The sculptor believes that every part of the human body is a source of "beauty". This is different from the beauty of the scenery. The beauty of the human body lies in the combination of vitality, every frown and every move. , is the most vivid beauty in the world.

However, in the history of human development for thousands of years, the pursuit of beauty has often fallen into an extreme cycle. From the east of Asia to the west of the Mediterranean, it seems that all nations are on the road to pursuing beauty. We all have the experience of "going astray".

Speaking of the wrong pursuit of beauty, many people can immediately think of a custom with a long history in China - foot binding. The kind of beauty corresponding to bound feet is called the three-inch golden lotus. The small soles of the feet are stuffed into embroidered shoes, no bigger than a child's hand. The lotus steps are slow. In ancient times, it was still the standard for judging ladies.

There are different opinions on the origin of foot binding. Historical data shows that it appeared in the late Tang Dynasty, became popular in the Song Dynasty, and was not abolished until the Republic of China. However, in fact, foot binding should have really disappeared at least in the 1960s and 1970s. The method of foot binding is very cruel. The richer the family, the younger the daughter's feet are. During foot binding, the entire sole of the foot is folded over the instep and tightly wrapped with strips of cloth, artificially creating a deformed state.

From young to old, the foot binding cloth basically cannot be let go, because there are records at that time, saying that some married women had their feet loosened due to the war and fled, and later their feet actually recovered.

The human body has the function of self-correction, but the custom of foot binding does not allow this kind of correction. In ancient times, the only way out for a woman was to get married. If she had big feet, she would be considered not a "lady" and would be looked down upon by her husband's family.

There is a custom that "look at the feet first when getting off the sedan chair". When the married daughter-in-law wears a red hijab, the man will secretly observe the three-inch golden lotus of his future wife. Museums often display embroidered shoes for women with small feet. The craftsmanship is indeed very exquisite, but when you think about the strange-shaped feet in the embroidered shoes, it is difficult for modern people to appreciate them.

From an academic point of view, small feet are abnormally small and completely inconsistent with the aesthetics of the human body. However, many years ago, both women and men have been brainwashed for nearly a thousand years, so they do not feel that way. wrong.

The establishment of human beings' sense of beauty often comes from the indoctrination of the surrounding world. When the whole world regards small feet as beautiful, foot binding is inevitable.

But even if the three-inch golden lotus is entangled, the price a woman pays is cruel. The first life-and-death moment is the moment when the feet are bound. The severe and rapid deformation of the orthopedics can easily cause infection, and the medical conditions are poor. , many girls were so young that they died directly due to foot binding.

Even if she survives this hurdle, a woman with bound feet will inevitably have difficulty moving from now on. Whether it is daily production work or escaping during war, they have a huge disadvantage. Therefore, when women were liberated, it was a very important step to abolish foot binding. Only by abolishing this kind of beauty that comes at the cost of harming the body can women achieve independence.

While foot-binding was prevalent in China, a strange trend of waist-binding also emerged in Europe during the Middle Ages. As the name suggests, Chinese women have their feet bound, and European women have their waists bound, but this also comes at the cost of deformity.

When we look at many portraits from the 15th and 16th centuries, we will find that the waists of the women are horribly thin, because in their gorgeous skirts, they wear "hats" made of whalebone, ivory and other materials. "Girdle the waist", poorer women will choose wooden boards.

In order to make their waists look tighter, ladies will wear the corset at the innermost part. Think about what it would be like to live with seven or eight pieces of wood on your waist that will not bend. Effect.

The waist corset first spread from the French royal family. The noble ladies suffered from imperfect figures when wearing skirts, so they invented the waist corset. Wearing the waist corset will force the body into an "S" shape. The curves are very charming, so people also follow suit.

However, as time goes by, the size of the corset is getting smaller and smaller, and ladies are willing to fight to get a smaller waist. In "Gone with the Wind", when the heroine wears a corset, the black slaves are like tug-of-war. Pull the belt back as hard as you can to ensure that the heroine wears a skirt designed for slim-waisted beauties. However, the heroine is already a typical thin person.

Excessive waist-cinching has led to ladies always keeping smelling salts to refresh themselves, otherwise they will easily faint from being out of breath. In Western literary works, we often see heroines falling to the ground after being slightly stimulated. In fact, it is not that the ladies are too psychologically fragile, but that the waistband makes it difficult for them to breathe.

Under long-term waist restraint, internal organs in the abdomen are prone to displacement, leading to life-threatening consequences. The greater danger of death occurs during childbirth. A woman has a narrow chance of death when giving birth, and the girdle makes this chance of life very slim.

The area bound by the girdle is exactly where the fetus grows and develops. However, in order not to be laughed at, many women did not dare to take off their girdle even if they were pregnant. Miscarriage and deformed babies were particularly common in Europe at that time.

Even if it is time to give birth, because the pelvis is compressed and deformed by the waistband, the fetus cannot be delivered smoothly. Giving birth to a stillbirth is not the worst outcome. In fact, most of the time, both mother and child die.

The mortality rate of waist binding is much higher than that of foot binding. It is also easy to understand. People can survive if their feet are broken, but if their internal organs are damaged, they will basically survive. Women in Europe at that time had a very tragic way of death - their ribs were broken and stabbed into their internal organs. The reason why their ribs were broken was because they could not withstand the pressure of the waistband.

Women were in so much pain, but they couldn’t do without corsets, because in the hands of the men in power at that time, only women with corsets were beautiful, and the clothes provided to them on the market were all narrow-waisted. Only the pajamas are loose, but you can't ask a 16th-century woman to wear pajamas on the street.

Eventually some women united and began to resist. After a hundred years of struggle, the corset was finally thrown into the garbage heap of history at the beginning of the 20th century.

Many people may not realize that both Chinese and European women have been freed from this deformed aesthetic in less than a century. There is still a long way to go before the liberation of aesthetics.

Compared with waist binding and foot binding, Japanese women’s black-toothed short eyebrows seem to be much gentler, and they have the longest history.

According to research, during the Heian period in Japan, black teeth became a standard feature for aristocratic women. After reaching adulthood, women would dye their teeth black with special pigments, and then pluck out the ends of their eyebrows, leaving only the peaks of their eyebrows and A little bit around the edges, and also use thrush dye to make it as dark as possible. This kind of makeup is somewhat similar to that of today's geishas, ??with contrasting colors, but to modern eyes, the effect is only horrifying.

According to research, short eyebrows may be related to the aesthetics of the Tang Dynasty. Similar short eyebrows appeared in pictures of ladies in the Tang Dynasty, which were called "hill eyebrows" or "moth-wing eyebrows". Japan at that time admired the Tang Dynasty It belongs to the Chinese culture, so it is not surprising that similar eyebrow shapes appear from top to bottom in the Tang style.

However, there is a difference here. There are dozens of eyebrow shapes for women in the Tang Dynasty. In addition to "moth-wing eyebrows", there are also many eyebrow shapes that are more in line with modern aesthetics. Women in the Tang Dynasty The eyebrow shapes of women are often changed at will. I don’t know why Japan only learned one thing from the past, and it became a must-have eyebrow shape. Otherwise, it cannot be called a "noble lady" and is no different from a commoner.

Eyebrows originated in the Tang Dynasty. There are different opinions on the origin of the "black teeth" trend. Anyway, it is definitely not from China. The Chinese aesthetic of beauty has always been "bright eyes and white teeth".

The only record of black teeth is the "Book of Mountains and Seas" in ancient times. The "Book of Mountains and Seas" records a country with black teeth, and its citizens all have black teeth. Because of this, many scholars believe that the so-called "Black Tooth Country" is ancient Japan, but the ancestors in ancient times could not tell whether their teeth were natural or dyed.

According to some Japanese scholars, the Japanese did have the custom of dyeing their teeth black in primitive times. At first, both men and women dyed it, but as it spread, it became a women's patent.

From a more realistic perspective, ancient people did not have dentistry, and their teeth were basically yellowish and carious. Black paint can be regarded as a kind of cover, but the effect is worse than that of natural teeth. It’s strange, so since the Meiji Restoration, Japanese women have begun to imitate Western trends, and black-toothed short eyebrows have gradually disappeared.

Beauty is innocent, but deformed beauty will cause some historical pain, such as those women who died due to foot binding and waist binding. They were irrational, but they were just victims of the times. From a philosophical point of view, there is no right or wrong in beauty. However, the pursuit of beauty should have nothing to do with "coercion" and "oppression." Only beauty that can be freely chosen has value.