The Chinese Tradition of Foot Binding

Why did Chinese bind the feet of young girls?

The practice of foot binding in China began around the end of the Tang Dynasty, or about 900 A.D. It was a Chinese custom that allows in producing very small feat in adult woman through the application of tight bandage wrappings on the feet of young girls. According to legend, a dancing girl at the court of the Tang emperor bound her feet so that she could dance on her toes, somewhat like a ballet dancer. Because of her grace, many dancers imitated her, and the practice spread to court ladies and other aristocratic women. It wasn’t until the Song Dynasty (960-1279) that there were definite records of women’s having their feet bound.

The traditional practice of the excruciatingly painful process of foot binding lasted for about a thousand years. Woman allowed themselves to suffer this procedure because men found bond feat attractive. Many wondered why men were so entranced by woman with feet less than three inches long. There are a couple of theories. One is that having crippled feet makes a women helpless and unable to run away, and some men are excited by the thought of helpless women. The other theory is that it gave a man status to be able to afford a wife who could not work, this therefore showed he was rich enough to support a ‘trophy’ wife. The practice finally began to die out by the early years of the twentieth century, although among the upper class women with bound feet were still preferred. By the 1930s mothers allowed their daughters’ feet to go unbound, and the practice stopped more or less completely.