Month / February 2015

by Olivia Kate Violet

Chinese Foot Binding

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.

 

by Olivia Kate Violet

Aimee Mullins

Sunday 8th February

Aimee Mullins

(born 1976 in Allentown, Pennsylvania)

American athlete, actress, and fashion model best known for her extraordinary collegiate-level athletic accomplishments, despite a disability that resulted in the amputation of both of her legs.She was born with fibular hemimelia (missing fibula bones) and had both of her legs amputated below the knee when she was just one year old. While attending Georgetown University she competed against able-bodied athletes in NCAA Division I track and field events and set Paralympic records in 1996 in Atlanta in the 100-meter dash and the long jump. She says she will have realised one of her ambitions when people describe her as “Aimee Mullins, the model”, rather than “Aimee Mullins, the disabled model”.

 

http://www.disabled-world.com/artman/publish/famous-amputees.shtml

 

Comments:

* I really like the idea of using the fact that she doesn’t dwell on the fact she has no legs or feet but is determined to be seen as more than disabled.

*I think that could use her story to influence my work in that people take having feet for granted and don’t look after them enough

by Olivia Kate Violet

Lisa Milroy

Thursday 5th February

Lisa Milroy

Anglo-Canadian painter. After a period as a student at the Université de Paris-Sorbonne (1977–8), she settled in London and studied art at St Martin’s School of Art (1978–9) and Goldsmiths College, University of London (1979–82). Her first solo exhibition, in 1984, was of small still-life paintings depicting common objects, either singly or in sets. These were technically remarkable works. Her subsequent series of paintings of objects in groups (rows, clusters, layers or grids) borrowed the language of hardware catalogues, shop display windows and formal arrangements in art and photography, while yet creating autonomous visual statements. Sometimes her arrangement of objects was influenced by their functional identity, so that, for example, stamps become islands for the eyes to travel between or wheels speed forward at an unstoppable visual pace. Later works continued to emphasise the arrangement of objects in relation to the picture plane, and in such works as Plates (1992; London, Nicola Jacobs and Tony Schlesinger priv. col.), in which four blocks of plates are presented in rows of four, six, three and five against a plain mid-grey background, an element of time was also introduced by giving the view of each block from a different height. Other works from the 1990s include landscapes, cityscapes and crowds. Crowd (1992; e.g. London, Nicola Jacobs and Tony Schlesinger priv. col.) demonstrates the artist’s continued interest in the technical aspect of the painting process, with strokes, dabs, dashes, dots, planes of colour and other painterly marks layering the surface.

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/lisa-milroy-2220

 

Comments:

*different height     Look into photographing form different heights

* strokes, dabs, dashes, dots    Consider effects that I could use on Images

by Olivia Kate Violet

Research into Feet

Monday 2nd February

Do You Think Feet Are Weird?

Y’all, I think feet are way cute and even so I’m sitting here making this “ew” face that is usually reserved for when Ed makes me smell things that have gone off in the fridge. 

So. Feet are weird. They’re like long hands with really short fingers. That we walk on. I think feet are really kind of awesome in structure — they’re architectural, like bridges.

But feet do tend to freak a lot of people out.

There’s interacting with another person’s feet — which a lot of people cannot even contemplate doing. And then there’s having people interact with your own feet — which is apparently a whole other level of special torture for some folks.

I think part of why people are so anti-feet is because feet have this rep for being dirty. And, yeah, we stick them in socks and shoes (or not) and walk around on them all day (or not) and they get kind of sweaty sometimes. And sometimes they get dried out and the skin does weird things and there are a whole host of funguses that rejoice in the presence of feets.

Y’all, I think feet are way cute and even so I’m sitting here making this “ew” face that is usually reserved for when Ed makes me smell things that have gone off in the fridge.

Basically, feet (and armpits, too) (and maybe crotches) get the side eye and when other people want to touch them — or want us to touch theirs — a lot of us recoil in horror.

Actually getting a pedicure at a salon can be a strange experience. You wind up in a throne-like chair with a person — often a woman of color — crouched at your feet. There’s a lot of problematic stuff going on in the salon world, so I do recommend finding a reputable salon that treats its employees well. But then I’d also think about WHY we consider taking care of someone’s feet to be such a shit job.

My second toe is longer than my big toe – my father claimed this is a sign of intelligence. Feet may be weird but they aren’t bad or inherently gross. Having someone care for them isn’t an act of torture.

It’s probably also going to sound weird to you when I say that my family who are not, by and large, touchy feely — gave each other foot rubs when I was a kid. I grew up well versed in just how nice it feels to have someone take the time to massage your toes. And any nascent foot aversion I had got worked out pretty quickly, too.

This is why I don’t even think twice about pedicures now. In fact, if my toes are not painted, I feel like I am a special kind of naked that is far too outrageous for anyone to actually see.

Here’s the thing: I am told, by my mother, that I didn’t have toe nails when I was first born. Like, I had tiny little toes and no toe nails. Whether or not this is true — or  even normal for newborns — I have thus been lifelong grateful just to HAVE toenails. And so I want to make them as pretty as they can be.

Also, they are, rather like my fingernails, shaped a little irregularly.

Writing for xoJane is an exercise in sharing all of my embarrassing secrets. I don’t actually have a lot of them, so I guess I need to make some more.

Anyone can polish their toenails if they want to! There are no rules about who can have a pedicure!

The point is: I don’t polish my toenails every time I polish my fingernails but it’s a pretty near thing. The idea of not having polish on my toenails is way weirder to me than feet or having someone touch my feet. My feet are awesome — they carry me around all the time. Sometimes they hurt. They deserve some nice treatment.

Going to the salon for a pedicure is even more expensive than going in for a manicure, so I understand fiscal objections to pedicures really, really well. I treat myself to a spa pedicure once or two a year and manage with my at-home-haircut version the rest of the time.

If you live somewhere dry or if you are prone to dry skin:

Gently exfoliate your feet and heels with a loofah or even a shower puff. Then dry them. Find a super moisturizing lotion and slather it on until your toes are super slippery. This might end up feeling a little like you are sliding around in pudding. That’s OK. Put on a pair of socks and sleep that way. The skin on your feet will thank you by being soft and moisturized. Do this as often as you feel like!

If you’ve got little toes:

Toss out your toenail clipper. Those things are big and scary! There is no reason you cannot use your regular nail clippers. If you do not own regular nail clippers, you probably ought to, if only to deal with the raggedy edges of broken or chipped nails. It’s helps to hold onto your toes when you’re polishing each one of them. as Ed demonstrates here.

If you’re going to polish your piggies:

Remember that, just like with manicures, painting these things takes practice. If you get the polish everywhere, that is OKAY. It’ll come off in the shower! In fact, if you wear socks and shoes, it’ll probably come off when you take your socks off because your feet have been hanging out in socks all day, getting moist.

Dear self: Context doesn’t matter. “Getting moist” still sounds unfortunate.

Also, don’t skimp — use the base coat! Your toenails will stain the same way your fingernails will.

If you’re a tense little stress monkey — or even if you aren’t:

Use a tennis or golf ball to give yourself a foot massage. There’s a bunch of different ways to do this but it’s really good for the muscles in your feet. Sit down and put a golf ball or tennis ball under the sole of your foot. Move your foot around and use the ball to massage and apply pressure. You can use as much or as little pressure as you want.

If you have good balance, you can try standing on the tennis ball to super stretch your muscles. This can make a huge difference in how easy it is to bend over and touch your toes. If you are into that sort of thing. It’s OK if you aren’t.

Obviously, not all of these are appearance-related tips. That’s because a pedicure is not just about making your feet look nice. A pedicure is about making your feet FEEL nice. To you. And to other people, if you choose to let other people touch your feet.

I just really like it when our polish matches – sometimes I get the dog in on this action, too.

If you’ve got rough skin:

Use a scrub. You can buy fancy sugar scrubs — or you can make them. You can also use baking soda to make a fine-grained scrub. Or, if you’ve got a face scrub that you love, you can just use that. Because, again, skin. Feet aren’t faces, but still.

You can use tougher exfoliants if you have tougher feet. But remember that it is better to take things gradually. Give yourself a regular foot scrub every couple of days instead of going hardcore with the pumice stone or something.

It’s summer and there are articles all over the place about sandals and going barefoot (which I almost never do because I hate having things between my toes). A lot of media is going to tell you that you have to make sure your feet are pretty. Screw that — but I like making my feet feel good.

The toenail polish is just the icing on the feetcake.

 

http://www.xojane.com/diy/little-piggy-got-manicure

 

Comments:

*a sign of intelligence.   How can we relate toes to intelligence? Intel lies within the brain surely?

*little irregularly.      What is normal? Is there such thing???

 

*My feet are awesome — they carry me around all the time. Sometimes they hurt. They deserve some nice treatment.      This is the opinion on feet I want to empahsis!