Featured Foot binding shoes?

I don't believe it was done for that reason. Many people in China in that era were extremely poor and had little to no life prospects for getting out of their lot in life.

When comments were made in court of what those in high up positions find desirable, it is reasonable to try and emulate that in hopes of catching their attention and attaining favour. Originally, a mere comment about the 'most likely naturally' tiny feet of some court dancer(s), expanded into becoming a widespread practice of mutilation because it's more a tradition of how one 'should be' or what they should 'aspire to' more so than a means to 'keep someone down'.

Much like the original Grimm brothers version of Cinderella when the step-sisters could not fit their foot into the slipper, so cut their own toes off in an attempt to fit into the shoe, for the that was their means to higher society.

 

I'm trying to think of anything men have had to do that impaired their health or led to mutilation just to be able to dress in a way that made them socially acceptable. And I don't want to hear about neckties.

 

Eunuchs existed for thousands of years. It enabled them to be in the king’s court and not be a threat to the king. And they wouldn’t sleep with the queen.

 

Not being a threat to the king. There you have it. But it wasn't about what they had to do just to be able to get dressed in the morning.

 

Clue me in please? I'm a pop culture illiterate for the most part. Game of Thrones?

 

yes....the eunuch and the queen....

 

TU

 

OMG i haaaate neckties. lol
Though yes, historically speaking, it is females who are subject to many detrimental actions. Male-dominated societies and the denigration of females can indeed lead to some horribly unbalanced outcomes.

 

bound feet were a status symbol: women with bound feet meant they had the means to live a work-free life. my grandmother and grand aunt had bound feet. here's a photo of my grand aunt with her tiny feet but no longer bound. dad is in the photo too

 

Exactly. It all goes back to power.

It was also a required to be able to marry the right partner, a man deemed respectable.

 

Foot binding was a Chinese practice, never Japanese. This may contribute to the discussion:

"Foot binding has never been practiced in Japan, and the Japanese footwear style evolved in in a very different manner to the Chinese style.

Japan took a lot of influence from Chinese court culture, including in fashion, but that was during the Tang Dynasty. Footbinding in Chinese history seems to date back to the Song Dynasty, with twelfth century references to the practice. So, by the time footbinding was a fashion in China, Japan had been turned inward for its fashions for a few hundred years.

The ladies of the Japanese Heian (794-1185) court wore shitauzu: "white silk substitutes for stockings fastened at the top with a drawstring." (p. 166, OKAGAMI, The Great Mirror: Fujiwara Michinaga (966-1027) and His Times by Helen Craig McCullough.) The average woman, of course, went barefoot, or wore straw sandals without socks.

However, by the fifteenth century, a new form of footwear had emerged: the tabi, which is now an essential part of the "standard" Japanese traditional dress. The tabi is an ankle-high cloth foot covering with a division between the big toe and other toes. The strap of a straw sandal or geta (a platform wooden sandal) runs through the gap. So, fashionable Japanese women - including Geisha - in their crisp white tabi actually showed off the spread of their toes. Observer Isabella Bird was not a fan of the style, "Foot mittens of white cloth, with a separate place for the great toe, are worn, and make the naturally small feet look big and awkward." (- p. 37, Unbeaten Tracks in Japan: Volume 1 - Isabella Lucy Bird)

One footnote: the Japanese government took over Taiwan in 1895, and portrayed their campaign there against footbinding as an example of Japan's more enlightened attitudes, as opposed to China's attachment to ancient ignorance. In this, they were selling themselves as model modern colonizers, who were there to "lift up" "degraded" natives."

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...ow_that_foot_binding_originated_in_china_but/

Personally, gives me the creeps to think that anyone would be subject to this practice. By the same token, I find high-heels creepy and can't understand how anyone finds any of it attractive or "sexy"!

 

As I understand it - they aren't removable either - as their necks have no muscle support and the bones are so far apart. Surgery might be the only way to put them back together?

Leslie

 

A friend whose info is generally reliable has insisted to me that women - this was a while back now - were asking orthopedic surgeons to do something to their feet (remove a bone? shave one down?) so they could fit their feet into skinny, pointy toed shoes. Have never verified this. Can imagine some women submitting to already painful bunion surgery for this purpose, having gotten the bunions from wearing such shoes in the first place.

 

Right you are. I'm obviously getting my novels conflated. Maybe it was The Warrior Woman?

 

We had a number of these shoes in the collection at the So Oregon Historical Society. Some were genuine, hand-embroidered by the future bride to impress her future female in-laws with her needlework skills. Others were manufactured for the tourist trade. Unfortunately, I don't know how to tell the difference. Description of the ones in 2nd photo: "Lotus" slippers for bound feet. "Two shoes tacked together by thread, not separable as is. Soles of white leather, heel is pale green silk couched with gold thread designs of leaves and vines with one 'forbidden' stitch in pink at back of leaf center. Body of shoe is pale pink silk with couched gold and green tripart leaves and tendrils with ornate red satin stitch and diapered gold band around top of shoe. Back has attached heel flap in pale pink silk with woven tape edge, also has one red satin ribbon tie. Lined with natural linen." The last image shows a typical shoe worn by a middle-class woman without bound feet. it doesn't look that easy to navigate either.

 

Not that extreme, but fashion as a political protest has some wild examples , thinking in particular of the 1790s incroyables of France. They may have gotten a few beatings as a result.