Women

Decades after the practice of bound feet died out, women are still mutilating their bodies in the name of beauty [Bound Feet Blues]

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This is a fascinating article about Chinese photographer Ji Yeo and her project to photograph women in the recovery room just after cosmetic surgery – See http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/mar/18/ji-yeo-cosmetic-surgery-frontline

According to the Guardian, she hated her body when she was younger – which was tied into her low self esteem –  and looked into having cosmetic surgery.

She didn’t have the surgery but started the Beauty Recovery Room photography project instead, taking photos of women just after cosmetic surgery.

A shot from Ji Yeo's Beauty Recovery Room series

As I’ve been thinking about bound feet and why women in China did that to themselves for my story performance Bound Feet Blues, I’ve been so much more aware of issues around women and their self esteem, body image, the role of fashion as power and body mutilation/ modification.

This project is particularly striking for me because it involves Chinese and East Asian women – symbolically making Continue reading →

Bound Feet Blues: Why did Chinese women have bound feet?

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I’ve been researching the history of bound feet for my solo performance piece Bound Feet Blues.

According to Wikipedia

Bound feet became a mark of beauty and was also a prerequisite for finding a husband. It also became an avenue for poorer women to marry into money; for example, in Guangdong in the late 19th century, it was customary to bind the feet of the eldest daughter of a lower-class family who was intended to be brought up as a lady. Her younger sisters would grow up to be bond-servants or domestic slaves and, when old enough, either the concubines of rich men or the wives of laboring men, able to work in the fields alongside them. In contrast, the tiny, narrow feet of the “ladies” were considered beautiful and made a woman’s movements more feminine and dainty, and it was assumed these eldest daughters would never need to work. Women, their families, and their husbands took great pride in tiny feet, with the ideal length, called the “Golden Lotus”, being about 7 cm (3 inches) long.[7] This pride was reflected in the elegantly embroidered silk slippers and wrappings girls and women wore to cover their feet. Walking on bound feet necessitated bending the knees slightly and swaying to maintain proper movement and balance, a dainty walk that was also considered erotic to men.[8]

 

 

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_binding

What can the new fashion for flat shoes tell us about the cultural need to control women? [Bound Feet Blues]

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The Guardian has this amusing piece commenting on the new fashion for flat shoes for women.

“Fashion trends generated by the fashion industry exist to make life complicated…. Now that the fashion industry has realised that women are fed up with being told they need to wear five-inch heels to look stylish, they’ve proffered flat shoes, but complicated ones.”

For me, there’s also something about fashion that is meant to make those in the latest fashion feel special – AND to make those who don’t have the latest outfits and accessories feel small, ugly and humiliated.  It’s a power thing – a way to control women to fit in with the self-styled “elite” arbiters of what is fashionable. More than that, this mindset also extends to body image – by making us all want to fit in to an ideal skeletal body shape so that those who don’t end up  feeling shame and self-loathing. It’s a way of controlling women and our bodies.

In researching the history of bound feet for my story performance Bound Feet Blues, I’ve been reflecting on fashion and its insidious destructive power.  The elite in ancient China set the trend for bound feet and as it became more Continue reading →

Emma Thompson on the agony of high heel shoes at The Golden Globe Award 2014 [Bound Feet Blues]

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Emma Thompson

I’ve been meaning to post this item for awhile. Emma Thompson is fabulous and one of my all time heroines. I loved her appearance at The Golden Globe awards earlier this year – for her irreverence and cheekiness, all the while maintaining her cool elegance and stature.

I love that she appeared barefoot with her stilettoes in her hand – and joked about the red colour of their soles being the blood from her feet, revealing what all of us women can feel in high heels but never dare to say! Painful feet is of course Continue reading →

Go Girl Guides! The ultimate feminists launch the “Free Being Me” badge to challenge unhealthy body talk [Bound Feet Blues]

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The Guardian reports that the Girl Guides are launching a new badge “Free being me” to encourage young girls to have more confidence and a more positive sense of their own bodies:

“The charity believes girls are under intense pressure to look a certain way and hopes courses designed to unmask beauty myths, expose airbrushing and challenge unhealthy body talk will boost their confidence. Girls who complete the training will be awarded a “free being me” badge if they can show that they have taken up the mantle and worked on spreading the message in their schools and communities.”

Read the whole article at http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/mar/20/girlguiding-body-confidence-badge-guides

Girlguiding's new body confidence badge

I feel very strongly that a sense of shame and self-worthlessness permeates our identity as women, either externally imposed on Continue reading →

Bound Feet Blues: Inside the mind of a woman crippled by bound feet in ancient China

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What was it like to be a woman crippled by bound feet? This question has always haunted me ever since I was a child when I  learnt about the bound feet women in China.

I have been researching this question for my story performance Bound Feet Blues.

You can read my essay about the practice of footbinding and how it affected generations of women emotionally and pyschologically over at my main blog StoryGuru.co.uk: see “Bound Feet Blues: What was it like to be a woman crippled by bound feet in ancient China?”

“For a thousand years, women crippled their daughters to create perfect dainty little bound feet which were beloved by men and became the currency for a good marriage. What was it like to be one of those women? Why did they carry on such a cruel practice? 

…. [READ MORE]”

 

 

Photo: flyer for Bound Feet Blues – A Life Told in Shoes – from the author’s personal archive