Post by vickieh on Sept 22, 2007 19:49:19 GMT -5
I am so glad that we don't do that anymore. My feet hurt enough after along day at work.
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Post by zorro on Sept 22, 2007 22:10:24 GMT -5
Based on the above statement, would we be led to believe that the Empress's feet were bound? Little girls between 4-7 went through this torture to assure a good marriage and proper status. Was that so the men could catch them easier?? As awful as foot binding is, think of the Ubangi custom of putting plates in their lower lips, and another tribe's custom of rings around girl's necks to make them longer… that's gotta hurt! (but at least they can walk without falling over).
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Post by kathleen34 on Sept 23, 2007 4:49:28 GMT -5
You're so on target zorro. Huge lips, long necks, tiny, tiny feet All these dreadful practices were done for the pleasure of the male of the species.
I think of precious little 4-7 year olds and cannot imagine breaking their toes and then reprimanding them for crying. So I'm including the description of 'the Process'.
Process - A mother or grandmother started to bind her daughter's or granddaughter's feet when the child was around 4-7 years old. The process was started before the arch of the foot had a chance to properly develop so that the feet were numb, meaning the pain would not be as extreme. Binding usually started during the winter months [4].
First, each foot would be soaked in a warm mixture of herbs and animal blood. This concoction caused any necrotised flesh to fall off [5]. Then her toenails were cut back as far as possible to prevent ingrowth and subsequent infections. To prepare her for what was to come next the girl's feet were delicately massaged. Silk or cotton bandages, ten feet long and two inches wide, were prepared by soaking them in the same blood and herb mix as before. Each of the toes were then broken and wrapped in the wet bandages, which would constrict when drying, and pulled tightly downwards toward the heel. There may have been deep cuts made in the sole to facilitate this [6].
This ritual would be repeated every two days, with fresh bindings. Every time the bandages were rebound they would be pulled tighter making this process continually painful.
A severe example of foot bindingThe most common ailment of bound feet was infection. Toenails would ingrow and could lead to flesh rotting, occasionally causing the toes to drop off. Disease inevitably followed infection meaning that death could result from foot binding. Occasionally, the ball of the foot would grow directly into the heel. As the girl grew older, she was more at risk from medical problems. Older women were more likely to break hips and other bones in falls and were less able to stand up from sitting.[7]
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jkn
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Posts: 319
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Post by jkn on Sept 23, 2007 10:37:13 GMT -5
I sometimes wonder how these rituals ever came to be. How attractive are deformed feet? Yuk! And breaking your own child's toes. I can't even imagine it. I know that there are tribes to this day that still do the plate in the lip thing. Not only to the women but the men also.
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Post by pip on Sept 23, 2007 14:00:07 GMT -5
I once saw a museum display of women's shoes from the foot-binding era. They looked like doll shoes. It made a huge impression on my because that was over thirty years ago, and I still remember them.
I understand that the ideal bound foot was called a "golden lotus" because of its size and shape. And I recall from my history books in school that footbinding continued into the 20th century, a pernicious practice that was decidedly hard to eradicate.
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Post by zorro on Sept 24, 2007 9:50:16 GMT -5
To answer the question, I would say no the Empress has not gone through that ordeal. No proof of course, but haven't we seen her walking without pain or difficulty to her throne for meetings? And none of the other women we've seen in the palace exhibited any difficulty that I can recall. Maybe the writers "sidestepped" this issue? We know Chulin never could fight with tiny feet, but if your theory holds, why wouldn't Sukyeong as a Princess be subject to this ritual? It's hard to even think about it, and yes, how could a mother do that to her child, especially if she herself had gone through the ordeal? Then again, if we remember some parts of Hwang Jini, the girls there had no choice in some matters, and were just expected to comply. As dancers, at least their feet were spared from binding. Another African barbaric ritual that may still be in practice is the mutilation of a girl's genitalia that Iman said she suffered before being discovered and brought here to be a model. If I remember right, it was on 60 minutes or a similar show some years back. And I thought tattoos and piercings must hurt… that's "nothing" compared to this other stuff. Scary.
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Post by kathleen34 on Sept 24, 2007 10:31:30 GMT -5
In her book "Infidel" Ayaan Hirsi Ali gives a very graphic description of female circumcision which is part of the Islamic routine as well. It probably remains a ritural in South Africa as well to little girls as young as 5. All these practices center around the desires of the men.
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Post by pip on Sept 24, 2007 12:52:49 GMT -5
Regarding the question of whether Emperor Shengshen might have had bound feet - - I, too, doubt it. Wasn't footbinding something for the upper-classes? The Emperor was of humble origins,we're told. Originally, she was a concubine to a previous emperor. Did Lady Sukyeong have bound feet? I don't know because I have no knowledge of whether footbinding was practiced in Goguryeo, or if it was confined to China.
Kathleen, you wrote that "all these practices center around the desires of men." True, but let's not forget that the women were complicit in acting upon them. If all the women had refused to comply, I wonder if the outrageous demands would have died off quickly for lack of enforcement. The "golden lotuses" produced by footbinding were seen as beautiful by men and women. In fact, peasants' feet were considered ugly because they were "large" and had normal color and shape.
As a grotesque side note to all this is a report from some time during the footbinding era, and I don't recall which dynasty this was. A fire broke out in the palace. Those who had normal feet ran out of the palace. Some of the royal women were able to hobble or crawl to safety, but many were found dead where they dropped as they tried to escape, crippled by their bound feet.
How gruesome! I think I'll bow out of this topic from here on.
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Post by soapygrams on Sept 24, 2007 13:01:15 GMT -5
Some years ago I read a novel that was set in early centuries China. It was very informative and the author obviously did her research. It explained that the Royal and noble class women all had the foot binding done at a very early age. Consequently, the women could not walk properly and were transported by sedan chairs whenever they left their living quarters to go anywhere. We sort of have that thing about feet/legs here in the US; what's the point of stiletto heels? That's one thing that leads to bunions, back problems, etc. But we women suffer to stuff our feet into "nine inch heels" LOL - I am so amazed when I watch a dance show where the females are wearing those high heels - don't know how they maintain balance - As a former dancer, I remember the highest heel I ever wore for dancing was about 2.5 inches and that took some getting used to when doing some of the lifts, the landings have to be precise so you dont' injure an ankle, leg etc. Back then we women weighed a bit more; maybe our male partners did weight lift training LOL. The ladies who dance now only weigh about 90-110 lbs no matter how tall they are. That's why their male partners can pick them up LOL - Just guessing at the weight but they do look very thin but muscular.
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Post by kathleen34 on Sept 24, 2007 13:01:27 GMT -5
Your point is well taken pip. I am mistakenly applying my 21century thought process to 600-something. I hate it when that happens. I overlooked the fact that Emperor Shengshen had very low beginnings and that footbinding was indeed given to the upperclass.
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Lila
Junior Addict
Posts: 80
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Post by Lila on Sept 24, 2007 13:56:59 GMT -5
I'm not watching this program, but this thread caught my eye. I have an incomplete memory of one of the Pearl Buck books that I read decades ago, in which she mentions foot-binding. IIRC, she naively began to unbind a young woman/girl's bound feet before the disfigurement became complete, because of her (Buck's) abhorrence of the practice. (Not sure anymore, but this may even have been something of a crusade for Mrs. Buck.) The result was that the removal of the bindings led to excruciating pain being caused to the young woman, to the extent that the only truly merciful thing to be done was to re-bind them immediately.
Nobody needs to look very far afield in order to find some version or another of the degradation and/or objectification of females, in most societies, even today. (I do understand that the males of certain races or characteristics don't fare much better, but for today's purpose we're talking about women.) I'll leave it for those who have much bigger brains than I do to speculate on how it can be that today's women, who have access to more personal power than any earlier generation down through the millennia, will still "put up with it." In some cases, the women seem to do it not for men, but for one another -- to wit, the skeletal look in celebrities and models. Of itself it isn't a big deal if somebody wants to look like a concentration camp case, but it can lead to anorexia, which can lead to disability and even death, and then it's a big deal, especially because tweenies try to copy anything they find glamorous or "cool", and kids that young haven't yet developed sufficient judgment to realize what they're doing to themselves. And the 90-pound adult females are doing it to themselves. The only thing I can think of, and I know it's kind of offbeat, but still -- is that, at a time when the fuller, rounder features of many women of color seemed almost overnight to be seen as desirable rather than as things to be made fun of, some racist designer decided that in order to maintain the mystique (read: superiority) of the fragile, ethereal white woman, they'd have to go in the reverse direction and make them absolutely sexless and featureless, almost genderless, and I'd go as far as to say not resembling earthlings.
Certain practices start for a particular reason, legitimate or not, and then proliferate to the point where nobody knows what the original reason was, nor do they even ask whether there's any longer a reason for it; it just self-perpetuates. (The topic of how that pertains to religions is a vast one.) I'd best stop now, lol.
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Post by soapygrams on Sept 24, 2007 15:57:26 GMT -5
Hi Lila, haven't heard from you in a while and it's truly good to read one of your well-thought out postings. You pose a very interesting reason behind all this skinny-look in fashion. I have also heard other suggestions, one of which is that since so many of the top-name fashion designers are men, they want the models to look like young boys/men and be straight and skinny without any curves I don't know whether that has any value as a reason but it just points out that a lot of us NON-fashionistas are still trying to find a VALID reason for women to look more like boys than women. Although, currently the top models seem to have invested a lot of $$$ in their chests LOL - thanks to plastic surgery. So now instead of looking like a 1 they begin to look more like a 7 ... ... and please - don't get me started on the shoes with the extremely pointed toes, totally flat soles and 5-6 inch heels - ouch --
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Lila
Junior Addict
Posts: 80
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Post by Lila on Sept 24, 2007 23:17:20 GMT -5
Thanks for the good strokes, Soapygrams. I know that the subject of designing for women can be a touchy one and therefore it took some courage to mention it in these PC days; but for years people have speculated that, since most designers are male, and most of them are also gay, the fact that the designs that are foisted upon women are often so horrible might just speak of the designers laughing up their sleeves at us. I have no idea if there's any validity to that so-called theory.
It used to be that celebrity women were somewhat curvy and sexually desirable because of that, while high-fashion models were intentionally thin, to impersonate clothes hangers and to make women think, "Geez, if that looks good on her, how much better is it going to look on me?" Wasn't Marilyn Monroe a 14 -- and not today's 14, which is more like yesterday's 16 or 18, but a "real" 14, which would be about 140 pounds on a 5'6" frame. You know, someone actually healthy. (About 15 years ago or so, clothing manufacturers secretly altered the sizing of women's clothing, downsizing them by one or two sizes, under the theory that when a woman tries on some new apparel and discovers that she miraculously is fitting into an 8 instead of a 10 or 12, she gets a buzz and goes on a clothing spending spree.)
By the same token, we women certainly have every right and responsibility to choose what we will and won't go for, yet what do we see almost everywhere we go here in the U.S.? Blubbery gals in ill-fitting, clingy, revealing clothing. I don't think I've seen a woman in a blouse in years!
As long as I've diverged so far from the foot-binding topic, I may as well ask if anybody can understand what's "chic" about "heroin chic?" Emaciated, pale females, with dark circles around their eyes, looking like they can barely stand up under their own steam. And that's expected to appeal to those who can afford expensive clothing; and apparently it does, or they'd have shifted away from that as soon as they realized it was a failure.
There's nothing more ridiculous and freakish looking than an 85-pound adult female with 4 pounds of phony breasts standing out on her bony chest, like two halves of a melon. And beyond that, it's not healthy. Mammograms aren't accurate; breast-feeding I'm told is impossible -- and yet people are giving their 16 year-old daughters these abominations as presents.
Suddenly foot-binding doesn't seem quite as horrible and foreign to me, you know?
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Post by TheBo on Sept 25, 2007 9:53:35 GMT -5
Your foot-binding thread has caught my eye because it reminded me of an excellent short story by Emily Prager from her book of the same name, "A Visit From the Footbinder" (1992). Until I read it, I had only a sketchy idea of what the process involved. Revolting, absolutely revolting. What was good about the story, though, and ties in with your points, Lila, was that the social structure that perpetuated the practice was revealed in all its glory. Everyone adores the little girl involved, but the practical situation was, who would marry her if she didn't do it? It's well worth reading. (As I recall, the rest of the book was excellent, too.)
Although, Lila, just because we have women who are willingly undergoing mutilations to their bodies here doesn't make foot binding less "horrible"--just more understandable. Which is, I'm sure, what you meant. ;D
Bo
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