Ouch!

Chinese lotus shoes for bound feet. About 4" long. What a torture.

 

That hurts my size 11s just looking at them. Yike!

 

There was a programme about foot binding on tv which prompted me to read about it online, It was absolutely barbaric, The bones in the feet would be broken as the feet tried to grow and were restricted by the tight wrappings, How on earth they could think feet treated this way were beautiful I don't know, they looked like animals hooves.

Thank god this practice was banned and the torture stopped because torture is what it was.

 

Cannot imagine.
Other things to say but I won't...

 

What societies do in the name of beauty.......specially to women...is often cruel.

Wasp waist anyone ???

 

Yes at one time it was the fashion to have an impossibly tiny waist, The difference was that women inflicted this on themselves whereas foot binding was done to little children who had no say in the matter......
Yes it was very cruel, Beats me how they thought normal size feet were ugly and these tiny deformed feet beautiful.

 

" women inflicted this on themselves"
I wonder if that's really true ??

 

Well no one forced them to lace themselves into tight corsets, They did it because it was the fashion.

 

Don't be naive ...Fashion forced them........fashion dictated by men ......men who didn't care that a 14 inch waist on a 23 year old woman was hurting her internally .

 

Health effects of the corset
European women throughout the Victorian era wore tightly laced corsets that were assuredly uncomfortable and in many cases actually injurious to health.

*****Young girls were put in corsets to grow accustomed to the restrictiveness.**
YA,,,,,,,,,like no one forced that upon them !!!!..........

Many illustrations and contemporary references from the turn of the century depict the painful process of tightening the corset. The corset wearer would lie on her stomach on the floor, while someone else put a foot on her back and pulled the laces.

****Women who perpetually wore tight corsets suffered from a variety of health problems, including deformed spines and ribcages, difficulty breathing, and compression of the internal organs.****

Around the turn of the century, several corset makers introduced new corsets designed by doctors. These aimed to support a woman's figure without undue compression.



Read more: http://www.madehow.com/Volume-7/Corset.html#ixzz4GaCaGzbi

 

I'm not arguing that these corsets didn't cause health problems, I'm sure they did but it was the fashion to have a small waist and women would suffer anything to be fashionable then just as they do now.

 

Nobody better bring up high heels.

Oh, wait... I just did.

 

LOL, I almost did at one point, How on earth do they walk on 5 and 6 inch heels?

 

I can manage 3"... 4" rise is just too high... unless the whole sole is elevated, as with platforms, but... the shoes have to fit perfectly and tightly, to wear with any degree of safety. But I digress...

 

I tend to wear sneakers. MS related nerve damage means I can't stand up in the heels anyway. I'm so sad. Not.

 

I'm thoroughly ashamed of my vanity amd insecurity that motivates me to wear heels. I'm working on it...

 

Don't work to hard on it....
one, you're petite & a little extra height makes you feel good.
Two...I doubt you wear them while painting......& you've been painting a lot as of late !

 

Chinese foot-binding was actually outlawed in the 1910s, I believe, when the new Chinese Republic was established and the fall of the Qing Dynasty occurred.

China wanted to be seen by the West as embracing modern ideals and modern ways of thinking. The Chinese queues (ponytails) were chopped off, clothing styles changed, and footbinding was outlawed, but that said, it died a surprisingly slow death. Even into the 1920s and 1930s, they still had women who tried to bind their daughters' feet, and the government had to send officials into the little towns and villages (the HUNDREDS OF THEM that there are in China), and re-educate these people on WHY footbinding was so undesirable in the "New China". But old habits die hard.

But then, we look at footbinding and think how barbaric it is, but as the others pointed out - corsets were no better.

To be fair, corsets to a certain extent, DID serve a purpose - remember that women didn't wear bras back then. The fad for what was called 'tight-lacing' (ULTRA-SUPER-MEGA-RESTRICTIVE cut-off-your-air-supply corset-lacing) came in during the later 1800s, and it was then that people REALLY started to stop and say: "This is getting a bit ridiculous!"

I mean ALL women wore corsets back then. The lady of the house. The kitchenmaid. The housemaids. The husband's secretary at work. They all wore them.

The point of the corset was to support the body and the bosom. Once corsets started going out of style in like, the 1920s and 30s, they were replaced by bras.

But that said, women still force themselves into impossibly uncomfortable clothes to this day. Skinny jeans, anyone?

 

Yes it's like I said, Women will suffer anything to be fashionable, I can remember wearing high heels and my feet were killing me but I still wore them, I can remember having Sciatica because my jeans were so tight, So tight I could barely sit down properly but.......It was the fashion.

Good grief I just remembered how I used to have to lay on the bed in order to be able to zip up my jeans.

It's comfort first these days!