Study: Foot-binding was driven by economics, not sex and beauty
Depending on whom you ask, foot-binding was everything from a bizarre cultural fetish that placed male ideas of beauty ahead of women’s health and well-being to a brutal tradition intended to keep women subservient to men. But a new study led by Melissa Brown, the managing editor of the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, suggests that its real underpinnings may have been economic Based on interviews with thousands of elderly women who experienced foot-binding, the study suggests it was used as a way to keep girls — in some cases as young as 5 — on task producing handicrafts, such as spinning thread or weaving cloth, which could be sold to support their families. The study is described in a September paper published in PLOS ONE. “One thing this paper shows is that foot-binding wasn’t an exotic custom about sex and beauty,” Brown said. “That’s important because it’s often used in high school...