foot binding
Lotus feet practice
Foot binding was a Chinese practice of tightly wrapping young girls' feet to prevent growth, breaking bones to achieve a tapered shape considered beautiful and marriageable.
The process was painful and crippling, limiting women's mobility.
The practice persisted for roughly a thousand years before being banned in the early twentieth century.
Her grandmother's bound feet were only four inches long.
- body modificationAltering your physical appearance permanently
- painBodily or emotional distress
- beauty standardsCultural criteria for attractiveness
- chronic painEnduring physical suffering
- nerve damageInjured neural tissue
marriageability · abolition movements · muscle atrophy · fractures · femininity · gender inequality · ancestral customs · filial piety · Qing dynasty · dowry · Han Chinese · domesticity · social stratification · status symbols · lotus · infection · tiny · concubine
- ChinaBeijing, Shanghai, Great Wall, Yellow River, Chinese calligraphy
- body customsgrooming, body modification, body art, tattooing, piercing
- body culturebody image, body modification, body positivity, body shaming, body art
- body modificationtattoo, body modification, tattoos, piercing, tattooing
- obsolete practicesbloodletting, leeching, trepanning, witch trials, human sacrifice
- Chinese cultureConfucianism, Chinese calligraphy, Beijing, Chinese New Year, Daoism
foot bindingbody positivity
Acceptance of all figures
body acceptance · body liberation · foot health · self-acceptance · orthopedics
foot bindingwomen's liberation
Movement for female equality
bodily autonomy · feminism · self-determination · feminist movement · freedom of movement