Day 78 Tiny feet

After thinking about high heels and feet yesterday, I suddenly thought of the bound feet in Chinese cultuur:

Legend has it that lotus or lily foot slippers first appeared in China in the 11th century when Empress Taki was born with deformed feet. To save her future embarrassment, her father announced that only women with very small feet could be truly feminine and desirable. As a result women began to bind their feet. The tiny, virtually unusable feet were a mark of status, beauty, gentility and sexual attractiveness.

The binding process began at age 5 to 7 years old. Bandages were wrapped around the foot to bend the four smaller toes inward under the foot towards the heel until it resembled a half moon.The majority of young girls had their feet bound by their mothers. Binding a daughters feet would ensure she would be married and hopefully to a wealthy man.

The intial process of binding the feet took just one night but the feet took years of pain to conform into the beautiful crescent shape. During a painful 2-3 year period, the size of the shoe was gradually reduced. The most highly desired goal being a size only three inches in length.

These silk shoes only measure 140mm (5½ inches) in length and 24mm (1 inch) in width...  

2010 version?

And taken from this website :

Well, since foot bound girls couldn’t go very far without assistance, (no roller blades in those days) pre-marital virginity was guaranteed. And after getting hitched, chastity and eternal loyalty were virtually assured. A woman’s life consisted of stumbling around at home, hand embroidering bits of material, and pretending her brain was made of sardine flavored jelly; i.e., total subservience to her partner and his whims. And that’s not all: the small and unsure steps of a foot bound woman were considered feminine and dainty, and it was widely believed that all that tottering around on the heels acted to tighten the buttocks and vagina – all the better to grip a husband’s jade spear, my dear. Apparently, men were so infatuated with small
feet that it bordered on a kind of perversion.

There is a rather good short film about the subject on YouTube