I used to think it was just me – that I couldn’t walk in high heels. I don’t know how many times I’ve sprained my ankles over the years wearing heels, supposedly in order to look poised and elegant. And it is excruciating when that ankle twists over and you can feel and hear your ligaments go crack…
This YouTube video shows that even
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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
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
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.
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
Ever since I’ve been working on my story project Bound Feet Blues, I’ve been drawn to news and other matters to do with women’s feet and shoes – especially anything that hobbles us, limits movements and involves pain.
I am excited to see a Guardian report on the rise of ugly – but comfortable – shoes.
The article quotes Natalie Kingham, head Continue reading
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]
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
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
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.
I’ve always had small, delicate feet. My shoe size is 3.5 and it’s a real problem trying to Continue reading
Images can help the creative process. Artists, writers and other creatives use Mood Boards to help them in their work. Discover how Author and Story Performer Yang-May Ooi has been using Pinterest to collect pictures in a Mood Board for her current project, Bound Feet Blues.
For Bound Feet Blues, I’ve found it helpful to collect images of bound feet and the Chinese cheong sahm (long dress) as well as other images – no matter how tangently – that relate to the various themes I’m exploring:
# Chinese Continue reading
Bound Feet Blues - A Life Told in Shoes 