Chinese foot binding had been a especially savage technique which was around mostly in rural China until recently. It was mostly a cultural practice. The technique required the very restricted binding of the feet of young girls and the maintaining of them bound to stop the feet from developing. This was a painful process and brought about significant deformity and handicap. Those who ended up being afflicted by this process had to use specifically created and made shoes. There was quite an art to this and the shoes that these children had to wear were decorated very deliberately and exotically. The main reason for the technique of Chinese foot binding was that smaller feet were considered far more desired in females. A much higher price can be demanded by the family of the bride to be for the dowry. The actual practice was very common in rural China for several centuries and just recently began to die out about 100 years ago as a result of social pressures that have been brought to bear on the practice a result of the pain and impairment that it was causing.

You can still find a number of older Chinese woman living today with these deformed feet from the foot binding when they were younger. The tragedy is caused by what happened once they were young children they do need to keep their feet bound because it is more at ease than not having them bound because the deformity has become so great. There's been lots of cultural and psychological research into the foot binding primarily in the framework of this being done too please the men instead of being of any advantage to the woman. Of recent awareness is the current practice of females using tight fitting high heel shoes has attracted resemblances between Chinese foot binding. Some of the social and psychological analysis of this have certainly pointed out the analogy between the two practices and who actually benefits from the practice. Both are painful, both produce foot deformity, and both are for the benefit of men.