Footbinding started during the Tang Dynasty. Supposedly, it started after the Emperor told everyone why he loved his wife so much - she had small feet. The upper-class women, wanting to be like the beautiful Empress, started to bind their feet, breaking them so they would be smaller. Eventually, it spread. Many women had bound feet, and they bound their daughter's feet too. The goal was to make the feet small enough to fit into a 3 inch sized shoe. A girl's foot was bound between the ages of 3 and 5, for ten long, painful years. The feet, when done growing, were considered beautiful, like a lotus blossom. But it also crippled the girl.
