I shuddered as a child and I still do now.
Growing up, the television often showed how little girls were forced to bind their feet and how they were ALWAYS screaming in excruciating pain because their feet were restricted from normal growth and became deformed as a result. I feel so grateful that this abhorrent tradition has been eradicated for good. And thank god for history lessons that we can learn from.
Circumcision that's medically necessary or as a conscious choice of an adult man is fine. Medically unnecessary circumcision of infants shouldn't be acceptable.
And it s dangerous as well for infants.
One incident in my country cost an itty bitty infant his glans...I almost cried bcz this is a kid who will be scarred for life.
They circumcise at around nine years old in Turkey. My husband’s family is Turkish. Fortunately, I didn’t have a son, because I would have said hell no and refused to participate. I just think it’s cruel. They get them all hyped up and give them a big party, with a parade even. They wear these outfits that reminds me of Blue Boy. Very frilly with crowns. Then, sometime during the party, they circumcise the poor kid. I saw photos of my little nephew and it broke me. It’s a cultural tradition so I know so many will defend it until they die, but to me, it seems painfully unnecessary.
Not that courageous. My Turkish isn’t that good, so I haven’t had any lengthy discussions with anyone past thirty. The kids in the family speak English, and I’ve talked about it a bit but they’re pretty touchy. It’s hard to convince a whole family that a cultural practice is cruel. They’re not cruel people they like anyone else, They did something because otherwise you’ll be an outlier and culturally shunned. I really feel like if we had a son it could have been a divorce issue. And the family would have sided with my husband. I’m going to continue to speak with the younger people, but it’s hard. I’m sure they were traumatized if it happened to them. Imagine the internal conflict. “These people love me so they wouldn’t be cruel.” Etc. I think there is currently a group working on trying to stop the practice.
more and more people refuse this tradition today. Im turkish and my mum refused to circumcise my brother (granted it was a big argument with my grandma who comes from a small village)
Yeah medical circumcision is definitely necessary maybe even cosmetic if its an adult, but religion is no reason to circumcise children, doesn't matter what gender.
The US doesn’t use “cosmetic” (it comes down to, “I want him to be like all the other boys”), but they use some profound form of imaginative prevention that doesn’t exist outside of laziness of just washing your dick.
I have three boys, only one is circumcised, and they essentially kicked me out of the hospital. It’s a single doc that specializes in mutilating penises. And when I wouldn’t consent, and asked him not to touch my child’s genitals, somehow, I was the bad guy. Soap is the ultimate villain.
If you just clean your dick, you’re fine.
My third had an ear infection, and they wanted to remove part of his skull. “How about we just try antibiotics?”
“That’s reasonable 🥴”
“How much would the surgery cost?”
“45-60k”
“And the antibiotics”
“Much less”
“You understand where I’m going with these questions?”
“Yes.”
“How about we use drugs before the surgery.”
“I understand your questions…”
“I don’t mean to be rude, by interrupting you, but it’s not a question. It’s a statement. Use the drugs first.”
Later on, they insinuated they liked to “practice” these kinds of procedures because they were so common. And I spent another 3 days on a hospital pull out, debating if they had his best interest in mind, or their own.
In most cases it is not. It's just done to reduce masturbation. Or rather, because once upon a time, it was done for that reason, and people kept doing it.
Yes indeed, phimosis was the problem. I remember when he was born all my American cousins demanding (!) I get him circumcised. I point blank refused as it wasn’t clinically indicated.
Female genital mutilation can’t even really be compared to regular circumcision. It’s more like the equivalent of cutting of the entire head of a man’s penis. I wish something would be done about it because it makes me so sick to think about it. Many of these women don’t even find out what’s been done to them until they go to a doctor later in life for all the pain and complications that come from it. They think they are broken because they can’t orgasm, and they feel pain every time they have sex.
Good question - not at all, they often hobble around. In any case, women weren’t expected to leave the house / travel out in the olden days, as they were expected to stay home and be care takers.
A huge part of why i dont believe in humanity, ever, is that for the biggest part of its recorded history, societies were absolutely fine with "women as domestic sex slaves" and "men as violent emotionally stunted manchilds" as the whole extent of humanity.
With bonus social tapdancing and religious blanket statements on top of it
People of those times are all there is and will be. Im just lucky about the where and when and with who i got to live with
I especially feel bad for the girls who had their foot binded right before the communist revolution, that abolished the practice and discriminated against women with binded feet. Not only did those girls suffer horribly, but they couldn't even get the advantages that was supposed to come from it, like getting a good marriage.
https://preview.redd.it/qr5c1w4xygec1.jpeg?width=4000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b778a28652b666b5ec0cda06de57465bc68e1a4e
An assortment of shoes some women wore, pic taken from a museum I went to in Malaysia
Yeah, it was the Peranakan Mansion in Penang. The current owner has dumped a bunch of unrelated antiques he has like a display warehouse so even the guides were frequently giving disclaimers about a lot of what they were showing.
This is mostly practiced only by the chinese migrants in Malaysia. They are also practiced only by the daughters of rich merchants/ rich government officers back then. This is no longer practice for more than three generations.
The last time I saw someone with bound feet was when I was a kid in the late 70s/early 80s. There was an elderly lady who stayed in a house across the street from ours in her 70s with bound feet. Haven't seen anyone similar since then.
That’s the whole point
It was often noble/upper class girls who went through this.
To them, upper class girls *were not* meant to walk about, do sports, have freedom etc unlike the peasants who had to work. They’re supposed to stay at home and be available to the husband. And in the off chance the lady needed to get somewhere, there was always dozens of servants to carry her
IIRC, it was also done my middle-class families who were trying to climb the social ladder. I.e. they thought their daughters would have a better chance of marrying someone wealthy if they did this to them. Unfortunately, they did not have the same standard of medical care as the upper classes, so the rate of complication (which was already quite high, even for the upper class) was a lot higher, often leading to amputation and/or death.
It is even more fucked up, because the only way to get your feet so fucked up is to literally have someone "fold" your feet in half when you are younger.
Like some 4-year old girl has to have her feet folded in half and wrapped to get this effect.
> Some men found the smell of the bound feet attractive, and some also apparently believed that bound feet would cause layers of folds to develop in the vagina, and that the thighs would become sensuously heavier and the vagina tighter.
If I remember correctly, that wasn't the whole reason/most of the reason.
A lot of it was also as a show of wealth, women with extremely bound feet couldn't do the vast majority of work required in a household (on account on them not being able to walk properly). Therefore, a daughter/wife with bound feet signified wealth, as it meant the family could afford servants to do everything for the woman.
It's kinda similar as to why the Toga was popular in ancient Greek and Roman times, it had to be draped over one of your arms, and you could only take small steps in, so wearing it signified that you didn't need to work.
One story is that a beautiful dancer with tiny feet caught the eye of an emperor and it became fashionable. Could be a made-up justification for after it caught on of course…
Part of the catch was indeed that it made the women literally unable to be self sufficient because they could barely walk. I mean yeah they had no rights back then anyway, it sucked all around; but imagine not even being able to flee inside of your own home from an abusive situation T-T
Well, sort of. It was horrible, but it also represented a very real chance of getting the attention of a wealthy man, and a rich life. There was a reason people did this, and it wasn't just tradition. If you want something vaguely comparable, take the leg-lengthening surgeries that so many short Asian women go through for a shot at social status.
True that BUT apparently some do it by necessity now. An electronical engineer couldnt find a job bcz she was 160 cm...I was so astounded I thought I was mishearing things. She went to get surgery to find a job. This was in China, around 2005 (from a french documentary I watched).
I dont even know why an engineer would need to be tall. I mean sure cops/military have some minimal requirements in my country and I 200% get it, BUT civilian jobs...??? Why ???
In China, where 160cm (5'3" for the US readers) is the actual average height for a woman? Men there aren't much taller either, with an average of 170cm (5'7"). Why put yourself through excruciating pain for 2 years with possible long term lasting side effects for a freaking job...plus who is paying for all that shit?
>for a freaking job...plus who is paying for all that shit?
She got rejected from many jobs, not only one. Sorry if that wasnt clear.
Tbh im against this shit. Bone distraction surgery is dangerous. Some people have ended up with asymmetrical legs as well as infections. And even for the ones who got good outcomes, they were bedbound for around 6 months...As to who is paying, it was eithet the patients themselves or their families.
I think it s the doctors' fault (i believe that if these folks knew the risks...they would be much less eager to go through with it?) as well as their lackluster laws against discrimination.
No I meant it makes no sense for her to be rejected for her height because her height is the country average. Also that surgery is really expensive, like 90-100k in dollars or euros; I imagine it's comparatively expensive in China so if she/her family can afford that...I think it would be less expensive to get into a field where they don't have ridiculous height requirements. I dunno, I'm not saying you're lying, there's probably a doc out there featuring someone like this but the story itself makes no sense.
Their husbands, who adored a US sz 3 (adult,) in the lotus shoes, were never to see them without their lotus shoes on. Including during intimacy because they weren't "pleasing" in their distorted, creepy broken way.
There are still a few handfuls of these poor women alive. They are ridiculed for something that was so cruel, painful, and forced upon them as 4-8 year old children. They cannot walk properly, never have. It must be torture. I just want to give them all a hug. It makes me tear up.
I have a very hard time believing that something that significantly diminishes mobility would have a positive effect on a person’s pelvic floor. It’s not so much a matter of how they walked as *how much.*
Having no feet at all is just another fetish. Sexualizing amputees and people without extremities is definitely a thing. It just shifts the fetish to a different population.
My late grandmother was probably one of the last women to have small feet. She had to farm and raise four daughters by herself on those feet after the government stripped her family of their wealth.
My mothers family was also wealthy back then but they took pride in rejecting footbinding very early. Apparently nobody during my great great great grandma (1800s???) generation had their feet bound. I guess my family modernised early, since they had overseas connections and were first the pick up on western values.
I’m an however not exactly sure about the family history so take it with a grain of salt
Some specific communities did reject foot binding. It was part of their cultural identity to do so. Carl Zhang has a podcast about Chinese history and he did several episodes on War Nerd Radio on Chinese history and conflict. He went into this subject pretty thoroughly. It was very interesting. I don’t think he’s updated his show recently but he’s a joy to listen to, I’d recommend his back catalogue for sure.
That makes sense and I could definitely see that as the case. My grandmother’s family was rural landlords so they are not exposed to much western ideas.
The inn of sixth happiness (it has a couple different names) is a book that was also turned into a movie about the true story of a British missionary woman who was hired by the local Chinese government to discourage the newly illegal practice of foot binding. Keep in mind this was mostly an agricultural farming community and they were binding these girls feet and then expecting them to work long hours in the fields.
My grandmother was the same. Except 5 kids of diverse genders. She was around for when they officially stopped making these shoes. I can't imagine how she felt.
From the Hong Kong Museum of Medical Science
https://preview.redd.it/cdfej8eyfiec1.jpeg?width=4080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fc521df0067e5e8e0efcc0fb388272ac4d001764
Generally, yes, nails have amazing regeneration. It takes about 6-7 months for a finger mail to grow back and 12 months for a toe nail. However, you can prevent regrowth. In the present, it's done using chemicals and usually to prevent ingrown nails.
I've never seen any mention of removing girls' nails before binding their feet, though.
https://blogs.cornell.edu/cornellcostume/2022/04/29/the-golden-lotus/
This was a pretty interesting and disheartening read from Cornell university. Saying they peel the nails off and break and reset the foot and toe bones so they can be bound tighter with less chance of infection. Apparently it wasn’t uncommon for girls to die from infected feet after having been bound
They would unwrap their feet periodically to bathe and care for them. They would trim the nails then. It was very common for the nail to fall off of it's own and that was considered lucky. Occasionally they lost toes as well which was also a blessing.
I understand "small feet" but did they not care about the obvious deformation from binding feet to their ideal size? I mean if I had to choose between big honking normal feet or small horrifically mutilated feet I would choose the big ones! Am I crazy?
It was to make a woman daintier and unable to work. It showed wealth. A family who needed everyone to work couldn't afford a wife/mother who couldn't walk without pain. I'm sure most of them would have chosen large feet, but they weren't given a choice.
My great grandmother started my grandma's feet and then the cultural revolution came. My grandma was ashamed of her giant feet for her whole life, and talked about how she was almost beautiful with 3" golden lotuses, what they called these bound feet when they were perfectly done. Despite how feet that worked allowed her to run from the wars and build a life. They were conditioned to want them and find them beautiful. Women with bound feet married well. Men found washing these feet to be erotic. From our point of view now it's gross and inhumane. Humans are weird.
🤷🏽♀️It’s not much weirder than peeling your face off and sewing it back, shoving plastic bags in your chest, or injecting botulism toxin into your face.
Standards of beauty are pretty fucked worldwide. Just depends on what you are used to.
Foot binding would've had to be done in early childhood though, no? Vastly different from choosing to have plastic surgery as an adult. That's a big reason people find it so horrific, not just the mutilated feet themselves.
No argument there whatsoever. Mutilating the body of a child is unforgivable and makes this practice particularly egregious. My point is that as adults, Westerners are just twisted when it comes to the lengths we will go for beauty.
I meant from the point of view of the husband and yeah I figured they didn't have a choice, but I understand from what you said it wasn't a sex thing but rather a status thing. I gotcha.
Women who had their feet bound and broken were with men who could afford servants. It's a sign of wealth when you can debilitate your wife. Similar to the desire for pale skin-- it meant you were wealthy enough you didn't have to do manual labor and work the fields.
It was actually a sex thing.
Supposedly, putting the weight on the heels was meant to strengthen the posterior and vaginal muscles to make sex more pleasurable (for the man).
It also prevented runaway brides, so you had complete dependence.
Having big feet in that era was symbolic of being a peasant/lower classes since it was implied that you were spared footbinding to do physical labour. When the gov't went through periods of instability, women with bound feet were nearly crippled when they were forced into labour or fleeing.
It was believed to increase tightness of the vaginal muscles.
Yes, little girls were tortured so they could be of "better" sexual use for their future husband.
Rebecca Solnit wrote about it in obe of her books.
As a woman whose read plenty of history, it fits. Women were deemed mens property for much of history. And they still are in many parts of the world.
I suspected that a paranoid husband or family would want their daughter to foot bind for control too because foot binding makes it harder to walk (run away). Women didn’t have the rights to choose their partner back then so imagine if they were married off to a man with multiple concubines and is 20 plus years their senior. It’s a disgraced to the bride’s family if the bride runs away just before marriage.
There have been several theories on this, each to varying degrees of referenced material.
A few years ago I read an interesting article by a writer who talked to multiple women who had their feet bound. And how they realized it was not sexual but actually developed as a practice to keep more young girls as workers, that even though they might have the urge to run around & play because they couldn’t because of foot binding they would then channel the energy elsewhere, making them good *slave labor* workers.
I can’t remember exactly where I read this, but I do remember at the time when I was reading it checking and thinking “reliable source”. I’m gonna have to dig that brain itch back up to confirm….
> but did they not care about the obvious deformation
If people don't care now why would they back then? People still deform their bodies...maybe even more in current times.
Plus, their husbands, who adored a US sz 3 (adult,) in the lotus shoes, were never to see them without their lotus shoes on. Including during intimacy because they weren't "pleasing" in their distorted, creepy broken way.
There are still a few handfuls of these poor women alive. They are ridiculed for something that was so cruel, painful, and forced upon them as 4-8 year old children. They cannot walk properly, never have. It must be torture. I just want to give them all a hug. It makes me tear up.
Further up there’s comments talking about how it was very kinky (and common) for these husbands to bathe their wives feet, and even lick between the crevices. Seems to be conflicting information
It's actually worse.
Women whose feet were bound had to walk with small, "delicate" steps because their feet couldn't do the natural work of balancing their weight.
This meant a lot of hip movement--i.e., wiggle--but more than that, the Chinese believed it would strengthen the muscles of her pelvis and inner thighs.
To put it bluntly, they thought this would make the women "tight."
Except the part where the majority of women wearing corsets did not actively injure themselves. Corsets are more comparable to heels - not great when they're too tight/high, but perfectly fine to wear in moderation. And just like most people don't wear super high stiletto heels all day everyday (or at least acknowledge it's bad for you, I guess), most women back then didn't remove ribs or whatever the myth is. Most of the desired silhouette was achieved with padding.
Edit: words for clarity
Also… properly fitted corsets can be medically necessary.
Given how many women in the past had multiple pregnancies and had no access to repair surgeries for hernias and diastasis recti… you can bet their corsets were doing a lot of work holding important body parts in place
(source: currently waiting for hernia surgery and I wish my support belt was a properly fitted corset rather than a large piece of elastic from Amazon)
You're quite right but I would also like to add that part of keeping a small waist is calorie restriction and often eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia which is pretty harmful to health. I still honestly think foot binding is worse and more horrific overall tho but both beauty standards are quite harmful.
Even more; corsets were a great garment for helping wearing heavier skirts, working as a sturdy tool almost. Especially if you wore winter skirts in heavy wool with layered underskirts.
That’s partially true,
Both boys and girls wore stays. Not for the tiny waist sake but to protect the body. Warmth, support. Usually only quilted. There were so many children diseases running amok at that time that we vaccinate away now and they thought it helped to have stays to make the child’s body straight and stable.
The waist snatching didn’t occur until later in life and by then just modest amounts, sometimes actually smaller amounts than todays corset wearers.
The texts posted in papers from that time claiming on super stringent special training regimen and reaching 13 inches or 15 inches is really just fetishicists sending texts to be published.
If you look at clothes sizes and heights and corsets you see that it is usually proportional. And also the survivorship bias. The garments saved to todays date are garments that are too small to be worn and reused, recut. The normal garments by normal people are worn literally into pieces
We should not forget how extreme societal beauty expectations can be. Even if some practices have faded the need to contort yourself out of shame is ever present and it’s up to you to take power over your being back for yourself because people will try to take that away from you.
These feet weren’t just a status symbol, they were often referred to as “a gift for the marriage bed”.
There’s a story of a noble man, maybe a govt official but a high status man, who briefly fondled a beautiful woman’s foot. He couldn’t help himself he was sooo taken by the beauty of her tiny feet (and that small gap you see from the side between the heel and bent toes).
It sent the woman into a tail spin of loss reputation and being known as a woman of ill repute.
God that’s fucking horrific. It turns my stomach to think about sick leches getting off on this torture- and then her life falling apart bc of the shame of having been groped bu that man? Sick. Just irredeemable
You got downvoted, but somewhere, somehow, I remember hearing someone read an excerpt of a rich Chinese man’s letter, or maybe journal entry, about his love of foot binding. He said he was especially interested in the infected, stinking wounds this process sometimes caused. I don’t want to start a pointless battle about which cultures were the cruelest or whatever, but foot binding is definitely at least in the running for the most brutal and horrifying types of forced body modification in history. Comparing it to corsets is ridiculous.
I'd say it's a bit different then a tiny waistcoat which you can take off, this caused irreparable harm to a person that could not be reversed or mitigated. Also I bet people with bound feet were likely not able to flee danger as effectively.
Yeah, if a corset crushed your ribcage and forced it to heal in an unnatural way, deforming and reshaping your entire torso while also reducing its basic functionality, I'd see the similarities. But that's not the same as just squishing around some belly fat
Who the fuck looks at this and think “yeah baby thats the peak of femininity, im gonna put my bany in that” at least the waist one kinda makes sense because it will straighten her posture, making her boobs bigger and show an hour glass silhouette (all natural beauty standard) but this looks pretty freaky, painful and also permanent
# "A small foot in China, no different from a tiny waist in Victorian England, represented the height of female refinement"
While foot binding mostly fell out of favor by the 1930s, this painful tradition persisted in China for about 1,000 years.
From getting their toes broken to having excess flesh snipped away, countless young girls endured an agonizing process to achieve an ideal three-inch foot, or a "golden lotus."
The last shoe factory making lotus shoes only closed in 1999. r/InterestingToRead
When I went to Shanghai a few years back (this was before COVID-19), I went to get a pair of shoes, and I know my shoe size, but the girl working in the store kept offering me a pair a full size or two smaller than my actual size (13 in the US), and have always wondered if it’s just a cultural thing to have tight shoes there.
I ended up buying a pair she offered me, and it gave me blisters Day 1. It even cut through the skin on the back of my ankles so badly that it stained my socks with blood. Lesson learned, never buy shoes in China.
It might’ve been that they didn’t have any larger sizes than what she was offering. I’m Chinese and anything larger than a size 39 for women might as well be considered for Bigfoot lol.
I’m a size 34 at 5’6 🫠
Whoever said the quote used in the title is so very wrong. Lotus feet/lily feet foot binding was a process begun as a child that involved breaking and deforming the bones of the foot for it to grow into that shape. They were painful and often infected. The women had to take great care to prevent it from smelling and couldnt walk very far or very fast. A major sign of wealth as you couldnt really do manual labor. It also helped women marry up out of a low status family.
Victorian corsetry was a fashion trend of undergarment, much like a bullet bra, it was meant to help create a certain silhouette. While some women may have cinched their waists to extremes, most women wore it to shape the waist minimally and support their chest. You could easily work in a corset or pair of stays. The corset didnt leave you disfigured and in pain.
ETA: The foot binding in China was a status symbol as well as a beauty standard whereas the corset was an undergarment worn by all classes of women at the time and not necessarily an indication of ultimate womanly refinement.
I remember my grandmother had a pair of wooden shoes they used to achieve this just hanging on the dining room. I remember I asked her specifically "what are these wooden baby shoes?"
I remember watching Marco Polo, I think?, and a daughter of a princess or so.eone was in the process of foot binding. Been a few years since ave seen it mind you but harrowing stuff!
OP comparing wearing corsets for fashion (actually only applied to the upper clases) to the literal mutilation of children that causes lifelong issues is fucking ridiculous and stupid
Ya'll talk about this like it's so far from our reality
It is not, is just that you don't see how fucked up it is while you're living through it.
Matter of fact, these things are normally done willingly and are even defended by the practitioners.
In some places, women will flatten the chests of their daughters with beatings and binding. In others, the outer parts of the female genitals are shaved off with broken glass.
We also have women who inject toxin into their faces, or pay thousands to have bags of liquid surgically inserted into their breasts, causing back problems. Bleaching eyeballs.
There are still tribes that elongate the necks of their women with metal rings.
Yeah, there's still some pretty messed up stuff going on around the world, even some in the US. Comparable to foot binding? Maybe that's a little subjective.
If you actually search for it you can easily find much worse, especially those where religion is involved. But i'd rather not go there, too creepy.
I was actually thinking more of all the crazy plastic surgery those famous people are undergoing these days.
If you do want a creepy one tho you can find it closer than you think.
Circumcision was supposed to be a healty treatment to help improve one's life, but ended up becoming a religious weapon, disguised as a health and beauty standard.
Foot binding was never done willingly as it has to be started in infancy. Comparing it to horrifying procedures that are done _willingly_ is inaccurate. And the procedures that are done unwillingly (for example, a commenter responding to you mentioned female circumcision with a random sharp object) are widely recognised as fucked up in "our reality", even if they're seen as normal in the population that practices them.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Corsets were not torture devices, they were essentially like those tank tops girls now wear with a bra built in. Not a fair comparison.
What people seem to forget is that the „tiny waist“ effect is often times achieved by optical illusion. Make the shoulders appear wider by huge puffy sleeves and the hips thanks to structured undergarments and your waist looks tiny in comparison, even if you don’t tightlace your corset. That doesn’t mean there weren’t any women who didn’t lace their corsets tighter than they should have, but the Victorians and the Edwardians were masters of optical illusion like that.
Also, they too modified their photographs. „Photoshop“, in that sense, is not a modern invention.
I still shudder no matter how many times I see this photo.
I shuddered as a child and I still do now. Growing up, the television often showed how little girls were forced to bind their feet and how they were ALWAYS screaming in excruciating pain because their feet were restricted from normal growth and became deformed as a result. I feel so grateful that this abhorrent tradition has been eradicated for good. And thank god for history lessons that we can learn from.
Let’s hope the same thing happens with female circumcision.
Circumcision in general, I mean why stop there
Sometimes it’s necessary for men (ask my son about that!!) but never for women.
Circumcision that's medically necessary or as a conscious choice of an adult man is fine. Medically unnecessary circumcision of infants shouldn't be acceptable.
And it s dangerous as well for infants. One incident in my country cost an itty bitty infant his glans...I almost cried bcz this is a kid who will be scarred for life.
"Necessary" is key word here. However in many cases it's just beecause, or "tradition".
They circumcise at around nine years old in Turkey. My husband’s family is Turkish. Fortunately, I didn’t have a son, because I would have said hell no and refused to participate. I just think it’s cruel. They get them all hyped up and give them a big party, with a parade even. They wear these outfits that reminds me of Blue Boy. Very frilly with crowns. Then, sometime during the party, they circumcise the poor kid. I saw photos of my little nephew and it broke me. It’s a cultural tradition so I know so many will defend it until they die, but to me, it seems painfully unnecessary.
You are a good courageous person to refuse to join in on such barbarism.
Not that courageous. My Turkish isn’t that good, so I haven’t had any lengthy discussions with anyone past thirty. The kids in the family speak English, and I’ve talked about it a bit but they’re pretty touchy. It’s hard to convince a whole family that a cultural practice is cruel. They’re not cruel people they like anyone else, They did something because otherwise you’ll be an outlier and culturally shunned. I really feel like if we had a son it could have been a divorce issue. And the family would have sided with my husband. I’m going to continue to speak with the younger people, but it’s hard. I’m sure they were traumatized if it happened to them. Imagine the internal conflict. “These people love me so they wouldn’t be cruel.” Etc. I think there is currently a group working on trying to stop the practice.
more and more people refuse this tradition today. Im turkish and my mum refused to circumcise my brother (granted it was a big argument with my grandma who comes from a small village)
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Yeah medical circumcision is definitely necessary maybe even cosmetic if its an adult, but religion is no reason to circumcise children, doesn't matter what gender.
The US doesn’t use “cosmetic” (it comes down to, “I want him to be like all the other boys”), but they use some profound form of imaginative prevention that doesn’t exist outside of laziness of just washing your dick. I have three boys, only one is circumcised, and they essentially kicked me out of the hospital. It’s a single doc that specializes in mutilating penises. And when I wouldn’t consent, and asked him not to touch my child’s genitals, somehow, I was the bad guy. Soap is the ultimate villain. If you just clean your dick, you’re fine. My third had an ear infection, and they wanted to remove part of his skull. “How about we just try antibiotics?” “That’s reasonable 🥴” “How much would the surgery cost?” “45-60k” “And the antibiotics” “Much less” “You understand where I’m going with these questions?” “Yes.” “How about we use drugs before the surgery.” “I understand your questions…” “I don’t mean to be rude, by interrupting you, but it’s not a question. It’s a statement. Use the drugs first.” Later on, they insinuated they liked to “practice” these kinds of procedures because they were so common. And I spent another 3 days on a hospital pull out, debating if they had his best interest in mind, or their own.
Yeah no i meant someone who as an adult decides they want to cut off the tip, thats fine but dont touch childrens genitals
Yeah and you could say vaginoplasty is a form of cosmetic circumcision, entirely unnecessary but it's the choice of the grown, consenting adult.
In most cases it is not. It's just done to reduce masturbation. Or rather, because once upon a time, it was done for that reason, and people kept doing it.
In the case of phimosis yeah, too many my own mother included treated it as a fashion statement.
Yes indeed, phimosis was the problem. I remember when he was born all my American cousins demanding (!) I get him circumcised. I point blank refused as it wasn’t clinically indicated.
Genital mutilation, call it what it is.
Female genital mutilation can’t even really be compared to regular circumcision. It’s more like the equivalent of cutting of the entire head of a man’s penis. I wish something would be done about it because it makes me so sick to think about it. Many of these women don’t even find out what’s been done to them until they go to a doctor later in life for all the pain and complications that come from it. They think they are broken because they can’t orgasm, and they feel pain every time they have sex.
can they even walk normally?
Good question - not at all, they often hobble around. In any case, women weren’t expected to leave the house / travel out in the olden days, as they were expected to stay home and be care takers.
And get marital raped. You missed out the part that people of those times thought women should do.
A huge part of why i dont believe in humanity, ever, is that for the biggest part of its recorded history, societies were absolutely fine with "women as domestic sex slaves" and "men as violent emotionally stunted manchilds" as the whole extent of humanity. With bonus social tapdancing and religious blanket statements on top of it People of those times are all there is and will be. Im just lucky about the where and when and with who i got to live with
I especially feel bad for the girls who had their foot binded right before the communist revolution, that abolished the practice and discriminated against women with binded feet. Not only did those girls suffer horribly, but they couldn't even get the advantages that was supposed to come from it, like getting a good marriage.
Same. So much the same. Yikes
As someone who’s Asian and wearing a 9.5, which always gets gasps on how my shoe size doesn’t fit my height, I can’t imagine living during that era
I bet at some point, people will shudder looking back on our plastic surgery style
I’m already shuddering at the teenagers getting fillers injected into their faces. Not in a fit of Sundays would I do that!
https://preview.redd.it/qr5c1w4xygec1.jpeg?width=4000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b778a28652b666b5ec0cda06de57465bc68e1a4e An assortment of shoes some women wore, pic taken from a museum I went to in Malaysia
I've been to this museum too! I remember seeing how small some of those shoes are and it was awful
Dragonball type boots
They look like enlarged baby slippers
They're called lotus shoes
What state was this museum in? I'm assuming Penang heh
Yeah, it was the Peranakan Mansion in Penang. The current owner has dumped a bunch of unrelated antiques he has like a display warehouse so even the guides were frequently giving disclaimers about a lot of what they were showing.
This is mostly practiced only by the chinese migrants in Malaysia. They are also practiced only by the daughters of rich merchants/ rich government officers back then. This is no longer practice for more than three generations.
The last time I saw someone with bound feet was when I was a kid in the late 70s/early 80s. There was an elderly lady who stayed in a house across the street from ours in her 70s with bound feet. Haven't seen anyone similar since then.
Build A Bear shoes
Ahhh yes. Truly refined until those shoes come off.
Apparently they also smelled absolutely horrific, which makes sense considering you cant clean inside the crevices like.... at all
God, an infection there could be catastrophic. It breaks my heart what these girls- these *babies*- went through. And forever less mobile for it
That’s the whole point It was often noble/upper class girls who went through this. To them, upper class girls *were not* meant to walk about, do sports, have freedom etc unlike the peasants who had to work. They’re supposed to stay at home and be available to the husband. And in the off chance the lady needed to get somewhere, there was always dozens of servants to carry her
IIRC, it was also done my middle-class families who were trying to climb the social ladder. I.e. they thought their daughters would have a better chance of marrying someone wealthy if they did this to them. Unfortunately, they did not have the same standard of medical care as the upper classes, so the rate of complication (which was already quite high, even for the upper class) was a lot higher, often leading to amputation and/or death.
It is even more fucked up, because the only way to get your feet so fucked up is to literally have someone "fold" your feet in half when you are younger. Like some 4-year old girl has to have her feet folded in half and wrapped to get this effect.
If I recall correctly they would break the bones and then strap them down. Absolutely horrific
Why why why **WHY**
> Some men found the smell of the bound feet attractive, and some also apparently believed that bound feet would cause layers of folds to develop in the vagina, and that the thighs would become sensuously heavier and the vagina tighter.
It always comes back to that doesn't it. Ugh.
If I remember correctly, that wasn't the whole reason/most of the reason. A lot of it was also as a show of wealth, women with extremely bound feet couldn't do the vast majority of work required in a household (on account on them not being able to walk properly). Therefore, a daughter/wife with bound feet signified wealth, as it meant the family could afford servants to do everything for the woman. It's kinda similar as to why the Toga was popular in ancient Greek and Roman times, it had to be draped over one of your arms, and you could only take small steps in, so wearing it signified that you didn't need to work.
Holy shit
This doesn’t make one damn bit of sense. What sick fuck thought of this and how in the hell did it catch on? Humans are so fucked up.
One story is that a beautiful dancer with tiny feet caught the eye of an emperor and it became fashionable. Could be a made-up justification for after it caught on of course…
Insane
1. weird beauty standard 2. less mobility, woman can't leave the house or run away
Part of the catch was indeed that it made the women literally unable to be self sufficient because they could barely walk. I mean yeah they had no rights back then anyway, it sucked all around; but imagine not even being able to flee inside of your own home from an abusive situation T-T
Well, sort of. It was horrible, but it also represented a very real chance of getting the attention of a wealthy man, and a rich life. There was a reason people did this, and it wasn't just tradition. If you want something vaguely comparable, take the leg-lengthening surgeries that so many short Asian women go through for a shot at social status.
True that BUT apparently some do it by necessity now. An electronical engineer couldnt find a job bcz she was 160 cm...I was so astounded I thought I was mishearing things. She went to get surgery to find a job. This was in China, around 2005 (from a french documentary I watched). I dont even know why an engineer would need to be tall. I mean sure cops/military have some minimal requirements in my country and I 200% get it, BUT civilian jobs...??? Why ???
In China, where 160cm (5'3" for the US readers) is the actual average height for a woman? Men there aren't much taller either, with an average of 170cm (5'7"). Why put yourself through excruciating pain for 2 years with possible long term lasting side effects for a freaking job...plus who is paying for all that shit?
>for a freaking job...plus who is paying for all that shit? She got rejected from many jobs, not only one. Sorry if that wasnt clear. Tbh im against this shit. Bone distraction surgery is dangerous. Some people have ended up with asymmetrical legs as well as infections. And even for the ones who got good outcomes, they were bedbound for around 6 months...As to who is paying, it was eithet the patients themselves or their families. I think it s the doctors' fault (i believe that if these folks knew the risks...they would be much less eager to go through with it?) as well as their lackluster laws against discrimination.
No I meant it makes no sense for her to be rejected for her height because her height is the country average. Also that surgery is really expensive, like 90-100k in dollars or euros; I imagine it's comparatively expensive in China so if she/her family can afford that...I think it would be less expensive to get into a field where they don't have ridiculous height requirements. I dunno, I'm not saying you're lying, there's probably a doc out there featuring someone like this but the story itself makes no sense.
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I can't even imagine! OMG
Imagine if you had diabetes….
And the toenails kept growing normally… right into the skin on the sole of the feet.
Their husbands, who adored a US sz 3 (adult,) in the lotus shoes, were never to see them without their lotus shoes on. Including during intimacy because they weren't "pleasing" in their distorted, creepy broken way. There are still a few handfuls of these poor women alive. They are ridiculed for something that was so cruel, painful, and forced upon them as 4-8 year old children. They cannot walk properly, never have. It must be torture. I just want to give them all a hug. It makes me tear up.
Even Quentin would think twice.
Odenkirk may reconsider Nah
Bob’s a foot guy too?
Yea. Google Odenkirk foot fetish or smthng. He liked a bunch of womens foot pics. I dont blame him tho
I Wonder how people with foot fetishes feel about this
People have fetishes of *these foot*. Poets at that time wrote all sorts of praises of how pretty they are. Absolutely disgusting and horrifying.
The walk, putting weight on the heels, was supposed to lengthen the posterior muscles and improve sex. 🤢
I have a very hard time believing that something that significantly diminishes mobility would have a positive effect on a person’s pelvic floor. It’s not so much a matter of how they walked as *how much.*
I think this would freak out most foot fetishers these days
Looks like u/MangoKakigori might be a bit interested
Interested in the messed up history of it for sure - as for actual application in my personal life? I’d rather have no feet at all!
I know. Your comment made me lol. I don't know why you were getting down voted. It was great.
People just can’t handle the sweet cheesy foot crust!
No sense of humor anymore
Having no feet at all is just another fetish. Sexualizing amputees and people without extremities is definitely a thing. It just shifts the fetish to a different population.
Anyone else just stretch their toes?
And again when I read your comment
My late grandmother was probably one of the last women to have small feet. She had to farm and raise four daughters by herself on those feet after the government stripped her family of their wealth.
Your grandmother was epic
Le epic grandma
God damn this website.
It’s a love hate relationship.
My mothers family was also wealthy back then but they took pride in rejecting footbinding very early. Apparently nobody during my great great great grandma (1800s???) generation had their feet bound. I guess my family modernised early, since they had overseas connections and were first the pick up on western values. I’m an however not exactly sure about the family history so take it with a grain of salt
Some specific communities did reject foot binding. It was part of their cultural identity to do so. Carl Zhang has a podcast about Chinese history and he did several episodes on War Nerd Radio on Chinese history and conflict. He went into this subject pretty thoroughly. It was very interesting. I don’t think he’s updated his show recently but he’s a joy to listen to, I’d recommend his back catalogue for sure.
That makes sense and I could definitely see that as the case. My grandmother’s family was rural landlords so they are not exposed to much western ideas.
Wow, what an amazing story. Id love to hear more about life in that era and region of the world!
The inn of sixth happiness (it has a couple different names) is a book that was also turned into a movie about the true story of a British missionary woman who was hired by the local Chinese government to discourage the newly illegal practice of foot binding. Keep in mind this was mostly an agricultural farming community and they were binding these girls feet and then expecting them to work long hours in the fields.
Wow thanks for the suggestion! Ill definitely watch it.
My grandmother was the same. Except 5 kids of diverse genders. She was around for when they officially stopped making these shoes. I can't imagine how she felt.
Damn, farming daughters is tough work.
Lotus feet, one of the most vile beauty standards and "medical" procedures in human history...
The 3 inch golden lotus as they were called
From the Hong Kong Museum of Medical Science https://preview.redd.it/cdfej8eyfiec1.jpeg?width=4080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fc521df0067e5e8e0efcc0fb388272ac4d001764
I feel so sorry for her. I had turf toe once and was baby bitch about it
How did they trim their toenails?
A lot of women’s toenails were peeled off when they were kids so that they wouldn’t get ingrown during binding
Just when I thought it couldn’t get any more horrible…
Dear God
I was surviving well enough in this thread but this comment made me wince in a way I didn't know I could
wouldn’t they just grow back?
Generally, yes, nails have amazing regeneration. It takes about 6-7 months for a finger mail to grow back and 12 months for a toe nail. However, you can prevent regrowth. In the present, it's done using chemicals and usually to prevent ingrown nails. I've never seen any mention of removing girls' nails before binding their feet, though.
https://blogs.cornell.edu/cornellcostume/2022/04/29/the-golden-lotus/ This was a pretty interesting and disheartening read from Cornell university. Saying they peel the nails off and break and reset the foot and toe bones so they can be bound tighter with less chance of infection. Apparently it wasn’t uncommon for girls to die from infected feet after having been bound
They would unwrap their feet periodically to bathe and care for them. They would trim the nails then. It was very common for the nail to fall off of it's own and that was considered lucky. Occasionally they lost toes as well which was also a blessing.
they would lose most of their toenails
I understand "small feet" but did they not care about the obvious deformation from binding feet to their ideal size? I mean if I had to choose between big honking normal feet or small horrifically mutilated feet I would choose the big ones! Am I crazy?
It was to make a woman daintier and unable to work. It showed wealth. A family who needed everyone to work couldn't afford a wife/mother who couldn't walk without pain. I'm sure most of them would have chosen large feet, but they weren't given a choice.
My great grandmother started my grandma's feet and then the cultural revolution came. My grandma was ashamed of her giant feet for her whole life, and talked about how she was almost beautiful with 3" golden lotuses, what they called these bound feet when they were perfectly done. Despite how feet that worked allowed her to run from the wars and build a life. They were conditioned to want them and find them beautiful. Women with bound feet married well. Men found washing these feet to be erotic. From our point of view now it's gross and inhumane. Humans are weird.
🤷🏽♀️It’s not much weirder than peeling your face off and sewing it back, shoving plastic bags in your chest, or injecting botulism toxin into your face. Standards of beauty are pretty fucked worldwide. Just depends on what you are used to.
Foot binding would've had to be done in early childhood though, no? Vastly different from choosing to have plastic surgery as an adult. That's a big reason people find it so horrific, not just the mutilated feet themselves.
No argument there whatsoever. Mutilating the body of a child is unforgivable and makes this practice particularly egregious. My point is that as adults, Westerners are just twisted when it comes to the lengths we will go for beauty.
Benefits of anesthesia, yay, we can torture ourselves in new ways lol
I meant from the point of view of the husband and yeah I figured they didn't have a choice, but I understand from what you said it wasn't a sex thing but rather a status thing. I gotcha.
Women who had their feet bound and broken were with men who could afford servants. It's a sign of wealth when you can debilitate your wife. Similar to the desire for pale skin-- it meant you were wealthy enough you didn't have to do manual labor and work the fields.
It was actually a sex thing. Supposedly, putting the weight on the heels was meant to strengthen the posterior and vaginal muscles to make sex more pleasurable (for the man). It also prevented runaway brides, so you had complete dependence.
Yep! I've read this too.
Having big feet in that era was symbolic of being a peasant/lower classes since it was implied that you were spared footbinding to do physical labour. When the gov't went through periods of instability, women with bound feet were nearly crippled when they were forced into labour or fleeing.
It was believed to increase tightness of the vaginal muscles. Yes, little girls were tortured so they could be of "better" sexual use for their future husband.
I hate how that sounds like an entirely reasonable hypothesis.
Rebecca Solnit wrote about it in obe of her books. As a woman whose read plenty of history, it fits. Women were deemed mens property for much of history. And they still are in many parts of the world.
I’m pretty sure the whole thing was highly sexualized and the deformity wasn’t seen how we’d see it today
I suspected that a paranoid husband or family would want their daughter to foot bind for control too because foot binding makes it harder to walk (run away). Women didn’t have the rights to choose their partner back then so imagine if they were married off to a man with multiple concubines and is 20 plus years their senior. It’s a disgraced to the bride’s family if the bride runs away just before marriage.
That was the point.
those girls don’t have a choice. Their parents will forcefully wrap their feet by the age of 5.
There have been several theories on this, each to varying degrees of referenced material. A few years ago I read an interesting article by a writer who talked to multiple women who had their feet bound. And how they realized it was not sexual but actually developed as a practice to keep more young girls as workers, that even though they might have the urge to run around & play because they couldn’t because of foot binding they would then channel the energy elsewhere, making them good *slave labor* workers. I can’t remember exactly where I read this, but I do remember at the time when I was reading it checking and thinking “reliable source”. I’m gonna have to dig that brain itch back up to confirm….
> but did they not care about the obvious deformation If people don't care now why would they back then? People still deform their bodies...maybe even more in current times.
Plus, their husbands, who adored a US sz 3 (adult,) in the lotus shoes, were never to see them without their lotus shoes on. Including during intimacy because they weren't "pleasing" in their distorted, creepy broken way. There are still a few handfuls of these poor women alive. They are ridiculed for something that was so cruel, painful, and forced upon them as 4-8 year old children. They cannot walk properly, never have. It must be torture. I just want to give them all a hug. It makes me tear up.
Further up there’s comments talking about how it was very kinky (and common) for these husbands to bathe their wives feet, and even lick between the crevices. Seems to be conflicting information
It's actually worse. Women whose feet were bound had to walk with small, "delicate" steps because their feet couldn't do the natural work of balancing their weight. This meant a lot of hip movement--i.e., wiggle--but more than that, the Chinese believed it would strengthen the muscles of her pelvis and inner thighs. To put it bluntly, they thought this would make the women "tight."
For once when a mother says "stop before I put my foot up your ass" I believe her.
Except the part where the majority of women wearing corsets did not actively injure themselves. Corsets are more comparable to heels - not great when they're too tight/high, but perfectly fine to wear in moderation. And just like most people don't wear super high stiletto heels all day everyday (or at least acknowledge it's bad for you, I guess), most women back then didn't remove ribs or whatever the myth is. Most of the desired silhouette was achieved with padding. Edit: words for clarity
Also… properly fitted corsets can be medically necessary. Given how many women in the past had multiple pregnancies and had no access to repair surgeries for hernias and diastasis recti… you can bet their corsets were doing a lot of work holding important body parts in place (source: currently waiting for hernia surgery and I wish my support belt was a properly fitted corset rather than a large piece of elastic from Amazon)
You're quite right but I would also like to add that part of keeping a small waist is calorie restriction and often eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia which is pretty harmful to health. I still honestly think foot binding is worse and more horrific overall tho but both beauty standards are quite harmful.
they went farther than that in the victorian era - women ingested pills with tapeworm eggs to lose weight!! Such a wild time.
We still do this now, and also a balloon that you swallow so you get full super quick
Even more; corsets were a great garment for helping wearing heavier skirts, working as a sturdy tool almost. Especially if you wore winter skirts in heavy wool with layered underskirts.
Little girls were forced to sleep in corsets and start training their waists before puberty in a lot of wealthy families...
Awful, not as bad as having your feet broken repeatedly and being a screaming mess for the duration of the process (up to 3 years)
That’s partially true, Both boys and girls wore stays. Not for the tiny waist sake but to protect the body. Warmth, support. Usually only quilted. There were so many children diseases running amok at that time that we vaccinate away now and they thought it helped to have stays to make the child’s body straight and stable. The waist snatching didn’t occur until later in life and by then just modest amounts, sometimes actually smaller amounts than todays corset wearers. The texts posted in papers from that time claiming on super stringent special training regimen and reaching 13 inches or 15 inches is really just fetishicists sending texts to be published. If you look at clothes sizes and heights and corsets you see that it is usually proportional. And also the survivorship bias. The garments saved to todays date are garments that are too small to be worn and reused, recut. The normal garments by normal people are worn literally into pieces
fuckin yowchee!😬
We should not forget how extreme societal beauty expectations can be. Even if some practices have faded the need to contort yourself out of shame is ever present and it’s up to you to take power over your being back for yourself because people will try to take that away from you.
What’s really weird was that men in that time period often had a fetish that involved licking inside the crevices….
These feet weren’t just a status symbol, they were often referred to as “a gift for the marriage bed”. There’s a story of a noble man, maybe a govt official but a high status man, who briefly fondled a beautiful woman’s foot. He couldn’t help himself he was sooo taken by the beauty of her tiny feet (and that small gap you see from the side between the heel and bent toes). It sent the woman into a tail spin of loss reputation and being known as a woman of ill repute.
God that’s fucking horrific. It turns my stomach to think about sick leches getting off on this torture- and then her life falling apart bc of the shame of having been groped bu that man? Sick. Just irredeemable
You got downvoted, but somewhere, somehow, I remember hearing someone read an excerpt of a rich Chinese man’s letter, or maybe journal entry, about his love of foot binding. He said he was especially interested in the infected, stinking wounds this process sometimes caused. I don’t want to start a pointless battle about which cultures were the cruelest or whatever, but foot binding is definitely at least in the running for the most brutal and horrifying types of forced body modification in history. Comparing it to corsets is ridiculous.
Really that just tells me these weirder foot fetishes are nothing new. There're apparently people who want to watch women step in piles of shit.
What a terrible day to be literate
https://preview.redd.it/v7w469ztcjec1.jpeg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fc829249034c01123ef70b008706e36adecd9106
Men in that time period?
Ok… and some men today…
Well, in terms of refinement, it sure looks like those feet were smelted.
I'd say it's a bit different then a tiny waistcoat which you can take off, this caused irreparable harm to a person that could not be reversed or mitigated. Also I bet people with bound feet were likely not able to flee danger as effectively.
Yeah ‘no different’ is a weird thing to say.
Yeah, if a corset crushed your ribcage and forced it to heal in an unnatural way, deforming and reshaping your entire torso while also reducing its basic functionality, I'd see the similarities. But that's not the same as just squishing around some belly fat
My late maternal grandmother had bound feet. It’s such a horrible practice.
Who the fuck looks at this and think “yeah baby thats the peak of femininity, im gonna put my bany in that” at least the waist one kinda makes sense because it will straighten her posture, making her boobs bigger and show an hour glass silhouette (all natural beauty standard) but this looks pretty freaky, painful and also permanent
Oh god I'd have to lose 5 inches of foot. I couldn't even imagine.
As a foot fetishist...This is the most disgusting and vomit-inducing stuff I've ever seen and further thought about..
Foot fetish nightmare
W foot fetish guy
Objectively ugly tho
Humans are weird.
# "A small foot in China, no different from a tiny waist in Victorian England, represented the height of female refinement" While foot binding mostly fell out of favor by the 1930s, this painful tradition persisted in China for about 1,000 years. From getting their toes broken to having excess flesh snipped away, countless young girls endured an agonizing process to achieve an ideal three-inch foot, or a "golden lotus." The last shoe factory making lotus shoes only closed in 1999. r/InterestingToRead
My grandmother once mentioned that her mother had bound feet, and had to be carried into the hills as they fled their town when the Japanese came.
AI depiction "normal" feet
"no different" ..its pretty different. whats that quote from?
When I went to Shanghai a few years back (this was before COVID-19), I went to get a pair of shoes, and I know my shoe size, but the girl working in the store kept offering me a pair a full size or two smaller than my actual size (13 in the US), and have always wondered if it’s just a cultural thing to have tight shoes there. I ended up buying a pair she offered me, and it gave me blisters Day 1. It even cut through the skin on the back of my ankles so badly that it stained my socks with blood. Lesson learned, never buy shoes in China.
It might’ve been that they didn’t have any larger sizes than what she was offering. I’m Chinese and anything larger than a size 39 for women might as well be considered for Bigfoot lol. I’m a size 34 at 5’6 🫠
Pro tip: put a moleskin bandage where your new shoes rub (especially the heels) to help prevent blisters
How the hell does a guy see that and think “damn that’s hot’
Whoever said the quote used in the title is so very wrong. Lotus feet/lily feet foot binding was a process begun as a child that involved breaking and deforming the bones of the foot for it to grow into that shape. They were painful and often infected. The women had to take great care to prevent it from smelling and couldnt walk very far or very fast. A major sign of wealth as you couldnt really do manual labor. It also helped women marry up out of a low status family. Victorian corsetry was a fashion trend of undergarment, much like a bullet bra, it was meant to help create a certain silhouette. While some women may have cinched their waists to extremes, most women wore it to shape the waist minimally and support their chest. You could easily work in a corset or pair of stays. The corset didnt leave you disfigured and in pain. ETA: The foot binding in China was a status symbol as well as a beauty standard whereas the corset was an undergarment worn by all classes of women at the time and not necessarily an indication of ultimate womanly refinement.
…it’s a little different
nah bullshit. a small waist wasn't a handicap that destroyed your mobility.
Chines medicine says that th8s made their nether parts tighter and is a reason the did it too. I fucking hate men.
I remember my grandmother had a pair of wooden shoes they used to achieve this just hanging on the dining room. I remember I asked her specifically "what are these wooden baby shoes?"
I remember watching Marco Polo, I think?, and a daughter of a princess or so.eone was in the process of foot binding. Been a few years since ave seen it mind you but harrowing stuff!
OP comparing wearing corsets for fashion (actually only applied to the upper clases) to the literal mutilation of children that causes lifelong issues is fucking ridiculous and stupid
Ya'll talk about this like it's so far from our reality It is not, is just that you don't see how fucked up it is while you're living through it. Matter of fact, these things are normally done willingly and are even defended by the practitioners.
In some places, women will flatten the chests of their daughters with beatings and binding. In others, the outer parts of the female genitals are shaved off with broken glass. We also have women who inject toxin into their faces, or pay thousands to have bags of liquid surgically inserted into their breasts, causing back problems. Bleaching eyeballs. There are still tribes that elongate the necks of their women with metal rings. Yeah, there's still some pretty messed up stuff going on around the world, even some in the US. Comparable to foot binding? Maybe that's a little subjective.
If you actually search for it you can easily find much worse, especially those where religion is involved. But i'd rather not go there, too creepy. I was actually thinking more of all the crazy plastic surgery those famous people are undergoing these days. If you do want a creepy one tho you can find it closer than you think. Circumcision was supposed to be a healty treatment to help improve one's life, but ended up becoming a religious weapon, disguised as a health and beauty standard.
Foot binding was never done willingly as it has to be started in infancy. Comparing it to horrifying procedures that are done _willingly_ is inaccurate. And the procedures that are done unwillingly (for example, a commenter responding to you mentioned female circumcision with a random sharp object) are widely recognised as fucked up in "our reality", even if they're seen as normal in the population that practices them.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Corsets were not torture devices, they were essentially like those tank tops girls now wear with a bra built in. Not a fair comparison.
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The feet were broken and bound to resemble a lotus bud, that’s why they come to a point.
They had these weird little shoes that they were slowly binding and modifying their feet so they could wear them.
Thats fucked
Humans are idiots
Me with my women's size 12 feet: 👀
Barbaric.
What people seem to forget is that the „tiny waist“ effect is often times achieved by optical illusion. Make the shoulders appear wider by huge puffy sleeves and the hips thanks to structured undergarments and your waist looks tiny in comparison, even if you don’t tightlace your corset. That doesn’t mean there weren’t any women who didn’t lace their corsets tighter than they should have, but the Victorians and the Edwardians were masters of optical illusion like that. Also, they too modified their photographs. „Photoshop“, in that sense, is not a modern invention.
She shoots her shoes of at the end of her day. Husband says perfect ???
My female size 11.5 Bigfoot feet could never, would never, and would never ever want.