Cultural Notes: Definitions of Beauty

When it comes to ideas of beauty, the 19th century Europeans and the 19th century Chinese appear to have nothing in common. In the West, petticoats, hoop skirts, and corsets were the fashion. In the Far East, women might wear shirts and trousers, and feet were often bound.

There is, however, a correlation. Corsets and hoops may seem completely different from three-inch feet, but they are similar--they drastically distort the female figure.

Let's start with the corsets of the West. It was popular to have a small (and I mean small) waist, and corsets played a big part in achieving the look. Corsets were laced tightly, and years of wearing them could make a woman's waist smaller. It was unhealthy--internal organs would be pushed together by the continuous strain. It was painful, too.

The women of the West also had hoop skirts and petticoats, masking the entire lower halves of their bodies. It also made the waist appear even smaller than it already was, just by giving it something to be compared to.

So, those ladies had some serious distortion going on, both physically and aesthetically. What about the women in China?

Small feet were common in China in the 19th century, and certainly fashionable. A big part of beauty was the size of a woman's feet. For most people, however, you weren't just born with tiny feet. How to achieve the look, then?

Foot-binding was the solution for a lot of girls. Like corsets, binding would make feet smaller and smaller. To get three-inch feet, bones would have to be broken often, and it was a painful process for years on end. (Sadly, this was a lot harder to ignore with bound feet than with corsets.) However, there was a light at the end of the tunnel--a woman would be a lot more likely to be married into a richer household if she had bound feet.

I found it interesting that, despite the horror expressed at foot-binding (it always manages to get mentioned in articles on 19th century China), many people will scarcely glance at corsets for a lot of the time, let alone their painful and hazardous repercussions.

If I do say so myself, the vanity of corsets disgusts me. I don't have much of a problem with hoops, and even less with petticoats, but that a woman would hurt herself so much purely for the sake of fashion makes me nauseous. Foot-binding was a painful and dangerous process, but there was a sort of necessity to it. Corsets have no such excuse.

But that's my rant. :)

Anyway, the correlation is interesting to me.