However, in the development of human beings for thousands of years, the pursuit of beauty often falls into an extreme cycle. From the eastern part of Asia to the western part of the Mediterranean, it seems that all ethnic groups have gone astray in the pursuit of beauty.
When it comes to the false pursuit of beauty, many people can immediately think of a long-standing custom in China-foot binding. The beauty corresponding to foot binding is called three-inch golden lotus, and the small sole is stuffed in embroidered shoes, which is not as big as a child's palm and the lotus is slow. In ancient times, it was still the standard of good family.
There are different opinions about the origin of foot binding. Historical data show that it appeared in the late Tang Dynasty and was popular in the Song Dynasty. It was not abolished until the Republic of China, but in fact, foot binding really disappeared at least in the 1960 s and 1970 s. The way of foot binding is cruel. The richer the family, the younger the daughter's foot binding. When binding feet, the whole sole is folded on the instep and wrapped tightly with cloth, which artificially creates a deformed state.
From young to old, foot-binding cloth can hardly be released, because there was a record at that time that a married woman released her feet because of the war, and later her feet actually recovered.
The human body has the function of self-correction, but the custom of foot binding does not allow such correction. The only way out for ancient women was to get married. If they have a pair of big feet, they will feel that they are not "educated" and will be given a cold shoulder in their husband's family.
There is a custom called "Watch your feet before getting off the sedan chair". The married daughter-in-law puts on a red gauze, and the man will secretly observe the three-inch golden lotus of the future wife. The embroidered shoes of these women with little feet are often exhibited in museums. Handicrafts are indeed exquisite, but it is difficult for modern people to appreciate the strange feet in embroidered shoes.
From an academic point of view, the feet are abnormally small, which is completely out of line with the aesthetics of the human body. But many years ago, both men and women were brainwashed for nearly a thousand years, so they won't feel wrong.
The establishment of human aesthetic feeling often comes from the indoctrination of the surrounding world. When the whole world takes small feet as beauty, foot binding has to be done.
But even if the three-inch golden lotus is wrapped up, the price paid by women is cruel. The first life and death pass is at the moment of foot binding. Severe and rapid deformation in orthopedics can easily lead to infection. Coupled with poor medical conditions, many girls are young and die directly because of foot binding.
Even if she survives this, a woman with little feet will inevitably be unable to move. Whether it is daily productive labor or fleeing in wartime, there are great disadvantages. Therefore, it is a very important step to abolish foot binding when women are liberated. Only by abolishing this beauty at the expense of the body can women achieve self-reliance.
While foot-binding prevailed in China, a strange trend appeared in medieval Europe. As the name implies, women in China bind their feet, while women in Europe bind their waists, which is also at the expense of deformity.
When we look at many portraits of 15 and 16 centuries, we will find that women's waists are horribly thin, because in gorgeous dresses, they wear "corsets" made of whale bones, ivory and other materials, and women who are a little poorer will choose wooden boards.
In order to make their waists look weak, ladies will wear them at the bottom. Think about the effect of putting seven or eight pieces of wood on their waists that will not bend.
At first, the belt was handed down from the French royal family. Ladies suffered from body imperfections when wearing skirts, so they invented waist-binding tools. Wearing a waist seal will force the body to show an "S" curve, which is very charming, so everyone will follow suit.
However, with the passage of time, the size of corset is getting smaller and smaller, and ladies are willing to die for a slim waist. In Gone with the Wind, when the heroine puts on a corset, the slaves pull the corset back like a tug of war to ensure that the heroine wears a skirt specially designed for a slim waist beauty. However, the heroine is already a typical skinny person.
Excessive waist-binding causes ladies to smell salt all the year round to refresh themselves, otherwise they will easily faint because they can't breathe. In western literary works, we often see that the heroine can't afford to fall to the ground under a little stimulation. In fact, it's not the ladies' psychological fragility, but the waist-binding that causes them to have difficulty breathing.
Long-term waist-binding, abdominal viscera is easy to shift, leading to life-threatening. There is a bigger death door during childbirth. It is a narrow escape for a woman to give birth to a child, and girding makes this opportunity very slim.
The place where the waist is bound is the position where the fetus grows and develops. However, in order not to be laughed at, many women dare not take off their waistlines even if they are pregnant. At that time, abortion and deformed children were particularly common in Europe.
Even at the time of delivery, the fetus can't give birth smoothly because the pelvis is deformed by the waist. Giving birth to a stillbirth is not the worst result. In fact, most of the time, mothers and children will die.
The mortality rate of waist binding is much higher than that of foot binding, and it is easy to understand that people can survive if their feet are broken, but their internal organs are damaged and they basically die. At that time, women in Europe had a very tragic way to die-their ribs were broken and stabbed into their internal organs. The reason why the ribs are broken is precisely because they can't bear the oppression of the waist.
Women are so miserable, but they can't live without girdling, because in the hands of men in power at that time, only women with girdling are beautiful, and the clothes provided to them in the market are narrow-waisted, only pajamas are loose, but you can't ask a16th century woman to wear pajamas to the streets.
Finally, some women United and began to resist. After a hundred years of struggle, the waist was finally thrown into the garbage dump of history at the beginning of the 20th century.
Many people may not realize that women in Central Europe have been out of this abnormal aesthetic for less than a hundred years, and the liberation of aesthetics has a long way to go.
Japanese women's black, red and short eyebrows seem to be much gentler and have the longest history than binding their waist and feet.
According to research, Heian period and Blackpool in Japan have become the standard for aristocratic women. As an adult, women will dye their teeth black with special pigments, then pull out the tail of their eyebrows, leaving only the peak and periphery of the eyebrows, and try to paint them black with thrush dye. This kind of makeup is a bit like geisha today, with sharp color contrast, which only shocks modern people.
According to textual research, short eyebrows may be related to the aesthetics of the Tang Dynasty. There are similar short eyebrows in the pictures of ladies in the Tang Dynasty, which are called "mountain eyebrows" or "moth-winged eyebrows". At that time, the Japanese respected the culture of the Tang Dynasty, so it is not surprising that similar eyebrows appeared in tang style from top to bottom.
However, there is a difference. There were dozens of female eyebrows in the Tang Dynasty. In addition to the "moth-like eyebrows", there are many eyebrows that are more in line with the aesthetics of modern people. Women's eyebrows in the Tang Dynasty often changed at will. I don't know why Japan has only learned one past, so it has become a must. Otherwise, it can't be called "your wife", but it is no different from civilians.
Eyebrows originated in the Tang Dynasty. There are different opinions about what happened to the "black pool" wind. It's definitely not handed down from China. China's aesthetic of beauty has always been "bright eyes and white teeth".
The only record of Blackpool is The Classic of Ancient Mountains and Seas, which records a country of Blackpool, and its citizens are all black teeth. Because of this, many scholars believe that the so-called "black pool country" is ancient Japan, but the ancient ancestors could not tell whether the teeth were born or dyed.
According to some Japanese scholars, the Japanese did have the custom of dyeing black teeth in primitive times. At first, it was dyed by both men and women, and it became a woman's patent in the process of circulation.
From a more realistic point of view, ancient people did not have dentistry, and their teeth were basically yellow and rotten. Black paint can be regarded as a kind of cover, but the effect is even weirder than natural teeth. Therefore, from the Meiji Restoration, Japanese women began to learn the western trend, and the black, red and short eyebrows gradually disappeared.
Beauty is innocent, but deformed beauty will cause some historical pains, such as those women who died because of foot binding and waist binding. They are irrational, but they are just victims of the times. From a philosophical point of view, there is no right or wrong beauty. However, the pursuit of beauty should have nothing to do with "coercion" and "oppression", and the beauty that can be freely chosen is valuable.