Author: Brooke Winsor
Most people have heard the old saying that “Beauty is Pain.”
All over the globe people are striving to be beautiful every minute of every
day because of the fact that humans tend to be very visual creatures and will
always first observe the look of a person before finding out what is held in
the other person’s heart. Many find this idea shallow and preach against it,
but it does not mean that they don’t do the same thing when they first judge
someone harming their natural bodies for beauty. Looking at a person from the
outside and then getting to know them is just easier since we can’t read each
others minds from a distance. What a particular culture designates as beautiful
can vary though. When was the last time you saw an American woman following the
ancient Chinese tradition of bound feet? Yet, these extreme cultural practices
for beauty are a constant throughout history and geography. Let’s take a look
at some extreme appearance practices from the past and present to see the
bodily mutilation committed in the name of ideal beauty.
1. Foot Binding
The Chinese tradition of binding the feet of women who could
afford the procedure and then afford not having to actually stand for more than
a few minutes at a time started in the 10th century and was still practiced
until the early 20th century by all classes of women whose husbands greatly
enjoyed these tiny lotus-shaped feet. During the Qing dynasty, it was even
common practice to involve bound feet in sexual acts, adding to the desire of
men wanting women with bound feet. Before the arch of the foot was fully formed
(before the age of 14), a young girl would have almost every bone of her foot
broken before an extremely tight binding was wrapped around the now squished
foot to have the bones repair themselves in this new, smaller form. A foot that
was roughly three inches was the “ideal” size. The problem of this act, not
only the restrictions of movement, was infection. While the wealthy could
afford to have fresh daily bindings and inspections, the poor were restricted
if they were binding their feet and would subsequently have more problems with
infection. Toe nails were cut as short as possible before binding and routinely
checked but in-grown toe nails happened anyway. Sometimes later in life a woman
could have her feet unbound, but severe deformities would still prevail.
2. Neck Rings
Having a long, graceful neck is seen as beautiful in many
cultures. The longest natural necks are generally seen in the women of the
professional Russian ballet who start training early enough to lengthen their
necks naturally through exercises that require holding one’s neck in a
stretched position over and over. However, some subcultures in Asia and Africa take the idea to extremes by having women wear
multiple brass coil rings around the neck to stretch it out. Usually, it begins
with only a few rings as a young child and the number increases with age,
meaning older women will have longer necks. This act of beauty is mostly an
illusion though. The pressure of the rings causes the collar bones and upper
ribs to be pushed down at a steep angle to make the neck look longer when the
actual vertebrae are not elongated. Coils can be removed but the neck muscles
are generally atrophied by that point, making the simple act of holding one’s
head up without the assistance of the coils extremely difficult.
3. Lip Discs
The idea of piercing one’s lip isn’t necessarily a new one.
Yet, taking this practice to the extreme by stretching out one’s lip (either
upper or lower) with a plate or plug tends to be acted out by only a few select
groups. The term “labret” is applied to any of these pierced-lip ornaments. The
process of stretching a lip piercing is thought to be independently invented
six times in the ancient world even though today it is only maintained by
select groups around the Amazon River in South America and Africa.
Because human skin, particularly the skin of a younger person, has an innate
flexibility and ability to stretch itself the act of using labrets to lengthen
a lip piercing is relatively easy as long as it is done slowly. Yet, the weight
of large ornaments can be intense even if they are made from light weight types
of wood. A young person (women generally do this in Africa while it is tied to
men in most parts of Amazonia) will generally only wear them during ceremonies
and special occasions once they have achieved the size they want, choosing to
let the stretched lip hang on its own during everyday chores.
4. Corsets
Having a “wasp waist” refers to a woman whose waist appears
segmented like the body of a wasp to the point where her upper (bust) and lower
(hips) body halves look like separated parts. This was generally achieved
through long term use of extremely tight corsets. The corset’s drastic form of
reducing a woman’s natural waist size by seven to even ten inches was most
prominent during the 19th and early 20th centuries but lesser forms can be seen
from the creation of the corset in the 1500s. While corsets do help to flatten
one’s stomach and help with a straight posture, “tightlacing” was used to
create the “ideal” womanly hourglass form by starting girls in corsets very
early and tightening the laces even more daily. The main problems though is
that this hourglass figure was attained artificially, meaning the basic make up
of a woman’s body was modified. Cracked ribs, displaced organs, and respiratory
problems were common. Also, miscarriages and death during labor were very
common to women who had extremely modified their bodies with corsets. To take
corseting even further though, during the late 19th and early 20th century,
some women would have their lower ribs surgically removed to get them out of
the way of the corset’s work on their stomachs.
5. Head Binding
Modifying the physical structure of a human skull was quite
popular in the ancient world. While rarely seen in modern times, ancient
Egyptians, Australian Aborigines, North American native peoples, Huns, Maya,
and some Germanic tribes were all peoples who practiced head binding or head
shaping at some point in time. Yet, these vast array of cultures preferred
different looks in their skull modifications. Native North Americans tended to
prefer flattened skull shapes. Egyptians and the Maya liked backward elongated
skulls during most of their head binding histories. Whatever shape was
ultimately desired though was generally achieved the same way - using binding
tools on the skull of a newborn baby. Parents would take the pliable skull of
an infant, usually one month after birth, and tightly bind the skull for
roughly six months. The act of shaping a skull that early and for a short
amount of time was usually enough to cause the skull to grow the way it was
shaped at such a pivotal developmental stage without much alteration needed
afterward. It was thought to be aesthetically pleasing in addition to giving
off the feel of being more intelligent.
Source : http://roadtickle.com
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