Posted on April 15, 2020
Why did they bind the feet of children in China?
Chinese foot binding had been a particularly crude process which persisted primarily in rural China until recently. This was primarily a social practice. The practice involved the very restricted binding of the feet of little girls and the keeping of them bound to keep the feet from growing. This is a tortuous process and led to significant deformity and handicap. Children who ended up afflicted by this practice had to wear specifically created and produced footwear. There was quite a skill to this and the footwear that these children were required to use were embellished very purposely and exotically. The actual cause of the process of Chinese foot binding is that smaller feet were considered much more appealing in females. A much better price can be demanded by the family of the bride for the dowry. The actual practice was very common in rural China for several centuries and only recently began to die out about 100 years ago as a result of social pressures that were brought to bear on the technique a result of the pain and impairment that it was causing.
There are still a number of older Chinese woman alive right now with these disfigured feet from the foot binding when they were younger. The tragedy is caused by what happened once they were young children they do need to keep their feet bound because it is more at ease than not having them bound since the deformity has become so great. There have been a great deal of cultural and psychological analysis of the foot binding primarily in the framework of it being performed too please the male as opposed to being of any benefit to the woman. Of contemporary curiosity is the present practice of females using tight fitting high heel footwear has drawn characteristics with Chinese foot binding. Some of the cultural and psychological investigation of that have definitely discussed the comparison among the two practices and who actually benefits from the practice. Both of them are painful, both produce foot deformity, and both are for the benefit of males.