Feet binding was an excruciatingly painful practice that was done in traditional China to baby girls. Women who had their feet bound was also known to have tiny “golden lotus” feet. The result of these tiny “golden lotus” feet was achieved from breaking the girl’s toes and binding them tightly with cloth to prevent them from growing any larger than 4 inches.
The common ideology was that it was more elegant for a woman to have small feet when she walks, as it’s slow and gentle. Not to mention, having tiny “golden lotus” feet was also a sign that one is a highborn.
Source: Smithsonian
Source: Business Insider
Throughout the years, researches have discovered the truth about feet binding. The common mentality of it just being for the sake of looking elegant was just one of its cover ups.
The truth about feet binding had much more meaning to it and it wasn’t anything to do with a woman’s beauty but a man’s pleasure. According to the Splendid Slippers: A Thousand Years Of An Erotic Tradition by Beverly Jackson, it was all about sexual pleasure for men.
Source: Pinterest
In Beverly Jackson’s book, he mentioned that due to their tiny bounded feet, they were forced to walk in a unique posture that forced the muscles in the upper legs, hips and vagina to tighten. Aside from that, the constant pressure put on a woman’s heels when she walked made her develop fat thighs which made her voluptuous and curvy in the eyes of a Chinese male. Many Chinese men then also claimed that it felt like making love to a virgin each and every time they had intercourse because the walk caused the muscles of the vagina to tighten to that extent. In other words, the smaller your feet were, the “tighter” a woman is.
Source: Huffington Post
It sounds completely terrible and an act against human rights but in this day and time, the practice has long subsided and is barely existent. There are only a few elderly woman alive to this day that have bounded feet.
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