Chinese Foot Binding Analysis

1394 Words6 Pages

Prince 1
Chinese Foot binding was a tortuous form of beauty that lasted for around 1,000 years. It was a tradition that lasted far longer than it should have. It was a huge part of Chinese history that is now seen as backward or barbaric. The practice did not end too long ago, as there are still people alive with bound feet. However, many don’t really know what foot binding is. This essay will teach you all about the tragic tradition. This writing was inspired by a quote in The Fifth Chinese Daughter, where food binding is briefly mentioned. In the story, the father writes to his wife, “Do not bind our daughters’ feet. Here in America is an entirely different set of standards, which does not require that women sway helplessly on little feet …show more content…

The rebellion wanted gender equality amongst other things, but subsided because it wasn’t able to integrate foreign ideas with existing Chinese ones. Many Christian missionaries throughout history opposed and fought against footbinding, and feminists hated it because it caused women to suffer. Writers from New World Encyclopedia that it wasn’t until “1911, after the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the new Republic of China government banned foot binding; women were told to unwrap their feet lest they be killed.” At first it was a big cultural shock, but the ban thankfully is still in place today. Be that as it may, there is still elderly Chinese women out there who still suffer from deformed …show more content…

The tradition of Chinese foot binding caused a horrendous amount of pain, only for the stupid excuse of aesthetics. Foot binding is the practice of breaking and binding the feet to resemble a lotus. It’s widely debated over when and who started it, but it’s certain that the elites in China helped it spread. It started off as something fashionable and morphed into it being
Prince 6 almost enforced. There have been many strange beauty trends among many cultures. A recurring theme in these trends involve body modification, in order to make the body look “beautiful”. Most people today won’t find lotus feet precious as people once did, so will people of the future find the beauty standards of today bizarre? Will we be seen as backward? Beauty is always changing with the times, but one thing stays the same—Beauty is

Open Document