The practice of foot binding stands out for me. It originated in China as early as the 10th century, and remained commonplace up until the early 20th. Foot binding was painful and permanently disabling, and rendered women effectively housebound and wholly dependent on their husbands.

From the tiny amount I've read, it sounds like the practice was sustained for so long through some combination of (Neo-)Confucian attitudes, and its entrenched role as a marker of beauty / femininity / honour / national identity which was only really possible to escape collectively — similar to less terrible but more familiar examples of harmful beauty standards. Top-down enforcement was not entirely necessary: the Shunzhi Emperor of the Qing dynasty even tried to abolish the practice, but failed partly owing to its popular support.

The especially sad thing is how contingent its origins seem to be — upper-class women began to imitate a story about a court dancer to the emperor, who reputedly bound her feet "into the shape of a new moon". The practice took hold as a status symbol among the elite, and spread throughout China.

I would be confident in saying at least half a billion women were subjected to this. One estimate claims some 2 billion women broke and bound their feet in total.

Adriana Arauzo

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