Come and see my TEDx style talk inspired by Bound Feet Blues – Breaking Tradition: How to Live Unbound

May 28, 2014May 30, 2014 / Yang-May Ooi / Leave a comment

I will be giving a TEDx style talk inspired by my research for my solo show Bound Feet Blues at the Inspiring Speakers Gala on Wed 9th July. The talk is called Breaking Tradition: How to Live Unbound and looks at the life lessons that I learnt from exploring the story of my great gandmother who had bound feet.

Yang-May Ooi talking about bound feet – her left hand stands in for a crippled bound foot

If you enjoyed the work in progress performance of Bound Feet Blues on 26 March, my talk will look behind the show at my personal crisis that led me to find out the story of my family heritage. I also talk about the life lessons that I was able to draw from the courage and spirit I saw in my great grandmother who was able to transcend the brutal limitation imposed on her by her cultural tradition.

If you haven’t managed to see the show but would like to get a flavour of what is in store when the full length performance of Bound Feet Blues is showcased later this year, Breaking Tradition will give you a feel for what lies ahead. Someone who saw me do a snippet of the talk said: “I feel as if I’ve just seen a feature film in 4 minutes!”

I’ll be giving this talk as part of … Continue reading →

Bound Feet Blues: Would you slice up your feet to fit into your shoes – like the ugly sisters in the Cinderella story?

May 2, 2014August 11, 2014 / Yang-May Ooi / 1 Comment

In the Cinderella fairy tale, when the Prince finds the glass slipper dropped by Cinderella, he travels around the kingdom trying to find the woman whose foot is the perfect fit for the shoe. Many women long to marry the Prince, including Cinderella’s ugly sisters but their feet are too big – so they resort to chopping off their toes and their heels to make their feet fit into that single perfect glass slipper.

You think this is a fairy tale.

Well, think again.

It seems that women today are having foot surgery so that their feet fit more easily into high heel shoes or sandals, according to an article on Shape magazine on Cinderella Foot Surgery.

They are asking for toe shortenings… nail re-sizing, “foot facelifts,” “toe tucks,” and foot narrowing… [and] “toebesity” surgery [liposuction on fat toes]

Having spent so much time researching the brutal Continue reading →

My story performance Bound Feet Blues is a way in to talking about contemporary feminist issues

April 23, 2014August 11, 2014 / Yang-May Ooi / Leave a comment

I workshopped Bound Feet Blues at The Centre for Solo Performance with 6 other solo performers and two facilitators. What was fascinating was that after my piece ended, in addition to giving me feedback on my performance and the structure of the script, the others in the group started talking about contemporary issues of body modification, body mutilation, the outward signifiers of feminity and masculinity and the eroticization of different part of our bodies in different cultures and times.

The facilitator had to interrupt the animated discussion to bring Continue reading →

My vision for Bound Feet Blues is as a pure form of storytelling

April 22, 2014August 11, 2014 / Yang-May Ooi / Leave a comment

I have added a page to my blog giving the background to the development of Bound Feet Blues.

Bound Feet

My vision for the piece is as a pure form of storytelling with no costumes or props and minimal lighting and music or sound effects. As a child, I loved listening to the stories my mother and Continue reading →

Yang-May Ooi: My great-grandmother with bound feet [Bound Feet Blues]

April 21, 2014August 11, 2014 / Yang-May Ooi / Leave a comment

This photo hangs on the wall in my study. It reminds me of my freedom to walk where I choose, to stride through my life, to stand on my own two feet

Why I love running in the rain [Bound Feet Blues]

April 21, 2014April 21, 2014 / Yang-May Ooi / Leave a comment

Researching the crippling effect of bound feet on women in ancient China for my story performance Bound Feet Blues has made me appreciate the freedom I have as a modern woman have to enjoy the simple pleasure of going for a run

I went for a 3 mile run on Easter Sunday in the pouring rain and came back utterly drenched. You may not believe me but I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Why such seeming madness?

Of course I’d prefer to run through a sunny landscape, with the warm sunshine on my face and the vibrant colours of spring bursting around me. But there’s something tactile and Continue reading →

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

April 18, 2014August 11, 2014 / Yang-May Ooi / Leave a comment

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]

April 17, 2014April 17, 2014 / Yang-May Ooi / Leave a comment

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 →

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

April 11, 2014August 11, 2014 / Yang-May Ooi / Leave a comment

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

Solo Performance: Bound Feet Blues – A Life Told in Shoes (work in progress)

April 10, 2014April 14, 2014 / Yang-May Ooi / Leave a comment

In Chinese tradition, women with tiny bound feet were desirable as wives and lovers, their delicate feet seen as objects of both status and sexual fetish. In her first full length storytelling piece Bound Feet Blues – A Life Told in Shoes, Chinese-Malaysian story performer Yang-May Ooi explores themes of female desirability, identity and empowerment in this personal story told through the shoes in her life.

The image of Chinese women with bound feet has haunted me since I was a child. I think of these women who have been crippled for life ever since they were 4 years old, unable to walk, with broken stumps for feet beneath the delicately embroidered silk shoes. Just so they can appear to have little, dainty feet and seem to be elegant and graceful – and therefore desirable and marriageable.