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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stop? Mom never told you?

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Speaker 1: From House to works dot Com. He and welcome to

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Speaker 1: the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristen. Today we're

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Speaker 1: gonna do a subject that has been requested a few

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Speaker 1: times over the course of of our history during this podcast,

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Speaker 1: and I hope that eventually we'll get to everyone's suggestions,

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Speaker 1: because you guys are full of good ones. But the

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Speaker 1: one we're going to discuss today is footbinding. Yes, Chinese

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Speaker 1: foot binding. It's something that I think a lot of

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Speaker 1: people are familiar with. Um, it does not it's a

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Speaker 1: practice that does not happen anymore. In fact, there are

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Speaker 1: maybe a couple of hundred women, it's estimated, left in

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Speaker 1: China who still have bound feet. Yeah. There have actually

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Speaker 1: been a lot of pieces in the last few years

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Speaker 1: about these, you know, women that are dying off and

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Speaker 1: how eventually you know, if you on to see bound feet,

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Speaker 1: you won't be able to anymore. Um, But it doesn't

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Speaker 1: seem to be you know, no one's no one's weeping

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Speaker 1: over it in China. Yeah. And and a lot of

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Speaker 1: times when we hear about footbinding, it's often in this

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Speaker 1: very negative sense of symbol of kind of women being subjugated,

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Speaker 1: having their feet broken at a at a young age,

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Speaker 1: and being bound and and essentially crippling them. Um. But

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Speaker 1: the information that Molly and I found painted a much

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Speaker 1: more complex picture of where footbinding came from and why

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Speaker 1: it happened even after it was outlawed in nineteen twelve.

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Speaker 1: So Molly, why don't we travel back in time to

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Speaker 1: the Song dynasty in China in the Southern Tang Kingdom

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Speaker 1: around UH nine sixty to a d Yeah, that's when

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Speaker 1: the first historical records show that there was actually footbinding happening.

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Speaker 1: And the story goes that the ruler had his heart

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Speaker 1: captured by a concubine dancer who bound her feet so

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Speaker 1: that she could do what she called a lotus dance. Yes,

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Speaker 1: and you might think of this. She wrapped her feet

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Speaker 1: in silk, and it sounds like it was something similar

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Speaker 1: to point shoes that ballet dancers were in order to

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Speaker 1: dence up on the Tipit does, but then uh, it

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Speaker 1: took a more extreme form as it caught on and

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Speaker 1: to actually bind feet what you to do as you

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Speaker 1: would break the toes so that they would go under

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Speaker 1: the foot, and the goal was to try and curve,

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Speaker 1: just make this monster arch so that those toes ended

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Speaker 1: up as close to the heels as possible. Three inches

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Speaker 1: was what you were aiming for in terms of foot length, right,

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Speaker 1: And these tiny, tiny feet were considered very attractive on

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Speaker 1: women back in the day. In fact, a woman would

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Speaker 1: make herself more marriageable but smaller the bound feet that

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Speaker 1: she had. Yeah, and that gets into the reasons why

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Speaker 1: you do it. And we found several conflicting things on this.

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Speaker 1: For one, because it started off in the kingdoms, uh,

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Speaker 1: it was seen as a sign of royalty. Then the

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Speaker 1: upper class kind of took it on as you know,

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Speaker 1: a sign of wealth and class, sort of the same

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Speaker 1: way that high heels caught on in that being able

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Speaker 1: to wear these really tiny shoes show that you didn't

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Speaker 1: have to go into the fields and work like everyone else.

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Speaker 1: But then it caught on among the lower classes for

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Speaker 1: the reason that Kristen mentions and that it made you

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Speaker 1: It made it possible to marry up essentially, because if

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Speaker 1: you had bound feet as a peasant, then you know,

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Speaker 1: if you found some wealthier guy who was willing to

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Speaker 1: marry you, you you wouldn't all of a sudden look out

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Speaker 1: of place when you entered his house. But then there

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Speaker 1: are others who say it was to keep the women

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Speaker 1: at home so that they wouldn't travel very far. They

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Speaker 1: had to basically stay home and work in the house

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Speaker 1: because they couldn't go anywhere. Uh. And then there's you know,

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Speaker 1: just questions of how erotic the men actually found it. Yes,

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Speaker 1: if you go back to ancient Chinese text you'll find

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Speaker 1: books detailing certain things sexual things that men could do

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Speaker 1: just to women's feet and obviously bound feet. Um, we're

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Speaker 1: not exactly if you if you unwrapped them. A lot

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Speaker 1: of times they were smelly, and they were prone to decay,

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Speaker 1: and they were also you know, the product of broken

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Speaker 1: bones and almost looked like hoofs, so we we wouldn't

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Speaker 1: think of them as as conventionally attractive. However, a lot

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Speaker 1: of times men would only see women's feet, women's bound

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Speaker 1: feet when they were covered in their special silken lotus

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Speaker 1: shoes that were often embroidered and lovely patterns and things

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Speaker 1: like that. And Um, one of the stories that we

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Speaker 1: found noted that one of the most erotic things that

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Speaker 1: a man could do in ancient China was too simply

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Speaker 1: pinch the toe area of a lotus shoe. Just even

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Speaker 1: touching the outside of the shoe was considered just highly

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Speaker 1: highly sexual, was going to like third base catching a shoe.

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Speaker 1: In fact, there was one book that had just forty

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Speaker 1: eight different ways you could touch a woman's foot. That

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Speaker 1: was sort of, I guess the kommissutra of of the day. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but it wasn't all. Historians and anthropologists today are quick

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Speaker 1: to point out that it wasn't all about some kind

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Speaker 1: of cultural foot fetish um. There were also economic drivers

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Speaker 1: as well and UM. A story we found in the

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Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal highlights the research of Melissa Brown, who's

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Speaker 1: an assistant professor of anthropology at Stanford University, and she

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Speaker 1: said that in the poorer households a lot of these

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Speaker 1: women would practice foot binding um because of economics, because

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Speaker 1: the women. It forced the women and girls to work

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Speaker 1: at home spinning the yawn, processing tea and chucking oysters,

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Speaker 1: you know, and with their their feet bound, they couldn't necessarily,

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Speaker 1: you know, they weren't very mobile and couldn't really leave

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Speaker 1: the home. Um and and trek off on their own.

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Speaker 1: And there's also want to bring up a cultural element

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Speaker 1: to it, you know. Basically, I think that we look

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Speaker 1: at it from very historical perspective and we're like, why

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Speaker 1: would you want to have your toes broken and your

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Speaker 1: feet made into these hoofs. But one researcher really emphasized

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Speaker 1: that this was something that your mother had done, your

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Speaker 1: grandmother had done. It was a cultural sign that you

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Speaker 1: were becoming a woman, that you wore a woman, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, no different than the things we do maybe

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Speaker 1: to squeeze into high heels today. Um. In fact, when

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Speaker 1: it was outlawed, some of women would hide the fact

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Speaker 1: that they were still doing it because it was such

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Speaker 1: this you know, status symbol and cultural symbol of womanhood. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, and we if we think about things like course,

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Speaker 1: it's back in the day women were squeezing themselves unnaturally

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Speaker 1: into these you know, whalebone corsets that even doctors back

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Speaker 1: then said, we're not very good for for our backs

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Speaker 1: and for breathing and for our internal organs. So while

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Speaker 1: foot binding definitely seems even more extreme than that, you know,

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Speaker 1: it was, and culture we've still practice, you know, our

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Speaker 1: our own set of kind of bizarre fashion rituals that

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Speaker 1: symbolize womanhood and you know, an attractive, beautiful woman. So

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Speaker 1: now footbinding loses its hold on society after the Opium Wars,

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Speaker 1: when the foreign missionaries came into China, and that's when

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Speaker 1: people start to say, whoa, if you're binding a woman's feet,

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Speaker 1: that's that's very oppressive. You really shouldn't be doing that.

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Speaker 1: And so in you start to see these anti footing

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Speaker 1: binding societies forming, um telling you know, men that not

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Speaker 1: to do this, men and women not to do this

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Speaker 1: to their children's feet, that it was making China look barbaric,

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Speaker 1: that China was losing face to the rest of the world,

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Speaker 1: and it was outlawed in nineteen twelve. Yeah, and not

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Speaker 1: only have scholars suggested that, you know, it was really

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Speaker 1: you know, these Western missionaries and kind of the injury

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Speaker 1: lovers coming in and saying, whoa, this is footbinding is

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Speaker 1: not healthy, need to stop doing that. The Wall Street

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Speaker 1: Journal also points out that there might have also been

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Speaker 1: an economic reason behind foot binding losing its prestige, because

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Speaker 1: also in the early twentieth century, machine made cotton yarn

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Speaker 1: became more widely available, and also uh tea prices started

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Speaker 1: to go down, and so with that you have the

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Speaker 1: demise of these home industries such as spinning yarn and

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Speaker 1: harvesting tea leaves that initially kept made it necessary to

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Speaker 1: keep the women and the girls home. So there was

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Speaker 1: this other component to that. So, like you said, Molly,

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Speaker 1: in nineteen twelve, we have the official outlawing of foot binding. However,

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Speaker 1: the practice lingered, especially in remote areas of China, and

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Speaker 1: in nineteen census in rural Shanxi Province found that eighteen

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Speaker 1: percent of women still had bound feet. But you know,

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Speaker 1: when the communist government took power in nineteen forty nine,

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Speaker 1: they're sort of the ones who really hit home that

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Speaker 1: you've got to stop doing this no matter where you are,

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Speaker 1: it's backward. And part of that was just because as

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Speaker 1: everyone had to go out into the fields and work,

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Speaker 1: and so these women you couldn't keep up with the

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Speaker 1: rest of the of the pack, and they were shamed

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Speaker 1: very harshly for their for their inability to move. Now,

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Speaker 1: Louisa Limb from NPR points out that the women who

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Speaker 1: were growing up when the Chinese came in and really

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Speaker 1: started to enforce the ban on foot binding, uh experienced

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Speaker 1: shaming by two eras because when they were young foot

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Speaker 1: binding was already forbidden, so they had to bind their

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Speaker 1: feet in secret. And then if you know, they go out,

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Speaker 1: they you know, they aren't very mobile, and they kind

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Speaker 1: of have to um to hide this thing that that

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Speaker 1: they're doing, this very painful thing that they're doing. And

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Speaker 1: then when the communist era rolls around and they have

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Speaker 1: to go out and start farming again, they're shunned for

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Speaker 1: the second time because since they're they're unbound feet, are

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Speaker 1: not able to um carry them as quickly and nimbly

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Speaker 1: in the fields as people who had unbound feet. So

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Speaker 1: at first, you know, they were they were kind of

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Speaker 1: these backward people who still had bound feet, and then

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Speaker 1: there were these kind of lagging, unproductive workers. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: found it really interesting about how those those people hid

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Speaker 1: the fact they're still doing footbinding when it was first

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Speaker 1: outlawed in nineteen eleven. I mean, you were you were

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Speaker 1: subject to find if they found out you were footbinding.

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Speaker 1: So they would um wrap their feet only at night

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Speaker 1: and in the day when inspectors might come around and

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Speaker 1: see you'd unwrap it. And it seems like the process

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Speaker 1: of wrapping and unwrapping would be more painful than just

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Speaker 1: like wrapping it and keeping it wrapped right becau since

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Speaker 1: some of the practices with footbinding, they would intentionally um

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Speaker 1: start the wrapping process in the winter since it would

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Speaker 1: be so cold that it would numb the young girls feet.

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Speaker 1: So I mean imagining doing that process every day or

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Speaker 1: whenever the the inspectors would come by. I'm sure it

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Speaker 1: was was not could not have been um pleasant to

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Speaker 1: say the least. And it wasn't just their feet that

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Speaker 1: were affected, as you can imagine, kind of like with

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Speaker 1: with women who bound themselves up in corsets. Um. There

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Speaker 1: were many physiological implications that came along with foot binding,

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Speaker 1: including a outside swelling of the abdomen in a line

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Speaker 1: down the back due to the muscle stress and lumbar

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Speaker 1: vertebrae that would curve forward. Because binding the feet forced

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Speaker 1: woman to shift her weight on her lower body, putting

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Speaker 1: pressure on her pelvis and eventually lowering it, which actually

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Speaker 1: caused a sacrum to be longer and wider. So this

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Speaker 1: the feet. The binding of the feet had effects all

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Speaker 1: over a woman's body. Would literally change a woman's body, which,

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Speaker 1: as you can imagine, affected women as they aged. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: In the University of California, San Francisco, did the first

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Speaker 1: study on the consequences of footbinding, and so at that

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Speaker 1: time there were all these elderly women who had grown

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Speaker 1: up having their feet bound, and so they staid long

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Speaker 1: term health effects. And the study found obviously that the

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Speaker 1: women had foot deformities, but like Kristen said, it it

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Speaker 1: just affected their whole body. They couldn't get out of

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Speaker 1: a chair without assistance compared to women who hadn't had

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Speaker 1: bound feet, uh, and this made them less able to

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Speaker 1: do daily acts like going to the bathroom, working around

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Speaker 1: the house. Uh. They weren't much raad or risk suffering

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Speaker 1: hip or spine fractures. The women who hadn't had bound feet.

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Speaker 1: They had lower hip bone density, lower spine bone density.

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Speaker 1: But the thing they said is that for all the

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Speaker 1: difficulties uh that the women were subject to, they did

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Speaker 1: not complain. And so they didn't know if that was

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Speaker 1: a cultural thing that they were reluctant to do it,

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Speaker 1: or if they just gotten used to being, you know,

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Speaker 1: essentially deformed. Right. Because again, um, these these lotus shoes

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Speaker 1: that they would wear were highly prized. I mean up

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Speaker 1: until not too long ago, there was still one shoe

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Speaker 1: factory in China that produced these these special small shoes

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Speaker 1: for the tiny population of women who still had bound feet,

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Speaker 1: and um it was also a major part of women's

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Speaker 1: handicrafts back in the day. As um. There was a

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Speaker 1: researcher from Barnard College, Dorothy Co who um went into

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Speaker 1: these villages and really studied, um all of the handicrafts

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Speaker 1: that went into making lotus shoes and how not only

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Speaker 1: important they were to the women, but also um important

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Speaker 1: they were to some of their religious rituals as well.

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Speaker 1: For instance, Co points out that, UM, some people would

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Speaker 1: make an offering of even miniature load issues um to

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Speaker 1: certain gods because they thought that they would be helpful

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Speaker 1: for praying for sons. And you know, even in these

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Speaker 1: recent pieces that have come out two thousand sevent nine,

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Speaker 1: uh about these last women who have these these bound feet,

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Speaker 1: the reporters seem to pick up on the fact that

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Speaker 1: they're still pretty proud of their feet. Yeah, they still

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Speaker 1: look down kind of admiringly, like my feet are so dainty.

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Speaker 1: My feet are still attractive to my husband. Maybe I

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Speaker 1: can't dance as well, but but this is you know,

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Speaker 1: how I was raised to to look. And I think

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Speaker 1: that it kind of does give you a little bit

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Speaker 1: of a sense of you know, in a hundred years,

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Speaker 1: what will we look back on and be like, man,

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Speaker 1: that was crazy? How did we do that? Will it

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Speaker 1: be high heels? Would it be you know the type

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Speaker 1: Jeanes we try and fit into, Like, what's going to

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Speaker 1: be the thing in a hundred years that we're going

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Speaker 1: to be like, why did we do that? Well? I mean,

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Speaker 1: I think the thing too with the foot binding is

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Speaker 1: that it's so extreme because you are physically altering your body,

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Speaker 1: breaking bones and tendons and um, you know, from a

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Speaker 1: very young age in order to kind of reshape the

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Speaker 1: foot and so so Yeah, I mean I think that

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Speaker 1: I think that we can't not say that foot binding

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Speaker 1: is extreme. But it's just one example, maybe on the

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Speaker 1: extreme end of the spectrum of kind of, like you said, Molly,

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Speaker 1: the bizarre things that we do in order to make

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Speaker 1: ourselves conventionally attractive in our cultures. Yeah, I think that

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Speaker 1: it because it is so extreme, it becomes this symbol

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Speaker 1: of everything that's wrong with the beauty myth. But you know,

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Speaker 1: it was kind of striking and when reading this research,

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Speaker 1: how you know, I think that if these women had

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Speaker 1: had the choice to do it again, they would have right,

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Speaker 1: because one thing that Dorothy co from Barnard emphasizes and

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Speaker 1: her analysis of footbinding is that we shouldn't just look

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Speaker 1: at these women as victims of this practice. You know,

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Speaker 1: there are just so many different layers to why footbinding happened,

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Speaker 1: from you know, kind of the more erotic elements that

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Speaker 1: we talked about, trickling down to how it was integrated

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Speaker 1: into more rural communities, um and and looking at it

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Speaker 1: from a more holistic perspective than just making the snap

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Speaker 1: judgment of oh my god, what a backward tradition, how

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Speaker 1: could that it possibly happened? Well, said Kristen. I don't

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Speaker 1: know if we've got anything else to cover on this,

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Speaker 1: so let's open it up to listeners. What do you

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Speaker 1: guys think about footbinding? Any historical fun facts we might

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Speaker 1: have missed that you'd like to let us and the

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Speaker 1: listeners know about. We'd love to hear from you guys.

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Speaker 1: And speaking of a listener, Maile, let's read a little

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Speaker 1: bit of it. I have an email from Lily who

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Speaker 1: was writing about the feminist role models and children's book podcasts.

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Speaker 1: She writes, the ones I thought you missed for the

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Speaker 1: books Cheaper by the dozen and especially bells on their toes.

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Speaker 1: Bells on their toes is so fantastic and I can't

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Speaker 1: wait to share this book with young girls. Uh, these

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Speaker 1: books are hilarious and so relatable to kids. I laughed

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Speaker 1: out loud reading these books and really wanted a large family.

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Speaker 1: They have a great message and focus on family values,

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Speaker 1: and though they are set back in the day with

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Speaker 1: super traditional men and women roles, I still think there

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Speaker 1: are definitely pro feminist messages in the book. Furthermore, there's

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Speaker 1: a nice arc of the females in the book battling

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Speaker 1: sexist views, for example and bells on their toes. The

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Speaker 1: mother is recently widowed and now has sole responsibility but

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Speaker 1: large family and struggles to keep her family together while

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Speaker 1: working in a man's field engineering efficiency, but she succeeds

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Speaker 1: by making a demonstration of efficiency in kitchen designs because

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Speaker 1: that's the females area of expertise. I think reading this

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Speaker 1: book was the most girl power book of my youth,

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Speaker 1: so I definitely recommend it to your listeners. All right, Well,

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Speaker 1: I've got an email here from Mike and this is

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Speaker 1: in response for our podcasts on whether or not men

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Speaker 1: and women can just be friends, and uh, he sent

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Speaker 1: us a little equation to calculate whether or not platonic

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Speaker 1: pals may or may not engage in UM a little

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Speaker 1: hanky panking. So here's what Mike hast to say. He says,

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Speaker 1: Number one, how much time do the pals spend together

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Speaker 1: in a given day, week, or month. Let's call this

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Speaker 1: factor T. Number two, Do they share real stuff like feelings, hopes, streams,

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Speaker 1: or just super superficial stuff like chatting about entertainment? Let's

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Speaker 1: call this S. Do they drink alcohol together or do drugs?

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Speaker 1: Let's call this D. Are they in committed relationships with

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Speaker 1: other people? Let's call this factor SEE. And do they

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Speaker 1: find one another at least somewhat attractive? Let's call this A.

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Speaker 1: He says, if T time together is fifteen hours or

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Speaker 1: more per month, if they s share real stuff like feelings, hopes,

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Speaker 1: and dreams. If the answer to D in terms of

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Speaker 1: drinking alcohol and doing drugs is yes, And if they

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Speaker 1: SEE are not in committed relationships and A find each

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Speaker 1: other at least somewhat attractive, then Mike says yes, sex

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Speaker 1: will happen at some point. So there you have it

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Speaker 1: for Mike. There's the official UM platonic friends equation five

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Speaker 1: variable approach. The five variable approach. You guys and girls

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Speaker 1: do the math out there, So thanks for sending that in.

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Speaker 1: And again, our email is mom Stuff at how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com and Molly and I would love for

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Speaker 1: you to all go on Facebook right now, don't hesitate

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Speaker 1: and like our face page where it's stuff I've Never

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Speaker 1: told You on Facebook? What could be easier than that?

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Speaker 1: Just click like so we asked for And you can

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Speaker 1: also follow us on Twitter where mom Stuff podcasts there.

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Speaker 1: And of course we have a blog, It's Stuff I've

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Speaker 1: Never told You and it is found at how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com. For more on this and thousands of

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Speaker 1: other topics, is that how stuff works dot com. Want

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Speaker 1: more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the

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Speaker 1: house stuff works dot com home page. Brought to you

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Speaker 1: by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are

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Speaker 1: you