re: #343 Spenser (with an S)

I know this is far off history and every culture has it’s nasty un-enlightened past (some have an un-enlightened present), so please no offense to any Chinese-American lizards, but my wife is reading a book about foot-binding in 18th century China? Very disturbing. I had heard of it, but had no idea what it really was. I had some notion of wrapping them tightly so they didn’t grow fully but it is so much more. They started with a 5 year old girl who has been able to run and play with her brothers until now and started binding all four toes under her foot and crippling her. The goal was a 4 inch-long foot for feminine beauty. They made a stump out of her feet so a man would take her off her parent’s hands. Creepy.

Hey Spencer,

I’ve read a few things about the process of footbinding. It’s extremely disturbing, not just as an account of physical cruelty but also as an account of the attitude behind it. The goal was to render the woman incapable of normal movement. The first person accounts of the pain involved, and what happened to the normal foot (atrophy, and worse) are horrifying.