Ancient Chinese custom, well, not so ancient because it continued into the early 1900's, required that women bind their feet so that they were as tiny as possible. And by tiny, I mean that the perfect length of a woman's foot was 3 inches. 3 inches! I don't know about you, but my foot is definitely longer than 3 inches, and I have small feet...

The binding would begin around the age of 6, when girls were still growing and their bodies still forming. The foot would be bent sideways, so that the girl would eventually balance on her heel and her big toe. The other four toes would break, causing them to fold underneath the foot and be useless. It was thought that the crease in between the front part of the foot and the heel was sexy, and the men loved it.

Of course, the men didn't feel the pain! That sort of deformation was horrific. Walking on broken toes, the unnaturalness of the bent foot, the deformation of the muscles and bones...Does not sound like a party to me. The feet were bound very tightly, and rebound every two days, to make the feet as small as possible. Not only was it painful, but it was dangerous. All sorts of infections could occur, ranging from ingrown toenals to fungus in between the odd creases. Girls died from this process. And if they did survive, every step they took for the rest of their lives was painful.

This practice was quite common for more than four hundred years. Finally, in the early 1900's, the Chinese government officially banned foot-binding, and it soon ended, bringing relief to women all over the country. But the reason it took this long to end was because foot-binding was considered extremely important in showing a woman's character. If she could survive this, she could survive childbirth. It also made her meek and obediant, ideal in a Chinese wife. And the smaller the bound foot, the better the life for the woman, because it would create a marriage with a man of high standing. And it was great for the man too, because his wife couldn't run very far very fast without falling over.

Throughout the centuries, there were one or two voices that spoke up against foot binding. But it's hard to protest against thousands of people who don't listen because they want to follow tradition. Men wouldn't marry an unbound woman. And a woman who wasn't married was worthless, a burden on her family. What else to do but try to survive the pain? No pain, no gain, right?

It's scary to think what women went through for fashion. Everyone knows about corsets and the damage they caused in the name of beauty, but I for one had not heard much about foot binding until recently. And what I learned was so shocking, that I will never (at least for the next few weeks) complain about high heels again!