This, to me, is outrageous. I am not here to shame anyone who is considering, getting, or has plastic surgery–that’s every individual’s choice and it is nothing that anyone should feel guilty about. I only want to talk about what this particular kind of plastic surgery may mean for women today.

Cosmetic foot surgery is where (almost exclusively) women get the bones of their pinky toes shaved to look cuter and get their feet reshaped to look more pleasing to the eye.

These surgeries range from hundreds to thousands of dollars and are purely cosmetic so they’re not covered by insurance. (You could clothe, feed, or educate someone with that money? Just saying–if you have it lying around.)

This creeps me out.

There’s a history behind manipulating women’s feet for the sake of beauty and it’s called foot binding. Foot binding was a practice where women’s feet were painfully broken, the toes were bent backward and feet were bound. Men found this appealing because feet appeared smaller (the most desired size for a foot was THREE INCHES LONG), women would have to walk in an unsteady, dainty manner, and because women could not walk for long periods they needed the constant help of their husbands. Essentially, immobilizing women was a way for men to possess them and keep them from being participants in their own lives. They literally NEEDED their husbands to live.

So how is women choosing to get this surgery anything like foot binding? Good question.

Well, here’s how it’s not like foot binding. It’s much safer, though there are still many risks including permanent nerve damage, deformity, infection and scarring. Women aren’t being forced to do this and it doesn’t render them unable to walk.

However, women mutilating their feet to look “pretty” is just another sign that things like magazines, the beauty industry, and Hollywood standards of attractiveness–are working.

Foot binding doesn’t have its origins in Hollywood, but it does have its origins in what a society thinks women should look like. Both foot binding and cosmetic foot surgery reveal the ABSURD lengths (pain and money) that women feel they must go through in order to be attractive enough. Where does it end?

Let’s face it, it always comes down to being dainty, petite, and helplessly reliant on men. Today it feels like we’re helplessly reliant on the views of everyone. Not just men, but other women.

Are we so critical of ourselves and each other that we have convinced ourselves we need CUTER FEET? All feet basically look the same. I’ve never looked at another woman’s toes and thought, “OMG! Is she kidding with those feet. I’m not talking to her!” I don’t know any guy who saw a girl’s feet as a deal breaker. I don’t know anyone who missed out on that job because her pinky toe wasn’t small enough. (People with foot fetishes and feet models excluded of course.)

Sometimes it just feels like our society has all of this amazing technology and we only use it to become more judgmental of our own bodies.

We just need to get used to what we actually look like and think about the fact that men (for the most part) don’t do these things.

No one is meant to be perfect. Perfect does not exist. It’s a fantasy we all made up and told ourselves. Just like any other fantasy, the fantasy of perfection can never be real.

What do you think of cosmetic foot surgery? Is it just too much? Let us know in the comments!

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