Suffering for Beauty

Throughout history, women have done a lot of unusual and often painful things in the name of beauty. The idea of beauty, however, has changed a lot throughout history and is different in different parts of the world. Often, these ideas of beauty come in trends. For example, in Europe in the 1500s–1600s—during the reign of Elizabeth I—having white skin was considered most beautiful and women covered their faces in white makeup made from ground lead, a poison that reaped long-term health problems on the wearers. Ironically, the makeup caused your skin to turn black over time. It also caused your teeth to rot, your hair to fall out, and a number of other gross side effects. A couple of hundred years later—during the Victorian Era (1800s)—wasp waists were the beauty trend. To achieve this tiny-waisted look, women wore corsets that were so tight in the waist that the corsets actually squeezed in their rib bones and squashed their internal organs. The corsets helped give a woman the appearance of having an incredibly tiny waist with a big bottom and big top—much like the way a wasp is shaped. To wear these corsets, women had to relearn how to breathe so that they didn’t suffocate while wearing them. These corsets played a role in the old idea that women would faint easily if excited—if you are excited and wearing a corset that severely restricts your breathing, you’re going to pass out from a lack of oxygen.

In other parts of the world, people have different ideas of beauty and these ideas are often integrated with their cultural traditions. In parts of Thailand and Africa, a woman with an extra long neck is considered the most beautiful. In these areas, women put increasing numbers of weighted rings around their necks starting as young girls, which alters their bone structure making their necks appear to grow longer. The rings don’t actually stretch a woman’s neck, but, instead, permanently push down the collarbone, which makes the neck look longer. In some parts of Africa, women stretch their lips using round disks—large lips being a highly sought after mark of beauty.

The Chinese practice of binding woman’s feet was both a traditional part of Chinese culture as well as one of the longest beauty trends in history—lasting for more than a thousand years. Historians believe the trend started in the 12th century with a royal dancer named Yao Niang who bound her feet in the shape of a new moon to dance before Emperor Li Yu. Soon after she danced on the toes of her bound feet inside of a giant lotus flower box, the foot-binding trend took off, starting first with aristocrats before becoming most popular with the rest of society by the 1600s. In time, women had to bind their feet if they hoped to find a husband, and the smaller her feet were, the better a woman’s chances of finding a good match. The highest prized foot size was called the golden lotus and was four inches long (the length of the original iPhone).

Sadly, foot binding came at a high cost for women. To keep the foot small enough, the binding needed to start when a girl was between the ages of four and six and was excruciatingly painful. To start, a girl’s feet were dipped into hot water and her toenails cut very short. Then all of her toes except the big toe were broken and bound flat against the bottom of her foot to make a triangle shape. Next, they bound her foot in such a way that the arch would break and her foot would be bent double. Adults would force the girl to walk long distances on her broken feet to encourage the arches of her feet to break. The ten foot long bandages would be replaced every couple of days to prevent infection and dead or excess skin would be cut away. The process of reshaping the foot took two to three years, but the girl’s feet would need to be bound for the rest of her life.

Foot binding made women’s feet look rather hoof-like. Women with bound feet suffered pain their entire lives and could not walk far or do various types of physical activities such as dancing. Many agree that foot binding subjugated women, which means that it kept women subservient and dependent on men. Foot binding kept women close to home because they simply couldn’t walk far on their own. Women couldn’t run on bound feet, but walked with a slow tottering gate. Only lower class women who needed to work in the fields or on fishing boats had unbound feet—and these big-footed women (whose feet were really just normal feet) were considered highly unattractive.

Foot binding in China was banned in 1912, but the practice continued in remote areas until the 1950s. There are a number of elderly women today with bound feet, but their numbers are rapidly declining as these women grow older. For hundreds of years, women’s tiny bound feet were a source of pride for China. It was part of Chinese culture for an entire millennium and yet was also an extremely long-lived beauty trend. As far as beauty trends for women go, it was rather extreme. But perhaps it is no more or less extreme than women getting plastic surgery to alter their faces or bodies in various ways as is popular nowadays.