Aching for Beauty Foot Binding in China -Wang Ping
The picture posted below is an original picture from W Ping's book. The book shares the old Chinese tradition of feet binding. Prefect feet are said to have seven characteristics: small, slim, pointed, arched, fragrant, soft and straight. In this tradition little girls start binding their feet between the ages of 5 and 7. Their mothers insist on them beginning this grueling process because it determines a young woman's worth when being selected as a wife. Badly shaped feet suggest a lack of endurance, patience and laziness. The objective is to become a piece of art and an object of erotic desire for men. Women never remove their lotus shoes, their shoes are associated with their chastity. Men would steal shoes and use them for sexual gratification and to humiliate the woman, in such an event manywomen would be overcome with shame and commit suicide.
Ping's article was really shocking to me. Although I had heard about foot binding as a practice in ancient China, I never fully understood the specifics. I think its horrible what these women had to endure. In the article foot binding is correlated with the high heeled shoes of today. Personally I do not enjoy wear high heels, they are uncomfortable and hurt my feet, thankfully its not a requirement of my society.
Seminar Activity:Definitions
In a small groups we were asked to generate definitions of our six key words: Feminism, technology, media, gender, woman and image. The picture below is my group's definition of gender before any major revisions. Click on the picture below for pictures of the other five definitions.
More Images
Before generating a group definition of "gender", we created out own personal interpretations, this is a picture of mine.