(1) The constant torture of pressure (not to mention the resulting corns
and bunions), which alone must surely outweigh a hundred times the
pleasure of gratified vanity at having a Chinese foot.
(2) The unconscious distortion of the features and furrowing of the
forehead in the effort to endure and repress the pain,—and wrinkles, be
it remembered, when once formed are ineradicable.
(3) The discouragement of walking and other exercise, involving a
general lowering of vitality, sickly pallor and premature loss of the
bloom of youth.
(4) The wasting of the calf of the leg to dimensions characteristic of
savagedom, disease, and old age, not to speak of the numerous maladies
resulting to women from the use of hard high heels of fashionable shoes,
every contact of which with the ground sends a shock through the spinal
column to the brain and produces obscure disorders in various parts of
the organism.
(5) The mutilation of one of the most beautiful and characteristically
human parts of the body. As the author of Harper’s _Ugly Girl Papers_
remarks: “One’s foot is as proper an object of pride and complacency as
a shapely hand. But where in a thousand would a sculptor find one that
was a pleasure to contemplate like that of the Princess Pauline
Bonaparte, whose lovely foot was modelled in marble for the delight of
all the world who have seen it?”
(6) Finally, and most important of all, the loss of a graceful gait, of
the poetry of motion, which is a thousand times more calculated to
inspire admiration—æsthetic or erotic—than a small foot.
Man is said to be a reasoning animal; and man embraces woman. But surely
in matters of fashion woman is not a reasoning being. Very large feet
being properly regarded as ugly, she draws the inference that the
smaller they can be made the more will they be beautiful; forgetting
that Beauty is a matter of proportion, not of absolute size. A foot may,
like a waist, as easily appear ugly from being too small as from being
too large. A large woman with very small feet cannot but make a
disagreeable impression, like a bust on an insecure pedestal or a
leaning tower.