According to lead author Steven R. Cummings, MD, UCSF professor of medicine and epidemiology and biostatistics, We also found that women with deformed feet were far less able to squat, an ability that is particularly important to toileting and other daily activities in China. In addition, the study found that women with bound feet had 5.1 percent lower hip bone density and 4.7 percent lower spine bone density than women with normal feet, putting them at greater risk of suffering hip or spine fractures. (Cummings, N/A)
Despite the difficulties we observed, women with bound feet did not have greater difficulty preparing meals, walking or climbing steps, Cummings says, adding that these women may have accommodated to their impairments or may be reluctant to complain. (Cummings, N/A)
Hopefully within one or two future generations, we will no longer see these debilitating effects on anyone.
Conclusion
Foot binding was a successful, thousand year old customary practice of the Chinese culture that did not die out until barely a century ago. It forced women to endure immense pain in the name of beauty and social status. The custom is truly an example of how much influence society has on our outlook of beauty.
From a purely anthropological view, we must not look at foot binding as either right or wrong, but as a custom that simply worked for the Chinese. Their social structure was such that men were to work and women were to stay home. Arranged marriages were the most important factor in a woman s life and a woman s wealth and status had to be judged by these marriages. Bound feet offered a way to visually separate the rich from the poor and helped enforce this social setting. For the Chinese, it was their way of keeping order.
Still, we can learn from this custom by using its example of society and beauty. This particular case study drastically shows how far a society can go in not only telling women how to be beautiful but forcing the issue as well. Beauty, something usually revered as a positive influence in society, can in reality cause major damage to the health of the population. Americans, in a most ethnocentric attitude, frown upon the custom of foot binding, accusing it of being disgustingly unbeautiful and barbaric and relish in the fact that such a custom doesn t exist in America. Yet, the gruesome statistics of Anorexia in America tell a different story, one not of foot torture but of starvation and death. And the pressure to be beautifully underweight still continues, painfully forcing one ideal of beauty on everyone. It took China nearly a thousand years for them to take into account what they were doing. Hopefully, the rest of the world will use its example so that others wont have to suffer beauty through pain.
Bibliography
1. Carlitz, Katherine.
http://www.sp.uconn.edu/ gwang/teaching/footbinding_in_traditional_china.htm
This web site offered information about the cultural significance of women suffering for beauty. The author made cross-cultural comparisons with the European corset and foot binding.
2. Chinn, Thomas. Bridging the Pacific: San Francisco Chinatown and Its People. San
Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of American, 1989.
(pp.36-54) This book offered some information about the lower class Chinese who had their feet bound. I gave many details about the immigrants who came to San Francisco and lived there with bound feet.
3. Cummings, Steven R., Chinese Foot Binding. American Journal of Public Health,
October 19, 1997. (http://www.sfmuseum.org/chin/foot.html)
This is a study done by UCSF on the health problems of women who have bound feet. It offered plenty of statistics that greatly demonstrated the hardships that these women have. The lead author is Steven R. Cummings, MD, UCSF professor of medicine and epidemiology and biostatistics.
4. Jackson, Beverley. Splendid Slippers: A Thousand Years of an Erotic Tradition, Ten Speed Press, Berkeley California, 1997.
(pp.22-45). This is probably the most interesting of the sources, as it offered plenty of pictures of the slippers for bound feet.
5. Levy, Howard S., The Lovers: The Complete History of the Curious Erotic Custom of Foot binding in China. Prometheus Books, New York, 1991.
(pp. 2, 4-6, 15, 36) The book talked a lot about the fascination men had with the bound foot. It surprised me how many different ways men revered and even used the foot (like in gambling games, drinking, sex, etc.).
6. Mo-ch n, Chang. Opposition to Foot Binding, in Chinese Women Through Chinese Eyes, (ed. Yu-ning, Li), M. E. Sharpe, Inc., New York, 1992.
(pp. 60-80) I got most of my information about the history of foot binding from this book. It discussed the way the ancient custom died out and about the role of women in abolishment.
7. Pang-Mei, Natasha Chang. Bound Feet and Western Dress, pg. 6, Doubleday, New York, 1996.
(pp.10-11) This book had some interesting facts and pictures of bound feet. This book, like Thomas Chinn s Bridging the Pacific: San Francisco Chinatown and Its People, talked about the Chinese immigrants who lived in San Francisco with bound feet.
8. http://www.planet-therapy.com/problems/anorexia.html
This web sight had the anorexia statistics that I used in the introduction.
9. Rita, Aero. Things Chinese, Doubleday & Company, New York, 1980.
Things Chinese discussed the role of foot binding in the intricate social structure of the Chinese. It mainly focused on how foot binding was a way to reinforce the female gender role in society.
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