Two mean things women do to themselves.

[mangeorge]

I’m not one of those men who find diminuative women attractive. Especially “big boned” women who are dying to achieve what some like to call “skinny”, and I call “scrawny”. My first (instinctive, almost) desire upon seeing a woman’s skeleton is to want to feed her. Don’t get me wrong, overweight isn’t attractive either, but there’s a lot of room in between those extremes. A famous woman who I consider to have been very sexy would be Marilyn Monroe. Yum! A not-so-famous would be my ex-wife.
Add scrawny to a pair of too small high heels and obvious discomfort sitting down in a short skirt and I’m the one who’s uncomfortable.
I wouldn’t do well in even sven’s situation at all.

[DianaG]

@even_sven

So is foot binding a healthy social practice, since women are just trying to look beautiful and confident?

I’m touchy about this. I live in a place that explicitly does value women mainly on looks/helplessness. It’s a place where women put their bust size and skin tone on resumes. Where freshman girls entering college are advised not to choose a career path where they might out-earn a potential husband. A place where my student regularly fall down fainting in class because to weight more than the magic 40 kilos (about 90 lbs.) is pretty much ruining your chances at life. A place where you have to write your husband or father’s name on official documents.

It’s also a place where 90% of women wear heels all of the time.

I see a connection.

And in the culture you describe there probably is one. I’m not dismissing your experience or your point of view. But the vast majority of the women who’ve posted in this thread do NOT live in that culture. It simply doesn’t apply, and our experience is entirely different. Do us the courtesy of not dismissing it, because it’s a little silly, and more than a little insulting, to insist that an American woman who has power and choices that the women you describe can barely dream of, wears high heels for the exact same reasons that they do.

[mangeorge]

It’s all fantasy, really.
Isn’t it?

[Freudian_Slit]

@even_sven

So is foot binding a healthy social practice, since women are just trying to look beautiful and confident?

I’m touchy about this. I live in a place that explicitly does value women mainly on looks/helplessness. It’s a place where women put their bust size and skin tone on resumes. Where freshman girls entering college are advised not to choose a career path where they might out-earn a potential husband. A place where my student regularly fall down fainting in class because to weight more than the magic 40 kilos (about 90 lbs.) is pretty much ruining your chances at life. A place where you have to write your husband or father’s name on official documents.

It’s also a place where 90% of women wear heels all of the time.

I see a connection.

But I don’t think they’re like that because they wear heels. Wearing heels all the time is probably a manifestation of that kind of behavior. I don’t think wearing heels is going to make women in America like that, if that’s what you’re implying. Foot binding is inherently crippling–that’s pretty much the goal of it. Most women who put on a pair of high heels aren’t trying to look weak.

[mangeorge]

@MeanOldLady

Seen a lot of cocktail waitresses in Vegas wearing heels. Not six-inch, pointy-toed stilettos, but heels.

Under deress they do. Story about even just two-inch heels in Reno.
It is as I expected. Now that’s men tellig women how to be. (Women bosses too, actually.)
Walking all day is not the same as an occasional, or even frequent, trip to the copy machine.