Foot Binding (the horrible things women have done for vanity)

The horrible things that women have done in the past for vanity have always fascinated me. Although not as severe, this does still exist today in the forms of plastic surgery, high heels, and unhealthy diets(bulimia, anorexia, etc). Now, I say more severe, but the only reason we can view it as such is because of modern medicine. Could you imagine how much plastic surgery would hurt without the drugs that are used to knock you out? Yuck.

Now, onto the subject today: Chinese Footbinding. This is something I have been interested and fascinated by (almost obsessively) for years. For those of you who don't know what it is, let me explain. Foot binding is the act of breaking and reshaping the foot into a more "desirable" size, in this case, a smaller size. "3 inch golden lotuses", feet not longer than a standard deck of cards, were considered the most perfect feet that you could obtain. How did they do this? With a lot of pain, over a very long period of time. The result left the woman crippled for the rest of her life, barely able to move around the house.

Foot binding began at a very young age, though it was different from county to county. The most common age I have read about is 6. To begin the process, the girls feet were soaked in warm water with herbs and sometimes animal blood and other things. You need to keep in mind that the people of China in this time were very spiritual, so somethings were thought to help based on ideas, not necessarily on the actual effectiveness. Her nails would be cut back as far as possible (to keep them from growing into the skin) and then the process would begin. Using binding cloths, which were just long pieces of fabric, the girls toes (all but the big toes) would be bound under her foot and secured there. The goal was to get the pinkie toe to touch the arch on the opposite side of the foot, I say this so that you can imagine more vividly where the toes were being placed.

This woman is pointing to the cleft in her foot, and her pinkie toe. 

After the girls toes were bound on both feet they were forced to get up and walk. Every day after this would be the same for years until their feet were finished. The above picture is a good example of what finished bound feet looked like. In order for this to be achieved, all the toes but the big one, and most of the bones in the foot would be broken either from the pressure of walking back and forth across the rooms of their house, or by using rocks or more force if the bones were more stubborn. 1 in 10 girls died from this process, whether from blood poisoning or other sickness. This was not considered a loss though, because in this time and age, women were only worth their number of sons or the amount of money they could bring in when married off to a higher family. Only by having "beautiful" bound feet could a woman make a better life for herself. 

I will in the future write more about this subject, but I just felt like I had to write a little something now. I want people to see this and become intrigued on the subject, and hopefully they will set out to learn more. :)

King Henry VIII (manwhore...)

So, hello. Welcome to my blog and my very first post. My point in making this blog is to share with you my love of history, but do it in a more enjoyable way. I'm not going to sit here and just rattle off facts in a boring school like fashion, but rather share with you things that I find interesting about people/places/ etc in history. If you disagree that's fine, but at least share with me the things you are interested in so I can broaden my horizons. :)

SOOO, here we go. 

Today I am going to share some information about someone I have found to be quite... interesting. King Henry VIII. Now, you may know exactly who I am talking about, or you may still be using your fingers and elementary knowledge of roman numerals to figure out which number I just typed, but either way, you should know this guy was insane. When I say insane, I don't mean like wore a potato sack over his head and went after villagers with rusty axes, but that's pretty close. Not only did this king have 6 wives in his lifetime, but he was also the man who caused the separation between England and the Roman Catholic Church. Why did he do that you ask? Because he liked the big V, if you know what I'm talking about. (and if you don't, I'm trying to say that he liked sex.) He pushed England to separate from the Roman Catholic Church because they would not allow him to leave his first wife(Catherine of Aragon) and marry Anne Boleyn (he had already had an affair with Mary Boleyn, the sister of Anne, and this was after Mary was already a married woman. What an upstanding guy huh?). So, instead of just keep her on as a lover, his solution? Oh, lets just make our own church for me to rule over so I can marry whomever I want. And he did exactly that. The funny thing about that? He ended up beheading Anne and most of her family anyway. Glad that whole separation from the church thing worked out for him. 

Along with Catherine and Anne, he had four additional wives. 

• Jane Seymour - The only of the king's wives to receive a queen's funeral and be buried beside him, she died from complications after the birth of their son Edward VI.
• Anne of Cleves - He never consummated this marriage (meaning he never had sex with her) and ended up getting a divorce. The reason? He thought she was ugly and hadn't actually met her before they decided to get married. Not all bad things came of this marriage though, because the two went on to be good friends. 
• Catherine Howard - A very young bride, she ended up having an affair with Thomas Culpepper, and for this she was beheaded. 
• Catherine Parr - Not too much of interest happened with this one.. she helped reconcile the relationship between the king and his two daughters. 

One last interesting thing about the King. His daughter with his first and true wife was named Mary. She went on to become Queen of England and I'll bet you have heard of her before. Ever play that game Bloody Mary as a child? Yeah, that game was about her. She got that nickname during her rule because of how many people she had executed. (for religious reasons of course)

***If you want to see an interesting representation of this mans life (although it isn't all historically accurate), The Tudors was a very good TV series about him***

So yeah, that's it for this post. Please give me some feed back, let me know what kinds of history you are interested in. I'll try to mix it up as much as possible.