Tuesday 10th February

Suffering for beauty is a concept familiar to most women, who have dyed, plucked or shaved their hair, squeezed their feet into uncomfortable high heels or even surgically enhanced parts of their anatomy. Millions of Chinese women went even further — binding their feet to turn them into the prized “three-inch golden lotuses.”

Footbinding was first banned in 1912, but some continued binding their feet in secret. Some of the last survivors of this barbaric practice are still living in Liuyicun, a village in Southern China’s Yunnan province.

Wang Lifen was just 7 years old when her mother started binding her feet: breaking her toes and binding them underneath the sole of the foot with bandages. After her mother died, Wang carried on, breaking the arch of her own foot to force her toes and heel ever closer. Now 79, Wang no longer remembers the pain.

‘Young Bones Are Soft’

“Because I bound my own feet, I could manipulate them more gently until the bones were broken. Young bones are soft, and break more easily,” she says.

At that time, bound feet were a status symbol, the only way for a woman to marry into money. In Wang’s case, her in-laws had demanded the matchmaker find their son a wife with tiny feet. It was only after the wedding, when she finally met her husband for the first time, that she discovered he was an opium addict. With a life encompassing bound feet and an opium-addict husband, she’s a remnant from another age. That’s how author Yang Yang, who’s written a book about them, sees these women.

“These women were shunned by two eras,” Yang says. “When they were young, footbinding was already forbidden, so they bound their feet in secret. When the Communist era came, production methods changed. They had to do farming work, and again they were shunned.”

 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8966942

 

Comments:

*Suffering for beauty is a concept familiar to most women     This should no be the case but isn’t always down to anyone faults but own.

* 7 years old  This is ridiculous that before she can have a say, the choice is made for her

*status symbol, the only way for a woman to marry into money    Very odd to think that it was down to the state of our feet as to whether we married into money.

*They had to do farming work, and again they were shunned.” Weren’t comfortable whatever happened. Restricted for life. This article really makes me feel emotional. I can’t imagine what these poor women went through.