There is a historic technique from rural China which involved the binding of the feet of female children to prevent them from growing. It was a brutal process and was debilitating and disabling to the feet. It was carried out as a smaller sized foot was considered an attractive feature in the female and a higher dowry can be asked for by the family for the bride-to-be when the feet had been bound. There was a considerable market in these rural communities for the ornamental and finely crafted shoes that these girls would need to wear because of the smaller and deformed feet. More than 100 or so years ago cultural pressures began to mount to ban the practice and this generally was successful and it is not done any longer. The practice had to stop as it was so disabling and painful for the child. When they became an adult, the damage had been done and there is not much that could be done to manage the suffering and deformity. Having said that, you will still find many elderly woman still living that had their feet bound when they were little girls.

You will find theoretically parallels to this practice of chinese foot binding that may be seen nowadays. A number of experts try to link the practice these days of females who force their feet into the high heel shoes as being the same as the foot binding. In rural China the practice was all about the female doing something that pleases the male, no matter the outcomes in terms of pain and deformity. The practice today of wearing tight fitting high heel shoes by females has consequences in the terms of foot disability and foot pain. It is also apparently done in the context of the female doing something which is pleasing to the eye of the man. There is some disagreement if the connection between the two practices really do warrant the type of evaluation that they have been put through.