r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Decim_98 • 3d ago

Image Fate and Feet: Three Chinese Girls in 1900s – A Barefooted Servant, a Bound-Foot Lady, and a Christian with Unbound Feet

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u/gabacus_39 3d ago

Everyone looked miserable in old photos

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u/ftpbrutaly80 3d ago

The one in the middle absolutely IS miserable.

Those bound feet and lotus shoes cause incredible pain especially while they were still growing. She would have been carried everywhere and kinda just put on display. If she was ever able to walk it would have been decades after this photo was taken and even then basically only across the room.

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u/fogelmclovin 3d ago

I couldn’t imagine and I’ve had foot surgery. I’ve seen X-rays of women this has been done too and it seems more like torture than anything.

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u/judyhops95 2d ago

It is torture, that's it. It was done "for beauty" but it was just torture for those that had to endure it.

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u/tbods 2d ago

Don’t forget the foot fetishists

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u/Petrihified 3d ago

She looks sickly and underfed, too.

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u/nlamber5 3d ago

It was pre-penicillin.

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u/Instant_noodlesss 3d ago

Oh geez. Wonder how many girls were murdered by this.

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u/Condemned2Be 1d ago

Not as many as you might think. If you look up more about feet binding, you will find that they rubbed the dying foot all over with special herbs & powders & washed it with a noxious chemical that made the necrotic skin slough off. Between these treatments, the feet were wrapped EXTREMELY tightly (tight enough to break the bones) which would stop air from circulating to the flesh

This is why you see so many old photos of women with bound feet but rarely hear about women losing their whole foot to infection. Essentially they mummified the foot directly onto the body. The infection was killed by ancient embalming chemicals & the binding probably killed any blood circulation too.

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u/i_says_things 3d ago

Exposure time was longer for cameras at the time and it is harder to maintain a smile than a neutral expression.

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u/Generic_Garak 3d ago

Actually that is a common misconception! Photography evolved pretty quickly past the long exposure time thing. What had more of an effect was the centuries of tradition of what a portrait looked like. When the transition from painting to photography was made, the posing conventions largely stayed the same. It wasn’t until candid photography became accessible to the public (via Kodak who released a box camera that could be operated by a layman without an elaborate photography setup) that smiling became commonplace in photos.

I hope it’s clear that I’m not trying to be a dick and just like sharing facts :)

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u/TheDamDog 3d ago

By the 1870s exposure times were well under a minute. In the 1880s you were looking at maybe 1-5 seconds (which is why kids and dogs are often blurry in photos of that era.)

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u/eggmayonnaise 3d ago

Old photography methods required long exposure, which meant subjects had to hold the same pose and expression for an extended period of time. This often lead to more serious-looking expressions as they are easier to hold.

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u/RazorWritesCode 3d ago

Okay

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u/Far_Detective2022 3d ago

What's your problem

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u/RazorWritesCode 3d ago

Wouldn’t you like to know weather boy