Thesis On Foot Binding

Beauty of a woman was very important to men because it often showed wealth. Footbinding was a cruel way to show a woman’s beauty in Ancient China, especially during the Song dynasty. It is thought that foot binding began in around 900 AD during the Tang dynasty and continued until 1911 when it was finally banned. "The practice of binding feet was originally introduced about a thousand years ago, allegedly by a concubine of the emperor. Not only was the sight of women hobbling on tiny feet considered erotic, men would also get excited playing with bound feet, which were always hidden in embroidered silk shoes” (Wild Swans) Footbinding was considered very attractive and was very common. Many times, a girl who did not have bound feet were rejected by

Kinesiology , the study of the human body and its movement. You could take numerous of routes with this degree and I plan on taking a couple of them such as a certified athletic trainer and also a physical therapist. I plan on advancing science in my field by catering to numerous off people bodies.

According to Mackie (1996: 1001) the practice of foot binding spread from the imperial palace, transmitting down through the classes until it was nearly universally adopted. Thus, foot binding can be seen as symbolising one's status. Foot binding came to symbolise gentility, and it was only the absolute lowest of the lower class who were the exception to the convention. Such destitute individuals could not afford for female family members to be foot-bound when their manual labour was needed (Mackie 1996: 1001). However, to avoid such disgrace, many poor families preferred to “struggle along for a precarious living, bringing up their daughters with small feet” (Doolittle 1865: 201). This is in keeping with Veblen's (1934) view that foot binding is a costly display of a family's wealth (Mackie 1996: 1002). Likewise in Africa, female mutilation reportedly spread partly due to individuals wanting to emulate their higher status neighbours who had already adopted the practice (Mackie 1996: 1004). In addition to symbolising wealth, Mackie suggests that female mutilation symbolises a family's commitment to values of purity and chastity (Mackie 1996: 1000, 1008). Given the costs and risks associated with female mutilation, that a family would choose to commit to the practice shows how willing they are to ensure that males can be confident in terms of paternity. With this intention, female mutilation can be seen as symbolising a female's purity and future fidelity (Mackie 1996:

In the ancient Chinese culture, the role of women was very restricted. They were raised by their parents until the age of marriage to be given away to another family. When living under their father’s roof he was the one they had to obey to, once married they then had to obey to their husband. Women were restricted to the walls of their home, which is no longer the case nowadays.

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.

The relationship between a female slave and her master wasn’t always a relationship built only on hard work in the fields or serving in the home. In some instances slave women were forced to comply with sexual advances by their masters regularly. Attempting to resist these advances often led to undesirable consequences that often included beatings and other forms of physical punishment. Because of these harsh and brutal consequences

An article about the very last know women who have had their feet bound; talks about the real beauty behind it. The woman by the name of Jo Ferrell has been traveling the world trying to uncover the journey a women goes through by having her feet bound. He first subject was a women named Zhan Yun Ying who is in her 90s and one of the last woman who have bound feet. "When she took her shoes and socks off, her feet were totally, fully in lotus shape. To me, they represented the trouble and toil this woman [has] been through—and what women do go through—to attract a partner…

The concept of foot binding was a shocking concept for the role of Chinese women to submit themselves to torture and represented a unique opportunity to gain the respect and recognition of the in-laws in The Joy Luck Club and The Good Earth who would praise the beautiful tiny feet even beyond the woman’s dowry, as an undeniable proof of capacity and obedience. According to Tan, “there are only two kinds of daughters, those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind!” (142). Foot binding was a significant role for Chinese women and the concept of beauty no matter the consequences of their pain in the body. The concept of obedience was the role of Chinese woman that was focused in The Joy Luck Club, which was how the characters based their views on. The Chinese mother’s desire was for their daughters to follow the obedience concept and act according to the regulations. For example, one of the mothers complained about not being able to teach their daughter about the Chinese character, which would help obey her parents and listen to her mother’s mind. Another mother talked about herself and being obedient as Tan stated, “I was an obedient wife; just as they taught me” (61). The Chinese mothers in the Joy Luck Club grew up with an incredibly restrictive idea of what it meant to be a woman. They realized that there was no good people in this world and only people who wanted to take advantage of their heart and soul. This belief was also true in The Good Earth as O-Lan

In Waiting by Ha Jin, Jin displays the effects of the controlling Chinese government on a group of people. Lin Kong, a doctor in the Chinese army, is married to Shuyu but wants to divorce her so that he can marry a nurse in the army, Manna Wu. Though Lin wants to divorce Shuyu as quick as possible, he cannot due to the government. The government continuously rejects Lin’s proposal for divorce, and so he makes his wife go through the divorce process every year. Lin constantly thinks things over and the consequences that might follow, and in the end he causes for the people around him to experience pain and remorse.

Special burdens were placed upon slave women that were not placed upon slave men. In nearly all cases, slave-owners would pursue their young slave girl until she submitted to him. To get her to sleep with him, he first “[bribed] her with presents. If these [failed] to accomplish their purpose, she [was] whipped or starved into submission to [his] will” (Jacobs 44). One of the worse threats these women received was the threat to sell their children to different owners (Jacobs 64). Men did not experience these trials in the fact that their owners would not sexually abuse them. Often times slave women were prohibited from marrying the man of their choice;

She was born to parents whose marriage had been arranged, they were probably never in love, neither before, nor after the wedding. Yu-fang's mother was not even given a name, and her husband was 6 years younger than her and only a boy of fourteen at the time of their marriage. She was expected to help raise her husband which was expected of a Chinese bride. Yu-fang's feet were bound when she was the age of two. This was done by her own mother, and was an extremely painful process. Jung Chang said, "My Grandmother screamed in agony and begged her to stop. Her mother had to stick a cloth into her mouth to gag her. My grandmother passed out repeatedly from the pain." (24) This painful tradition is one of the worst examples mistreatment of women that was considered a necessity.

A central idea of Lensey Namioka’s novel, Ties That Bind, Ties That Break, is that we don’t have to diminish ourselves to societies standards. With the setting being in the early 1900’s of China, we meet the main character, Ailin Tao, who shows us that traditions and standards are meant to be broken. Ailin is a five-year-old girl who refuses to have her feet bound, which causes her engagement to be broken and later become the symbol of shame for her family. Eventually, after ending up in America, Ailin proves that she didn’t need her feet bound in order to make a living. Whilst talking with a fellow passenger on her voyage to America, it is brought to her attention that “[she is] a revolutionary, and [is admired] for fighting a war, a war against

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

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)

Schiavenza, Matt. “The Peculiar History of Foot Binding in China.” In The Atlantic. 16 September, 2013 article was published. Web. 1st October, 2013 article was accessed. From http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/09/the-peculiar-history-of-foot-binding-in-china/279718/