The Price of Beauty----A Brief C

   

The Price of Beauty----A Brief Comparison Between Ancient Foot-binding And Modern High Heels

     For more than a thousand years in ancient China, we had foot-binding for most females, that is, using binding strips to wrap the feet of young girls tightly to prevent further growth for the sake of beauty. And now people think it’s a morbid tradition. Morbid it is, but are we now really far from such distorted aesthetics? If we were to perceive today’s high heels in a more rational and profound way, we would have no problem in recognizing that we are nearly doing the same in our modern society.

       The so-called beatifying benefits of foot-binding in ancient China came at an extremely painful price. At the preliminary stage of foot-binding, many of the foot bones would remain cracked and broken nearly for several years, and as time went by, the crushed feet would begin to heal. But even after their grievously distorted foot bones had been healed, they still couldn’t balance themselves firmly on their feet, let alone run very quickly. The foot-binding women, at that time, to a large extent, were confined in the domestic realm on account of the inconvenience brought by foot-binding. They were subjugated and expected to bend themselves to looking beautiful and pleasing their husbands. Foot-binding, to a certain degree, had robbed them of freedom, physically, socially and psychologically.

The Price of Beauty----A Brief Comparison Between Ancient Foot-binding And Modern High Heels

    Foot-binding in ancient China is condemned as being cruel and inhumane to females, quite reasonably. People of our times might tend to think that such physically harmful habits and spiritually confining aesthetics are only a matter of the past, self-complacently despising the ancient people. But when it comes to high heels in today’s society, we might want to be less so conceited.

The Price of Beauty----A Brief Comparison Between Ancient Foot-binding And Modern High Heels

      High heels now are becoming into vogue in modern woman’s daily life, virtually the same as foot-binding, for the purpose of charming and sexy looks. But the problem is, wearing high heels, a woman can barely run, or else she might fall over and hurt herself easily. High heels sometimes even deform a woman’s feet, cases of which have been reported time and again in recent years. One research denotes that up to a third of the women who wear high heels suffer permanent problems as a result of their prolonged wearing of them, ranging from hammer toes and bunions to irreversible damages to leg tendons, many of which occur simultaneously. It’s reported that the higher the heels, the greater the pressure, then the more severe the problems will be. The knee and back can also be affected. With the majority of female shoes being of high heels, the potential problems for the wearers’ health later in their life are almost guaranteed. What’s more, with all these potential risks for health, women in our society largely consider wearing high heels an enjoyment of beauty, blindly craving to squeeze their feet into the physically harmful and confining high heels.

The Price of Beauty----A Brief Comparison Between Ancient Foot-binding And Modern High Heels

      So far, we can clearly see the price of beauty resulted from wearing high heels is of close similarity with that brought by traditional foot-binding. They, be it foot-binding or high heels, both render physical damages to and generate spiritual enslavement of women. The longing for physical beauty exists everywhere, yet the beauty that entails the deformation of body is definitely not an ideal thing to pursue.