You look great, but can you dance?

I was maybe thirteen or fourteen when I bought my first waist trainer. Tumblr, in those days, was littered with posts reviewing aliexpress corsets and plastic devices that claimed to make your nose more upturned. It seems that sexy, cheaply made solutions to bodily insecurities have always been fair game to advertise to teenagers. It was hard to walk, bend over and dance as a fourteen year old wearing a waist trainer, but I felt fashionable. Fashionable, and beautiful.

Putting aside this horrible reality for children on the internet, I somehow recalled these memories while researching the now unsupported practice of Chinese foot binding. The earliest evidence for this practice originated in the 10th century during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. The practice is said to have been inspired by Emperor Li Yu's fascination with his concubine's dance on a lotus flower. Initially reserved for the elite, foot binding later spread to lower classes, becoming a symbol of status and feminine beauty. The process involved excruciating pain–bones of girls from as young as four years old were “softened” with liquid and wrapped with gauze to slowly deform the skeleton over time. Research on the subject shows that there was even an erotic element to these tiny feet and their little shoes, and allowed for poor women to attempt social and class mobility. By the 20th century, influenced by political and social changes, foot binding gradually disappeared, outlawed by the Chinese government and condemned by feminist movements.

Exploring this moment in fashion and then later, the iconic corset, had me begin to wonder ...Why does popular fashion so often restrict mobility? Why are the trendiest, sexiest things so difficult to move in? And why does this tend to (mostly) apply to women?

And while “beauty is pain” is not exclusive to women, the experience of being plucked, shaved, constrained, uncomfortable and immobile is familiar to both the historic and modern women. Often we don’t even want to do these things, but it’s expected from us because of “professionalism”. I also think I often look my most glamorous in heels, a unique dress, and bold makeup. These are also the things that make it the most difficult for me to move comfortably. 

While this could be entirely a coincidence, in the aforementioned case, early foot-binding was seen as proof that the woman did not have to engage in any kind of manual labour. In fact, the hobble walk that women with bound feet did began to be sexualized by men. The bound feet showed that the woman was upper class, feminine, and attractive for marriage.

However, new research by Brown and Satterthwaite-Phillips on the practice showed the reverse–Foot-binding in the final years it was practiced was not a way to display class superiority, but instead to keep daughters engaged in domestic crafts to bring income to the family. In other words, it became a way to keep women confined to the home. What was advertised as fashionable, classy, and feminine, also happened to be the things that kept them from moving easily. And while foot binding is an extreme example of this, I don’t think women’s fashion trends are so off from that today.

Often the most beautiful features for women are the most unattainable. Perhaps this is by design. In ancient Chinese society, bound feet signified refinement and virtue, much like how corsets and snug attire symbolized elegance and sophistication in the West. Some anthropologists argue that foot binding stemmed from Confucian ideals of female subservience and domesticity, and that the practice reinforced the notion that women's bodies should conform to patriarchal standards. Both now and then, professionalism and femininity in women is often tied to impractical garments.

Is there some big bad guy named patriarchy who controls popular fashion trends like a puppeteer? Of course not, and many of these uncomfortable practices are supported and reproduced by women themselves. It’s really not clear if any of this was intentional. But it is clear that women’s ability to move outside the home was and is not a cultural priority. Otherwise, that would presumably be expressed in fashion.

People often rag on the Germans for always looking like they’re going hiking, but maybe they have this one figured out. Perhaps in a future society where women are not expected to constrain themselves for fashion, we would all look like the Germans. Utopia or Dystopia… you decide.