Why did women in the old society avoid natural feet when binding their feet?

Hands and feet are the most active parts of the human body, and actions and manners are mostly related to hands and feet. There is a folk saying that "bitterness and joy are related to brothers and sisters". As the saying goes: "people's hands are like cotton, and they are idle when they are born; A man's hand is like a claw, which will never heal. "This universal belief is likely to come from direct observation of life. In life, people with thick fingers and dry feet will work hard; If the hands are soft and moist, if the meat is chubby, this person will be happy. Although this speculation fails to reveal the fundamental truth of social inequality between the rich and the poor, it also contains some objectivity. There are some songs about fingerprints, which are also very interesting.

The first one is: "one fights for research, two fights for wealth, three fights for pawn shops, four fights for firewood, five fights for six, seven fights for eight fights for living in a big house, nine fights for ten dustpans, and Jiangxi buys land"; The second article is: "It is good to fight two treasures, three to four to mow horse grass, seven to eight to buy land in Gai Lou, nine to run to Shaanxi, and ten to win the championship." As far as these two statements are concerned, there are many contradictions. Both are "a fight", saying "poor" and "good"; It's all "three strikes and four strikes" As soon as they say "open a pawn shop", they say "cut the horse grass" It can be seen that it is not a folk letter, but a proverb with the nature of game and limited by dialect rhyme. Nobody takes this seriously. There are also superstitious fortune-tellers who read palms. They compile palm books. They make up stories and talk nonsense according to the direction, depth and thickness of fingerprints. Most of their words are nonsense, and it is hard to say that they represent folk beliefs.

People who hire fortune tellers do not rely on their own beliefs, but entrust themselves to fortune tellers to talk nonsense, taking fortune tellers' words as signals from God, so fortune tellers can win the pious trust of fortune tellers whether they look up from books or talk nonsense. This phenomenon of believing in fortune tellers is a custom belief. And the calculation method and formula of fortune teller can't be the content of folk custom. Because the people themselves don't directly grasp it, let alone use it directly, just like the hexagrams that need to be consulted, although they also absorb the elements of folk customs. For example, when talking about fingers, they say that "those who are hard and sparse are destroyed, and those who are soft and dense are accumulated"; "

People also have taboos about foot shape. There is a saying in Guangxi: "(Feet and shin) go up five inches, down five inches, and walk on crutches for three years." There is a saying in Henan: "Two thumbs are long, don't be a mother when you grow up." There is also a saying in the south that "two toes are too long (big toes), and if you die, you will be poor." In the old society, in the age of foot-binding, women were afraid of their feet. The symbol of virtue is the "three-inch golden lotus" that wraps the foot of heaven into the shape of a disabled person. If you don't tie your feet, it will be unacceptable to the world. This vulgar custom was gradually abolished after the Republic of China, and now it has disappeared.