Footbinding

I first heard the word "footbinding" when I was in second year high school.

It was a Chinese tradition for women, so that their feet do not grow. The book said that small feet are the standard of beauty.

My feet are sized 5 (or 35 in French), at most. Often, even size 5 or 35 shoes are loose for me, so I resort to buying size 5 or 34 (or 4 or 35) shoes for kids (because kids' and ladies' shoes seem to have some overlapping or different size standards).

I always thought that my feet were footbinded.

I was wrong.

The book in high school did not offer much information about footbinding aside from one paragraph of history or description. Neither did the teacher, or the class reporters. That is probably because it was not that much of great importance to Filipinos because we are not Chinese. That is not our tradition. Knowing it will not do us any good.

Only in college did I truly understood what footbinding is, how it is done, what it looks like, etc. It is horrible. Physically and in terms of physics. Hahaha.

My point is, one book does not offer everything there is to learn. For the kids and youth, be resourceful on your studies.

And, never like footbinding. Haha.