What I Learned from Foot Binding

Ying Lu

Professor Bieber

Engl 113B

1 September 2012

What I learned from foot binding

Will you judge small feet as a standard to decide whether to marry with the other half? In past of China, it did. If a woman has a normal big feet, then no one will marry her. It is one reason why women kept binding their feet for thousands years. So does the female circumcision happen in many area nowadays, it is a cruel practice on women and girls, which only benefit for men, similarly have the same reason, marriage, to keep women and girls doing it. Both foot binding and female circumcision exist in a male-dominated society, where women nearly have no rights for their better lives because of lower education and have no sense of protect their human rights. Furthermore, foot binding is no longer exist and female circumcision is on its way to the end. With the help of many organizations and people, female circumcision will be outlawed so that millions of women and girls will free from the suffering. Learning from the foot binding, female circumcision should be outlawed in the world in order that women have equal rights as men to prevent their own body from hurt. It is the inevitable result of  history, the development of society encourage human become more harmony and show the human’s glory.

Foot binding was a long history that practiced generation by generation. It started in Song dynasty(960-1279 A.D.), which practice to young girls around 6 years old binding their feet in order to prevent further growth, then, foot binding goes to the boom around Ming dynasty(1368-1644 A.D.), ultimately outlawed in 1912.  At the begin of the foot binding, people believe an emperor, Li Yu, who was the last emperor of NanTang dynast and he was interested in a concubine’s dancing, especially her small feet. At that old time, men have ability to marry with several wives. Typically, a emperor of a county have thousands of concubines. How to have a better life among thousands of women while there is only one emperor. Make themselves attractive and unique as well as do what the emperor like. All these are necessary to survive in that competitive environment. Therefore, all the concubines began to emulate binding their feet to pleasure the emperor. No one realizes this special hobby of the emperor will deeply affect millions of women and girls in China next thousands years later on. Generally, outside the Palace, the wealthier classes also following to encourage women to bind their feet. It was a symbol of high status for women showing their rich and powerful family background. Until the Ming dynasty, foot binding spread widely over the nation. Even the farming women bind their feet, and it was hard to think how could they do farming with those small shivery painful feet. In fact, it developed to a higher strict level that how to bind a three-inch feet and there were twenty four kinds of different types around the country in various regions. In the male-dominated society, women have no rights to express how they feel about the foot binding. Obviously, it is extremely painful to forcibly bow bones by string into three-inch length. In the last hundreds years’ period of the foot binding, women were suffering both physically and mentally around all kinds of pressure coming to them, even they do not like bind their feet they have no choice if they want to have a peaceful life they have to bow to fate. Women afraid there is no one would marry them because of the big feet. They can not take a risk of  having a bright future destroyed by a pair of ridiculous big feet. There is no doubt, marriage to human is ineffable important in their lives, particularly for Chinese people. As the saying goes in China, a man should get married on coming of age, and so should a girl. It is only a comfort for binding women’s feet as they people know how painful it will be.

Similarly, for doing the female circumcision, marriage is one of the main reason. From the World Health Organization websites, about “140 million girls and women worldwide are living with the consequences of female genital mutilation.” “Female genital mutilation is a violation of the human rights of girls and women.” Like the Djibouti and the Egypt, over ninety seven percent of girls and women have undergone the female genital mutilation. It is a requirement for marriage because people have a serious concept of virgins. Generally, young girls are being control by their mother and a woman will cut labia or remove clitoris. There are all three different types of female genital mutilation. Moreover, it would be a very dangerous procedure for young girls because no medical support so that they might die from the circumcision. After the circumcision, it will take a long time, probably years to recover, and the pain is throughout the life. The famous modal from Somalia, who experience the circumcision when she was about five years old, and she says “When you give birth, they unsew you. Once they baby has come out, they sew you back up again.” For women and girls, of course they do not like hurt themselves like this. The reason why women and girls do the miserable thing is to satisfy men’s need. “Men invented the custom so that sexual pleasure is nonexistent for women - sex is just for men.”In most female genital mutilation areas, like Djibouti and Egypt, men have absolute power to control women’s behavior. They do not want women have optional sex with others, and make sure their wives are virgins so they use the extreme way to get their ugly goal. 

From the situation of today’s female genital mutilation, similar with the last hundreds years of foot binding, women and girls have emotional dislike the practice by hurting themselves. However, different kinds of pressure push them keep doing what elder generations did. Women and girls hardly violate the old rule because there have more cruel punishment or death for them if they do not follow the rule. Fortunately, many organizations like WHO does much effort for helping those women and girls out from suffering. From the history of foot binding, there are two main way to make foot binding outlawed eventually, which also can help female genital mutilation being outlawed all over the world. First is to educate people how harmful circumcision is and women have the same rights as men to protect their life safety. Not only educate women, it is quite important and necessary to educate men to help them realize female genital mutilation can not be continue just for satisfy them. During the last period of foot binding, men access new knowledge from outside country and notice that women bind their feet was only useless and many well educated men encourage people to rethink women foot binding in order to their fault. Furthermore, they launch campaigns to against women foot binding. It is vital to finally outlawed the foot binding. Because of some reasons, like men usually in those female circumcision places, men in general have more education than women. Therefore, they have more chances to get a new vision on female circumcision impartial. In addition, like foot binding lasted thousands years in a big deep-rooted environment, the male-dominated society, men normally have more influence and power than women to have activities against the female genital mutilation in advance. On the other side, a effective way to make female circumcision being outlawed is utilizing some influential people or issues to make people, especially men, change their mind about circumcision is inhumanness. It is the same as advertisements and many public warfare, they generally invite some famous people to encourage people consider some specific problems, which have a effective outcome for people to pay attention to those issues. In those female genital mutilation countries, they can make use of some respected people to undertake this important task to lead million of women and girls to a bright peaceful future. 

All in all, similar with foot binding, the female genital mutilation should be outlaw in the world, because both they are satisfy men’s need and women have no human rights to protect themselves. In the history of foot binding, because men’s special aesthetics, millions of women and girls bind their feet and it lasted for thousands years. Coincidentally, in order to control women’s pure, they force to do circumcision and the pain lasts for the whole life. Both of them are requirement for marriage seriously trampled women’s life safety, which should and will disappear in the world.

Work Cied

“Female Genital Mutilation.” WHO. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Oct. 2012. 

Lim, Louisa. “Painful Memories for China’s Footbinding Survivors” NPR. NPR, 19 Mar. 2007.  Web. 1 Oct. 2012.

Stuart Hirschberg, and Terry Hirschberg, eds. ONE WORLD, MANY CULTURES. Dirie: The  Tragedy of Female Circumcision, 2010. Print.