Chinese foot binding had been a notably savage practice that existed primarily in rural China until recently. It was largely a social practice. The technique required the very tight binding of the feet of young girls and the maintaining of them bound to prevent the foot from growing. This is a painful process and led to substantial deformity and incapacity. Those who were being afflicted by this process had to use specifically created and manufactured shoes. There was quite an art to this and the shoes that these children had to wear were ornamented quite deliberately and exotically. The reason behind the technique of Chinese foot binding is that smaller sized feet were considered a lot more desirable in women. A much better price might be commanded by the family of the bride for the dowry. The actual practice was very widespread in rural China for several centuries and only recently began to die out about 100 years ago as a result of social pressures that were brought to bear on the technique because of the pain and impairment it has been causing.
There are still a number of older Chinese woman alive today with these misshaped feet from the binding when they were younger. The tragedy is because of what happened once they were kids they do need to keep their feet bound because it is more at ease than not having them bound because the deformity is now so great. There's been a lot of social and psychological analysis of the practice particularly in the context of it being done too please the men as opposed to being of any advantage to the female. Of contemporary awareness is the present practice of females wearing tight fitting high heel shoes has attracted parallels between Chinese foot binding. Some of the social and psychological analysis of that have definitely suggested the comparison among the two practices and who exactly benefits from the practice. Both are painful, both produce foot deformity, and both are for the benefit of men.