Painfully Beautiful

In a society where beauty is seen as a size two waists and double D breast the average women is likely to feel dissatisfied with her body. The media shows pictures of what women should look like and when women do not fit within this ideal their self esteem suffers. In order to fell beautiful women will wax, pluck, dye and even go into surgery to look beautiful. The United States standard of beauty is a lot different than other countries but whose definition is right? Should the definitions of beauty include how much pain is involved in order to get to that beauty?

In places like China foot binding is what was considered beautiful. According to the web site: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8966942 . The origins of foot binding have gone back to the Chang dynasty. The legend says that the empress had a club foot so she wanted all the other people in the court to have a club foot as well. This soon became the fashion statement to many women who endured a 3”inch “golden lotuses”. The process of foot binding is extremely painful according to the web site: http://www.sfmuseum.org/chin/foot.html . A young girl had her feet bound by her mother or grandmother. The process starts by clipping the toenails so that the nail does not dig into the bottom of the foot. Then the foot is soaked to soften the tissue and bones. The next step is to break all the toes except the big one, and folded the toes under to the sole. The foot is then wrapped in a bandage and left. Then ever two days the foot is unwrapped for cleaning. The foot gradually gets smaller and eventually becomes approximately 3” inches in size

Today foot binding is not practiced in other countries. The side effects women endured were brutal. A 3” foot would be extremely painful for especially during everyday activities. Women who had their foot bound are still having problems today According to the web site: http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art29600.asp .Women had a hard time walking in a line, standing and even going to the bathroom. Some women had large corns and calluses on their feet that had to be cut off in order not to get infected. The most common effect of foot binding was infection. Women not only had to endure pain while getting their foot bound but the effects afterward was just as painful. Although our definition of beauty has changed over the years women are still willing to go through torture to be considered beautiful. Maybe one day our society will look to an individual’s personality instead of just looking at outside features. Sadly until our society changes; torture and pain are going to be endured by women around the world.