Women in the Song Dynasty

I have a huge problem with how women are always being treated from history to now. In Chapter nine of our world history textbook I read the section called Women in the Song Dynasty and how ““the boy leads the girl, the girl follows the boy; the duty of husbands to be resolute and wives to be docile begins with this.”(pg. 246) ” when I read this I was upset. Women were not put on earth to be slaves to men or their pets. Another thing I thought was unfair in the same section was how a widow was not allowed to be married again because it was seen to be shameful to walk through the courtyard again. I believe that is crap. If you are a widow, that means your husband is dead, and if you find yourself with someone else who loved you as much as your husband or more and you want to spend the rest of your life with him, then why not be able to get married again? It is not like you killed your first husband and that is why you were a widow. In that case then yes, you should not be allowed to get remarried again. Another issue that I have with the treatment of women back in the Song Dynasty is the tight wrapping of girls’ feet. It the book it said that the bones in foot would break causing intense pain. This painful foot wrapping became a common practice among the elite families. How crazy were these girls! The foot wrapping was “an image of female beauty and eroticism that emphasized small size, delicacy, and reticence, all of which were necessarily produced by foot binding. (pg.247)” If someone told me that I had to break the bones in my feet to be beautiful and accepted I would laugh in their face. I guess that is why I not too keen on wearing high heels. A similar comparison to the foot wrapping. Women and girls from a young age are influenced and or taught about how we should look and dress. I have tried the whole high heel shoes and I observe other women who wear them. I have noticed the instability in women when they walk in high heels, but they want to look beautiful so they suck it up and wear them. I myself do not like wearing them because after an hour my feet start to hurt, but why do I keep them on? So I can feel that I look beautiful since that is what we are taught is beautiful. But at the same time they say “beauty is only skin deep” and that is why you will barley catch me in heels. Look in my closet and you will find flip flops of every color, because that is what I feel comfortable in. So in regards to the issues of women and how they are treated it looks like history may not be so ancient.