May 01, 2008
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
I'm currently reading the (fiction) book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See. Although the story is fiction it is a great example of the social construction of gender in different cultures. The book takes place in China in the 19th century. Snow Flower, the main character is considered beautiful not because of her personality or good looks but because her feet were properly bound and are very small. They call their bound feet "lilies". Click the link for pictures - but they are kind of gross so be prepared! The process of foot binding is extremely painful and the women who have their feet bound can hardly walk once they are fully shaped. What is more interesting is that the women are considered burdens on their families. Even after they are married, the women live with their own families until the first heir is born. Many things particularly related to the roles of women stunned me in this novel. The women are basically married into a family to become a sort of servant for their husbands family. In addition, they are not allowed to eat for 10 days before their wedding! This book was a great example of how gender is constructed by culture not by biology. What are some other extreme examples of gender construction - and by extreme I mean extremely different from what we know as masculine and feminine.
4 comments:
While reading this story, I was sitting here thinking wow this is horrible how can these women endure this lifestyle?! But, after thinking about it for a a minute, I realized that this is just China's way of socially defining what it means to be appropriately feminine. I wonder how many other cultures find our way of sexually exploiting women by depicting them in as little clothing as possible to be disgusting as well, since this seems to be America's way of defining femininity. However, I think learning about how other cultures define masculinity and femininity helps to open our eyes to how socially constructed these ideas about men and women are.
Wow. It is really interesting to read this post. I have heard of binding feet before and watched an eposide on Oprah about it. It is truly crazy how different societies look at beauty. It really does show how gender is socially constructed. I think that it is so interesting to look at different prospectives of beauty. My question is who comes up with what beauty is supposed to look like? Like who in the European/American worlds thought that little waists, big breasts, and blonde is beautiful? Who thought that tiny feet are beautiful? I don't get where it comes from and I think that it is interesting to see how some things evolve over time and some don't. For example, women in America used to be larger than the model sizes are now. Like Marilyn Monroe. I think she was a size 12 and people considered her beautiful. I think a model today that is a size 12 would be considered far too large.
In response to who comes up with beauty I believe it first starts with an innate biological sense. For instance larger chests are considered "beautiful" originally because they meant the woman would be more capable of feeding children. Also, symmetrical features are considered beautiful because those traits are considered "healthy" and people are attracted to those who look healthy because they would be good candidates to bear future children. Beyond that basic biological sense, gendered imagery evolves through cultures and generations. I think media and popular figures have a lot to do with it. We did talk a little about how women are supposed to be thinner now (according to model sizes) because it's an exaggeration of taking up less space and seeming more passive. The way extreme forms of beauty (like feet binding) orginiate is very interesting to me. Although it is very painful I know that modern day American women do many painful things for the sake of beauty (waxing for instance). Although these measures may not be as extreme they are still things that are purely done for beauty and don't have any other benefit.
I haven't read this story, but it reminded me of one I read in a sociology class a few years ago. It described a culture that underwent many different body changing and "grueling" processes in order to become beautiful. Basically, it described different techniques such as burning their skin and putting metal wires in their mouths. In the end, however, it was describing America... tanning... braces, etc. Yeah, the binding of the feet is extreme to say the least, but think about the things Americans do in order to achieve "beauty" in our eyes.
Post a Comment