LOTUS SLIPPER

I remember reading a story about binding the feet because the reader was never asked her hand in marriage, and following the story made her realize that a man doesn’t define her.

It was late one night when I came across the story—just a small article in an old anthology I found at a thrift store. The title was “The Legend of the Lotus Slipper.” I opened it with idle curiosity, thinking it was a fairytale. Instead, I found history dressed as horror, beauty bound by pain.

The Story Within the Story

Legend has it that a lotus or lily foot slipper first appeared in China in the 11th century when Empress Taki was born with deformed feet. To save her future embarrassment, her father announced that only women with very small feet could be truly feminine and desirable. As a result, women began to bind their feet. The tiny, virtually unusable feet were a mark of status, beauty, gentility, and sexual attractiveness.

The binding process began at age five to seven years old. Bandages were wrapped around the foot to bend the four smaller toes inward under the foot toward the heel until it resembled a half-moon. The majority of young girls had their feet bound by their mothers. Binding daughters’ feet would ensure she would be married—and hopefully to a wealthy man. The initial process of binding the feet took just one night, but the feet took years of pain to conform into the beautiful crescent shape. During a painful two-to-three-year period, the size of the shoe was gradually reduced. The most highly desired goal was a size only three inches in length - silk shoes only measured 140mm (5½ inches) in length and 24mm (1 inch) in width.

Foot-binding was horribly painful. In asking why women would do this, we need to understand the history behind the practice. Then we can begin to answer the question as to why such a painful tradition would continue to exist for so long.

When I finished reading, I sat for a long time, my tea gone cold beside me. I remember staring down at my own feet—wide, ungraceful, the nails chipped, unpolished and uneven. I wiggled my toes and thought of all those girls. Their bones folded like paper cranes, their childhoods pressed under silk and blood and yet, they were miserable.

The story haunted me.

Not because of the pain, but because of the reason for it.

They did it to be loved.

They did it so someone—some man—might look upon them and say, you are worthy.

That night, I dreamt of a girl named Mei.

Mei’s Dream

In the dream, Mei was seven, sitting on a low stool while her mother unrolled long white bandages. The smell of jasmine tea mixed with the sharp scent of vinegar used to soften the cloth. Her mother’s eyes weren't cruel—only determined.

“This is for your future,” she whispered. “For love.”

Mei cried when the first bandage tightened around her toes. She cried until the world blurred into shades of pain.

Years passed in the dream. Mei learned to walk again. This time, with each step a prayer and a punishment. When she was thirteen, a man came to her home. He looked at her face, her posture, and finally her feet—tiny and trembling inside pink silk slippers embroidered with golden cranes.

“She will do,” he said.

Mei was married by the next spring. Her husband admired her delicate feet, the way she shuffled across the floor like a doll. But when he left for weeks at a time, when the ache in her bones screamed louder than the silence of her house, she wondered if beauty had been worth it.

One night, she removed her slippers and stared at her twisted feet under the moonlight. She imagined them whole again—running, dancing, free.

Then I woke up. I was crying, not because I was Mei, but because in some ways, I wasn’t so different.

No, I hadn’t bound my feet. But I had bound myself.

For years, I’d been waiting—waiting for someone to see me, to choose me, to tell me that I was enough. I’d worn heels that hurt, smiled when I didn’t mean it, and shrunk myself to fit into someone else’s expectations.

When a man I loved once told me I was “too much,” I learned to fold my laughter in half. When another said I was “hard to love,” I pressed my ambitions under soft smiles.

I thought love was something I had to earn. That being chosen was proof of worth. But that story about the lotus slipper—it unbound something in me.

A few days later, I went for a walk barefoot in my backyard. The ground was cold and uneven, pebbles biting into my soles. It hurt a little, but it was a real kind of pain—the kind that comes with living, not hiding. I closed my eyes and imagined Mei's ghost beside me smiling faintly as she took a step—slow, unsteady, but free with me.

The air smelled of wet grass and freedom. For the first time, I didn’t think about how I looked walking alone. I thought about how it felt.

That night I wrote in my journal:

“A man doesn’t define me. Love isn’t proof of my worth. My steps, no matter how uneven, are mine.”

And I meant it.

Years Later

I kept that old book on my bookshelf I admit. I take it down just to reread the legend, not to mourn, but to remember who I am. The silk shoes in the photographs still look impossibly small, the embroidery still delicate and tragic.

But I’ve learned to see something else in them too—a quiet defiance - not in their feet but within themselves. They carried beauty, dignity, and hope in bodies that refused to break completely, however; through centuries of pain those women endured was horrific.

Perhaps that’s what it means to be truly free: not the absence of pain, but the refusal to let it define you.

I started painting after that. My first piece was of two feet—one bound in silk with a golden crane, one bare and strong. I called it Unbound. It wasn’t perfect, but it was mine.

Friends came over and saw it hanging in my living room. One asked if it was about heartbreak. Another thought it was about rebellion. I just smiled and said, “It’s about walking away.”

Sometimes, late at night, I still think of Empress Taki, whose father’s decree changed the course of millions of lives. I wonder if she ever knew the consequences of her supposed “flaw.” Just think of all the girls who believed their worth could be measured in inches.

And then I think of all the women now—walking, running, dancing—with the strength of those who came before them.

Every step is a revolution.

I am no longer waiting to be chosen. I am no longer folding myself into smaller shapes. I wear shoes that make me feel tall, powerful, alive. I wear none at all when I can too. I walk with purpose—not for a man, not for approval, but for the girl I once was, who thought love had to hurt.

Sometimes, I reread that line from the story:

“We need to understand the history behind the practice.”

And I realize it’s not just about foot-binding. It’s about all the ways women have been taught to shape themselves into something palatable, desirable, for less.

But history isn’t destiny.

I stretch my legs, take another step, and whisper to the ghosts of Mei and the millions like her:

“It's okay, we are unbound now.”