What is Foot binding?
[[File:A HIGH CASTE LADYS DAINTY LILY FEET.jpg|thumb|right|alt=Black and white photograph of a sitting Chinese woman with pointy squished feet|A woman with bound feet.]] '''Foot binding''' is an old [[China|Chinese]] [[custom]] of wrapping girls' feet with cloth in order to stop them from [[Growth|growing]] with age. Some [[Chinese people|Chinese]] [[legend]]s say people started binding women's feet as early as the [[Shang dynasty]] (1700&ndash;1027 [[BCE]]). However, writing says that foot binding began at the court of the [[Song dynasty]] (960&ndash;1279 [[CE]]). It lasted until the early 20th century, when it was [[ban]]ned by the [[People's Republic of China]]. Foot binding was a sign of [[social status]]. If a woman's feet were bound, it was a sign that she was a higher-[[social class|class]] woman who did not have to do hard work. However, foot binding slowly spread to the lower classes who wanted to try and get a higher social status. By the 17th century, Chinese girls of all social statuses had their feet bound. Some people think that Chinese women were forced to bind their feet in order to help their husbands feel [[Sexual arousal|sexual]] pleasure. Some people also see foot binding as insulting to women. But other people argue that this view is [[bias]]ed against the Chinese culture in favor of modern [[Western world|Western]] standards. Foot binding usually tried to make the feet about {{convert|3|in|cm}} long, at most. Some drastic things were done at times to try to do this. Because of this, women who had their feet bound would usually be [[impairment|impaired]], or damaged, for the rest of their lives. The physical consequences (or results) of foot binding stayed in Chinese [[society]] until very recently, according to a study published by the [[University of San Francisco]]. When the [[Manchuria]] created the [[Qing dynasty]], the Manchurian [[emperor]]s wrote many laws banning foot binding. However, the laws did not work very well. In 1874, the first anti-footbinding [[committee]] was hel