The power of culture

Do you remember when you first learned in class that there was a period in Chinese history in which many Chinese women had their feet bound from the time they were babies?

Multiple theories attempt to explain the origin of foot binding: from the desire to emulate the naturally tiny feet of a favored concubine of a prince, to a story of an empress who had club-like feet, which became viewed as a desirable fashion. However, there is little strong textual evidence for the custom prior to the court of the Southern Tang dynasty in Nanjing, which celebrated the fame of its dancing girls, renowned for their tiny feet and beautiful bow shoes. What is clear is that foot binding was first practiced among the elite and only in the wealthiest parts of China, which suggests that binding the feet of well-born girls represented their freedom from manual labor and, at the same time, the ability of their husbands to afford wives who did not need to work, who existed solely to serve their men and direct household servants while performing no labor themselves. The economic and social attractions of such women may well have translated into sexual desirability among elite men.

However, by the 17th century, Han Chinese girls, from the wealthiest to the poorest people, had their feet bound. It was less prevalent among poorer women or those that had to work for a living, especially in the fields. Some estimate that as many as 2 billion Chinese women were subjected to this practice, from the late 10th century until 1949, when foot binding was outlawed by the Communists. (Foot binding had also been banned by the Nationalists, but the Nationalists never had thorough political control over the entire country, and were unable to enforce this prohibition universally.) According to the author of The Sex Life of the Foot and Shoe, 40-50% of Chinese women had bound feet in the 19th century. For the upper classes, the figure was almost 100%. Generally speaking, footbinding was not as widespread in southern China as in the north. In contrast to the majority of other Han Chinese, the Hakka of southern China did not practice foot binding and had natural feet. Manchu women were forbidden to bind their feet by an edict from the Emperor after the Manchu started their rule of China in 1644. Many other non-Han ethnic groups continued to observe the custom, some of them practiced loose binding which did not break the bones of the arch and toes but simply narrowed the foot.

We would never do such a thing in this culture would we? Or would we? Various times in my life, I have worked at medical centers. And, as a priest, I have also visited people in the hospital. There are a perceptible percentage of women who have feet that have been partially deformed by the shoes that they have chosen to wear. One of the most common deformities is a retracted or over-riding little toe. There are various words that are commonly used for various of the deformities: clawed toes, hammer toes, mallet toes, etc. And, well over half of them are self-inflicted deformities, not congenital. They are caused by the shoes that the person chose to wear. And, while toes are the most obvious result of many of the fashionable shoes, one also has to include maladies such as arch pain, calf muscle pain, achille’s tendon pain, knee joint pain, etc. (Yes, I know that there are medical terms for all these.)

So, why would women choose to wear shoes that give rise to such medical problems? While men have to deal with the discomfort of modern suits and ties, nevertheless, these are no comparison to the actual physical pain that women will suffer in order to wear what they consider to be fashionable shoes, or the surgeries to which they will submit their bodies in order to have “pleasing” looks. (Note, I am NOT talking about surgeries to correct problems; I am talking about purely cosmetic surgery.) For definitions of purely cosmetic surgeries, look at Med Clinic and their recent posts about plastic surgery. Now, I am not the first to bring this up. I can remember feminists discussing this back in the late 1960’s, when there was a push towards comfortable clothing for women, as part of what it meant to not be bound by the culture.

For a while, this push took hold. One can look back and see many of us dressed in clothing that now makes us giggle. Men were in multicolored striped pants. Women had peasant dresses, and so on. I am not arguing for a return to 1960’s clothing. Rather, I am making the point of how powerful is the formative power of culture. Most of us do not realize just how powerful, how strong, culture is internalized. From the moment you leave the womb, even how you leave the womb reflects the cultural attitude towards childbirth. Through the years, without any verbal teaching, the unwritten rules of culture mold and shape the very way in which you perceive reality. By the end of the “training period,” your formation can be so strong that it will not let you easily do something which someone in another culture can do easily. Let me give you one simple example.

When my wife and I were in southern Perú, one of the delicacies among many, but especially among the Quechua was fried cuy. So, what is a cuy? Well, it is a guinea pig raised for meat purposes. They are larger than the USA “pet” guinea pig, since we do not want our guinea pigs to be too large, but to be just right for a child to hold in his/her hands as a pet. But, they are a meat animal in Perú. I could cite several other types of food that we would have serious trouble eating should we go to another culture, but this is just one example of the strength and the power of culture among us, even when we most think that we are acting out of free will.

This creates a problem both for the missionary going to another country and for the Christian trying to live out their life here in the USA.

===MORE TO COME===