User:Kristen998/Foot binding

Footbinding gradually spread from the upper class of society to the lower class. It is believed that women’s feet binding can make themselves respected by society, thereby improving their social status and bringing honor, prestige, and money. Women who do not bind their feet can only become slaves. A woman with her feet bound can marry a rich man. Some women wish to have their feet bound to death, and they regard the binding of their feet as an honor. Women are not seen by society as having their independent personality or productivity, but as a commodity. The body and labor of unmarried daughters belong to their parents. For women, the boundaries between work and kinship are blurred. People want their daughters to realize that unpleasant things are inevitable and they cannot control their bodies. Daughters who do not bind their feet will experience more torture when they grow up. People in different regions have different acceptance of foot binding. The average foot-binding age is 12 years in coastal areas and 7 years in inland areas. When women can do light industry without the need to farm or carry heavy things, foot binding becomes common. Women who do heavy work often do not bind their feet, because binding their feet hinders physical work. The daughters of wealthy people mostly bind their feet. Gates believes that the disappearance of foot binding has nothing to do with the opposition of missionaries and political activities. When the light industry market collapsed, women could only choose to do heavy work, so the bound feet disappeared. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the reasons that prevented the foot binding were changes in politics and people's consciousness, as well as the development of the industry. After two generations, the foot binding disappeared in China forever.

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Brown, Melissa J., et al. “Sociocultural Epistasis and Cultural Exaptation in Footbinding, Marriage Form, and Religious Practices in Early 20th-Century Taiwan.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 106, no. 52, 2009, pp. 22139–22144. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40536412. Accessed 22 Oct. 2020.

Gates, Hill. “Footloose in Fujian: Economic Correlates of Footbinding.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 43, no. 1, 2001, pp. 130–148. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2696625. Accessed 22 Oct. 2020.