In ancient times, when girls reached the age of five or six, their parents began to wrap the little girl's feet in a long cloth, despite the little girl's wishes. The method is to use a long cloth strip to break the four toes other than the thumb and bend them to the center of the foot together with the soles of the feet to form a bamboo shoot-shaped "three-inch golden lotus". The degree of pain can be imagined, starting from the Southern Song Dynasty, up to the royal palace nobles, down to the common people, the family insisted on wrapping women's small feet in this way, this is because in the Southern Song Dynasty, most of the standards for measuring women's beauty and ugliness were small feet, and the smaller the feet, the more beautiful they were, and even once became a condition for talking about marriage. Women's small feet are generally forced by their elders, and the mother or grandmother ignores the tears and shouts of the child to fulfill their responsibilities, and uses the wrapping to ensure the future married life of the child.
In the society at that time, women's feet were a measure of their happy life, just like when they reached the age of marriage, some ordinary girls could marry a rich man's family with a pair of good-looking little feet, which was much more important than the appearance of girls. Therefore, in order to change their fate, many girls from poor families have suffered a lot of hardships and wrapped their feet, just so that they can marry the rich and enjoy a happy life.
As for the origin of the wrapped foot, there are many different versions in history, and some people say that the wrapped foot originated in the Sui Dynasty. According to folklore, when the Sui Dynasty Emperor visited Jiangdu, 100 beautiful women were selected to pull fibers. A beautiful woman named Wu Yueniang was chosen, and he hated the tyranny of the Sui Emperor, so he decided to eliminate harm for the people. She asked her father, a blacksmith, to make a lotus knife three inches long and one inch wide, wrapping the knife under her feet, and at the same time wrapping her feet as small as possible, with a lotus flower carved on the soles of her feet, and the beautiful lotus flowers were printed step by step when she walked. The Sui Emperor liked it very much after seeing it, so he hugged her tightly. Wu Yueniang gradually unwrapped the cloth wrapped around her small feet and took out a lotus flower knife to stab at the Sui Emperor. Although it did not succeed, the Sui Emperor's arm was stabbed, and Wu Yueniang's assassination was unsuccessful, so she threw herself into the river and committed suicide. In the future, the Sui Dynasty Emperor chose beautiful women, no matter what kind of beauty looks, the beautiful women with small feet are not selected. But folk women began to wrap their feet in honor of Wu Yueniang.
Some people say that wrapping small feet originated from five generations, the emperor at that time liked girls who could sing and dance, there was an emperor who specially made a six-foot-tall golden lotus, and the palace maid wrapped around the feet to form a crescent shape, and then put on socks to dance on the lotus stage, so that it could show the beauty of the dance posture, and over time, the folk also began to become popular. Later, during the Ming and Qing dynasties, women who did not wrap their small feet could not find a good in-law family.
As for why foot binding was so popular in ancient times, first of all, the idea of "male superiority and female inferiority" almost ran through the entire feudal society, when men's three wives and four concubines were basic rights, while women could only be attached to men and at their mercy. Foot binding is also a means for men to control women. Once women's feet are wrapped into a "three-inch golden lotus", then they will be greatly restricted in terms of labor and communication, and even standing and walking must support the wall. In this way, not only can the logic of "male outside, female inside" become logical, but also make "male strong and female weak" become an established fact, and women's dependence on men will become deeper and deeper. With the continuous development of the times, the thousand-year-long vice of foot binding that poisoned women has finally been abolished, and the control of the body should belong to ourselves, which is the victory of human nature and the victory of civilization.