by Katelyn Muir

Created on: April 24, 2008   Last Updated: September 17, 2009

Can you imagine your mother coming up to you and announcing that it was time for you to prepare for your future by causing huge amounts of pain, broken toes and likely infection. Do you think you would be jumping for joy and excitement? Would the honor' of upholding a cultural tradition be enough to convince you that it was a good idea? Or would the knowledge that many young girls in your town or village died because of infection and disease, and cried out of intense pain put doubts in your mind?

Foot binding was a tradition practiced on young girls in China for over one thousand years. It began in the tenth century and ended in the early twentieth century.

Where the idea came from is unclear, some say it was from a favored concubine of a prince, she had very small feet and other women desired them as well. Some other sources say that there was an empress who had clubbed feet and the deformity became a desirable fashion statement. In the court of the Southern Tang Dynasty in Nanjing, the dancing girls with tiny feet and beautiful bow shoes were well known and celebrated.

It was among the rich and the elite that foot binding began. It did not take long for the common people to begin the practice as well.

The ideal was to have a golden lotus foot. The golden lotus was a 2 inch foot and the silver lotus was 4 inches. Such tiny feet are difficult to imagine on grown women, it's a wonder they didn't topple over.

Girls started their feet binding process between the ages of 4 and 7, before the arch of the foot had formed. First the foot would be soaked in a warm mixture of herbs and animal blood. Then the toenails were trimmed as far down as they could go, to prevent them from in-growth and causing infections. Massaging the foot helped prepare it for the next step, binding.

Silk or cotton bandages, 10 feet long and 2 inches wide, were soaked in the same mix the feet were soaked in. The feet were wrapped very tightly, causing toes to break. The bandages would constrict when they dried, pulling tightly downwards toward the heel. The toes that weren't broken during the wrapping would break when they were forced to walk on their newly bound feet. Every two days the process began again, replacing the bandages, pulling the new ones tighter.

It was not uncommon for infections to cause trouble. Toenails would often in-grow and cause infections which would cause disease. Ingrown toenails also could cause the flesh to begin to rot. Sometimes gangrene would set in and toes would fall off. Girls even died from the disease that followed the infections. Later in life the girls would also be prone to other medical problems, broken hips, and difficulty moving around, even standing.

With bound feet, girls and women were unable to walk great distances on their own or do much outside labor. This greatly limited their ability to associate with the outside world and kept them in their homes. When they did travel outside they usually had an escort to help them, this ensured devotion to their husbands. Bound feet became a symbol of chastity.

Men found bound feet erotic, the fact that the foot was hidden from their sight was sexually alluring. They also found the lotus gait' alluring, which was the unsteady walk the women had due to the pain and broken bones in their feet.

Thankfully foot binding is no longer a practice that is allowed. In the twentieth century both Chinese and Western missionaries demanded the tradition to end, and an anti-foot binding movement began. In 1911 the Republic of China government banned the centuries old cultural tradition. Women were told to unwrap their feet and not to begin with their daughters, or face severe punishment and even death.

China still bans foot binding today.

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