Talk:Foot binding

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is part of WikiProject China, a project to improve all China-related articles. If you would like to help improve this and other China-related articles, please join the project. All interested editors are welcome.

???

This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.

[edit] Maybe rework article?

I changed back a couple of vandal droppings and a few items which struck me as POV, but the article might well be reworked from scratch to reflect both popular interest and recent scholarship. cwh 05:02, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Liberation

Quote:

"When the liberation occurred, the women were told to unwrap their feet or they would be killed.

My guess: The abolition of the Chinese Empire, i.e. founding of the Chinese Republic in 1911. I changed the text accrodingly since before it didn't fit right anyway. If this is incorrect, anybody knowing better can correct it. Edwing 07:30, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Bold textIn the origin section, the part that claims that by the 12th century women's feet were bound extremely tightly is false. Binding actually started out as non-crippling but then became more and more debilitating as time went on. This is information is found in Dorothy Ko's Cinderella's Sisters, to which I will add a reference. Zeus1234 02:44, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I thought (from Pearl S. Buck) that this was limited to upper-class women. Lower-class women needed their feet for work, but were disparaged because of it. -- Error

That's my understanding, not from Buck, as well. I think middle-class women j;lkj;lItalic text could afford binding as well. --Menchi 05:10, Jul 31, 2003 (UTC)

There was NEVER an imperial order of foot-binding. It was purely "fashion". The following is two sources available online:

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/studpages/vento.html http://www.ccds.charlotte.nc.us/History/China/04/hutchins/hutchins.htm

wshun 06:13, 31 Jul 2003 (UTC)

The last two paragraphs are redundant and should be integrated better with the rest of the article. It seems they were just slapped on there. (12 Dec 2005)

[edit] The TRUE origin of footbinding:

The vague origin stated in this entry is wrong. In reality, footbinding started far earlier and for a much different reason than is commonly known:

"Tang court women followed Persian and Turkish fashions, wearing dresses with tight-fitting bodices, pleated skirts, and hats with enormous veils. And it was apparently imitation of foreign toe-dancing groups that originally led upper-class Chinese women to bind their feet. At first it was just palace dancers who bound their feet slightly, like ballet dancers, to stand on their toes." - When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-1433 by Louise Levathes (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195112075/qid=1072385707//ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i0_xgl14/104-9319236-0455946?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)

The Tang Dynasty was when foreign influence was at its peak in China and greatly welcomed. Elite Chinese courtesan female audiences must have been amazed to first see Western prototypical "toe-dancers" perform for them! They must have been genuinely fascinated by their tightly-bound feet or small shoes. For in any dance where women must get on their toes, they must wear under-sized "pointe"-type shoes or constrictive bindings to allow them to withstand the greatly-multiplied pressure. It's easily conceivable to see how Chinese women sought to imitate these wondrous dancers and their unique footwear. So, this practice started out harmlessly enough as an elitist fad. It didn't just spring up out of the air in the Song Dynasty for no apparent reason. Only very gradually did it become exaggerated and spread into the lower classes as a deforming . But even so, it was still a largely self-imposed tradition passed down from mother to daughter - and one borne of female social-climbing vanity, like many other self-imposed practices from Victorian corsets, high heels, b00b jobs and plastic surgery today.

They say Geishas also originally put on whiteface to imitate Western women, but that's another topic... ;)

Ophelia Benson, in her essay "The Yuk Factor" on the subject of cultural relativism of morals, makes a remarkable claim about the purpose of Chinese foot-binding:

"The result was generations of women who could barely walk and couldn't possibly run, but were proud owners of the lotus foot - a foot which, by being folded in half, created a new orifice just the right size for an erect penis. Custom is king of all."

I had never heard such a thing before, even as an urban legend to say nothing of a piece of history. Is there any basis for this claim, or is it a piece of academic foot- ism? --FOo 23:26, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Apparently bound feet were seen as sexually arousing; men apparently loved the look and feel of then. There's little doubt at least some men took things one, ahem, step further. Exploding Boy 01:56, Apr 16, 2004 (UTC)

Two hundred years later the custom was as strong as ever and small deformed feet had lost none of their attraction for Chinese men, as a French scholar explained. "All the Celestials whom I have interrogated on this point have replied unanimously: 'Oh, a little foot! You Europeans cannot understand how exquisite, how sweet, how exciting it is!' The contact of the genital organ with the little foot produces in the male an indescribable degree of voluptuous feeling, and women skilled in love know that to arouse the ardor of their lovers a better method than all Chinese aphrodisiacs is to take the penis between their feet. It is not rare to find Chinese Christians accusing themselves at confession of having had 'evil thoughts on looking at a woman's foot.'" (http://www.romanization.com/books/formosan_odyssey/footbinding.html) Dpr 03:12, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

The origins section needs work, as it goes straight from origins into a discussion of the physical manifestations and political influences of footbinding.

I'm also unsure about the statement that only upper class women could be bound, I've seen pictures of poor women with tiny bound feet hobbling along. At least we need a source or two for this. And we should also bear in mind that a lot of footbinding sources have their own agendas, such as Beverly's book, which is rather romanticising.

And who put that comment about the geisha in? That is a common misconception without any factual basis. Sorry, but I have studied Japanese (and to some extent Chinese) customs for a while, and that kind of thing irritates me. Markleci 13:18, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Possible copyright infringement

I found sentences copied word-for-word from this article:

http://www.sfmuseum.org/chin/foot.html

Notably, those dealing with the origins of the custom.

foot binding was a practice not a law, used on womens feet in the 1800, showing a sign of beauty.

Foot binding could not be said to be a Chinese culture, as it was practised by a minority of its people. If it had anything to do with culture, it was in fact a counter-culture.

I was taught at school that in Victorian England, for the men it was titillating to catch a glimpse of women's ankles because their long dresses covered their feet. Nowadays, it would be the naked female breasts.

"According to Professor Wang of CSU Stanislaus, Footbinding began in the Song Dynasty. It started after a man had a dream of a woman walking on lilypads, she looked so elegant and beautiful, that when he woke up he wanted his wife to look the same way. He thought up the idea of foot binding so that she would walk more elegantly. This is where the nickname "lily foot" comes from. Only her husband was allowed to see her feet unwrapped at night."

I deleted this paragraph from the article completely; it seemed rather vague and difficult to prove. If anyone can cite a source I'd be happy to keep it, but I can't see how some random guy's dream would be recorded as any sort of historical fact. It's completely implausible. As such, it doesn't belong. Fedallah 02:43, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

'Two of the most deadly weapons for the oppression of a woman in China were either elaborated or had their origin in the Sung dynasty, and they have remained in power until recent times. I mean the custom of footbinding and the moral philosophy that condemns the marriage of widows' (Ch'en, Heng-che "Influences of Foreign Cultures on the Chinese Woman". In Chinese Women Through Chinese Eyes, ed. Yu-ning Li, Armock, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1992.)

I've read a great deal about footbinding and there doesn't seem to be any certainty among even Chinese scholars about when or why footbinding started.

I believe that footbinding spread down until only the very lowest members of society were unbound.

Beverly Jackson has a chapter about sex and bound feet in her book 'Splendid Slippers', but it's also mentioned in the Golden Lotus...

Markleci 07:16, 2 April 2006

[edit] Age footbinding started

I changed it from three years old to five years old. According to "The Lotus Lovers" by Howard Levy and "Splendid Slippers" by Beverley Jackson, the usual age for beginning footbinding was between the ages of 5 and 7.

[edit] NPOV

Please tag as not neutral point of view, or at least weasel words the section MODERN TIMES that declares "All modern societies would treat the behavior as child abuse and punish it accordingly".

I modified this section to say 'many people' as opposed to 'all modern societies.' Hope this makes it more netural. Zeus1234 03:36, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pictures?

I think some non-Xray pictures of what bound feet look like would be interesting and informative, if they aren't too graphic or disgusting (don't know, I've never seen them). 68.69.145.52 15:50, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't know, the one being used right now is a little too disturbing for me. BTW, should we state that there's a reference to footbinding on "Snow Flower and The Secret Fan"? There's alot of info on it there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.111.15.73 (talk) 19:01, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The 'severe' example of footbinding picture is wrong

I've seen real bound feet and believe me, it's a whole lot mroe gruesome looking than that. All the toes but the big one are curled inside the foot like they were melted and stuck back on. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.194.236.133 (talk) 01:38, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Replaced with 2 photos from a 1900 German book (taken from article on German Wiki). Pavel Vozenilek (talk) 09:45, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Just exactly how popular was foot-binding?

Just how popular was foot-binding? If it was popular with the rich and wealthy, was it practised by the Imperial families of the time? For example were princesses and imperial concubines-to-be required to undergo foot-binding? 81.154.203.177 (talk) 23:24, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] too long?

Why is this article tagged as too long? It's not even at the limit 30-50kilobytes.Brian0324 (talk) 18:03, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

The lead was too long. I split off the history section into one of its own. BrokenSphere^{Msg me} 23:37, 6 June 2008 (UTC)