Footbinding: Domination or Choice? Essay

In all honesty, to imagine myself in Jon Western’s shoes is very difficult. He was just a normal boy from North Dakota who hasn’t been exposed to raw, inhumane, and mass amounts of deaths in text and photos and is now doing this as a living. I would of taken the information with belief, but always making sure the sources are reliable. The tact I would of taken if I were Western would be emotional. I would want the superiors of action to see how life really is during this genocide and stories of the people who were affected. I would also want them to put themselves in the shoes of the victims.

By changing their clothing, women were able to make their legs seem the most beautiful parts of their

Many children in various cultures had to undergo body modifications due to certain cultures and beliefs. “The feet of very young Chinese girls were bound and spliced, intentionally and irreversibly deforming them, because this was seen to guarantee the girls’ eventual amorous and matrimonial success.” (Borel,1994). In Polynesia, unless a girl was tattooed, she would not find a husband. An unornamented hand could not cook, nor dip into the communal food bowl (Borel,1994). It is as to say that “the fact that such motivations and pretexts depend on aesthetic, erotic, hygienic, or even medical considerations has no influence on the result, which is always in the direction of transforming the appearance of the body. Such a transformation is wished for, whether or not it is effective.”

Foot binding is now considered a very extreme and cruel form of body modification. It is almost near impossible to find information on the subject without it being shed in a negative light. The important thing to remember, however, is that body modification in different cultures is usually viewed as a right of passage and honor, not a form of torture. To be able to have your body altered to the definition of beauty in China’s society was a great privilege, and surpassed any pain that went along with the modification.

During the Qing Dynasty Chinese women roles were more restricted than they had been during the earlier dynasties. According to Women in World history in the 19th China followed the Neo-Confucian or Confucian gender norms. These norms emphasized the family as the primary social unit and supported the dominance of women. Within the Chinese family structure, “one’s position in the hierarchy is determined rank and responsibility. Daughters were expected to obey their parent’s authority, assist their mothers in domestic tasks, and, in wealthier families learn how read and write.” History reflects during the Qing Dynasty the image of foot binding played such a crucial and significant role in gender and social change amongst Chinese women, where

With the return of Confucian ideals, and the rise of literati scholars, women began to dress differently. They would use clothing, hair and makeup to draw attention to the differences between genders, often attributed to the fact that literati scholars had a more feminine appearance. This attempt to differentiate genders was taken to the extreme with the introduction of footbinding. This practice created the idea that a woman with small feet was delicate, diminutive and beautiful, which followed the already pre-set notion that beauty was in part because of demureness and attentiveness (s.t.g. 38-41). Not only that, but by changing a woman’s foot, men were able to physically render women different than them, while also making it more difficult (painful) to leave their inner sphere within the home.

The coefficient of friction, or the μ, is a scalar value which is equivalent to the ratio of the force of friction (FF) between two surfaces to the normal force (FN) which pushes two surfaces together. Each set of surfaces has a different μ, as it depends on the particular materials. Basically, the μ increases as it becomes more difficult for objects to move against each other. When a large amount of force is required to move two surfaces against each other (and therefore a large amount of friction is produced), the μ will be much larger than when a small amount of force is required. For example, the μ of ice on a smooth metal would be very low, while the μ of rubber on rough wood would be much higher.

What Is Foot Binding? Foot binding is a process used by all women during the Tang Dynasty. Women did this to show their high status and rank. This was a sign of beauty.

The debate with-in the anthropology field has been heated over the evolution of the human and the events that have lead us to where we are now. One of the major questions that is debated is how did we, humans-large brained and small jawed, evolve from primates-large jawed and small brained. Interestingly enough, this debate is now being directed from outside the field; by biologists and plastic surgeons. On march 25, 2004, Doctors Stedman (and others) published their findings in Nature (VOL 428) under the title Myosin gene mutation correlates with anatomical changes in the human lineage. Their findings point to the gene myosin and its mutated form MYH16 and

One change that the human body has faced through natural selection is the human foot getting flatter. Unlike cats and dogs, the human foot has evolved to no longer walk on the balls of it’s feet (Blue). Cats and dogs have evolved to have longer legs due to their tendency to walk and run on the balls of their feet. Therefore, the human leg has gotten shorter than it was millions of years ago; when humans still ran and walked on the balls of their feet (Blue). Scientists believe that part of why humans began walking with flat feet is because each step from heel to toe elongates the limb completely

The summary of the article “ Painful Memories for China’s Footbinding Survivors” is about women who have their feet bound. This is called foot binding. They would use bandages for foot binding. They also had disabilities because they couldn’t really run, walk, or dance. This was prosaic for them. The golden lotuses they wore were just 3 inches. Life is not easy for them but they try hard to survive.

In the article, Ko highlights the many misconceptions modern people have on footbinding such as keeping a woman’s foot bound, kept them in a hobbled and subservient domestic state or as sex objects . Afterwards, she states that our “certainties may turn out to be dead wrong” suggesting to readers that she is going to shine a positive light on footbinding. Ko goes more in depth about the three things men believed footbinding was, and why the tradition of binding ones foot was important at that time. The Chinese believed that wearing shoes differentiated and distinguished them from beasts as well as savages

It was pointed out that women were likely to remain the weaker sex as long as they were encased in whalebone and confined their physical activity to the decorous movements of the ballroom, and the new "doctrine of hygiene" as it was coyly termed advocated sports for women and Rational Dress. Many young women pedalled their way to undreamt-of freedoms on the newly popular bicycle; petticoats and chaperons were equally inappropriate accompaniments, and could be discarded in one go.8

Ever since slavery, the size and shape of a woman’s body has been important. in the seventeenth

When coupled with the line "the bound feet" (Piercy, 20), the poem appears as if it were a comment solely about the injustice forced upon Chinese women from 934 until 1949. Foot binding is a painful process which includes breaking all of the toes and arch of the foot to grossly alter the shape of the foot, so that the foot, when mature would be no more than four inches long.  The first break was usually made when a girl was three to five years old, then the feet were wrapped in yards of cloth to prevent them from growing or reshaping. The pain from the initial break was nothing compared to the enduring pain the women experienced for the rest of their lives. The pain was caused by the drastically deformed feet. (Chinese foot binding- lotus shoes)