The Part About Feet

All right, here's where I make a molehill into a mountain, but it kind of pertains to femininity and societal perception, which is something I seem to have found my stride writing about here, so here I go:

The Part About Feet.

I (finally) finished my desert oil painting the other day (much thanks to E gifting me a fantastic set of oil pastels that she doesn't use), and since those pastels are infinitely better than the ones I had been using, I figured I'd just continue with doing more oil paintings instead of taking a break like I usually do because my fingers hurt so much. So, I immediately started drafting this one idea I've had for a bit of time ... girl on the moon, blowing star dust into the night sky ... very fanciful and cutesy and girly and colorful. It's gonna be fun!

BUT, as I was drawing her, I was drawing her feet, and I started thinking to myself: "Yikes, I draw some fugly feet. They're all big and knobby and weird looking, and wow, EW. Haha!" So I did some self analyzing, trying to figure out why I always draw weird-looking, gross feet ... Is it because I have strangely large feet for my height and I don't want to be the only one? I, personally, and unlike a lot of people, don't mind feet. There are far too many awesome reasons that feet are awesome, like running, and walking, and generally helping people get places. Reason enough to not mind feet.

So what's wrong with the feet I drew? (Well, ignoring the anatomically incorrectness because I didn't really pay attention to bones and toes and silly things like that.)

Then I realized it: girls are always portrayed in cartoons and animations and drawings and such with teeny, tiny feet! My drawing's feet are ... enormous in comparison, and I've just always drawn feet like that in my Figure Drawing classes, but I've almost only ever seen small feet on animated characters. Case in point: Disney movies ... I don't have any pictures to back this up, because Disney Feature Animation (rightfully) doesn't allow photographs inside the building, but the studio is advertising for the upcoming movie "Frozen" (which I am extremely excited about and can't wait to see) in its front hallway, complete with these awesome, gorgeous life-sized (ish) cardboard cutouts based on the character designs, which range from probably about five-foot-four to six-foot, depending on the character.

Obviously, these characters are not realistic or anything, because they are animated characters, but something that really threw me were how tiny Elsa and Anna's feet were! Their cardboard cutouts were five foot fourish, which is about my height, but their feet were between half and three-quarters the size of mine! And, I mean, I know I have big feet; I'm a size nine, and, relative to my height, I'm pretty sure people my height usually land somewhere around a seven, but ... half the size of my feet!? That's like almost kids' sizes.

Again, obviously, it's a design choice to make the feet that size, but it makes me wonder why it's so common for feet to be teeny tiny in female characters. Hans's and Christoff's feet were of normal size (ish). At the very least, their cardboard cutouts, at six feet tall, had feet that were bigger than mine. By a fair amount.

So why is it so prevalent that the girls' feet be small? It's not dainty or cute ... it's painful. I know this because binding feet was an extremely popular custom in China, and I've heard horror stories about how binding feet for a little while can still cause permanent damage. Now, I know this custom has more or less died away, and I'm not saying that Disney movies are influencing girls to attempt to make their feet smaller in any way, but I think to some extent, it just sucks that this film portrays an older teenage/young adult woman with feet designed to the proportions of a child. I mean, the issue is bigger than just her feet; it's just sort of the gateway to this problem of "feminine" beauty in art.

I think what I'm hoping for -- and this is more of an overarching idea about the perception of women's beauty in the media -- is for real women to be better portrayed in popular culture. Things have gotten a bit better in recent years, with there being a backlash against super skinny models in ads or on TV (there's a problem with the backlash too, but that's a whole 'nother blog), and with actresses like Jennifer Lawrence or Shailene Woodley being prominent in both the awards circuits and when they talk about their confidence in their natural body types (who knew that Jennifer Lawrence is considered a "plus" actress?? The girl is like a size 4 or something ridiculously not "plus"). But is it enough? There are still countless examples of girls in media who are an unhealthy size 0 or 00 or have done extremely damaging things to their body to fit into what the media portrays as beauty.

It's a little bit funny to me because, while the rest of the character designs don't exactly promote having a bit of muscle or weight on your bones, the feet were what really got me. But I guess it's because they were so far out of the range of normalcy for a young woman's foot. I look at the designs, and I say to myself, "well, yeah, I know people who are that tiny and that tall, so okay, it's not a stretch." If a girl were born with the set of genes that are conducive to her being that skinny without hurting or starving herself, then good for her; some people get lucky in their body types, but no girl, I repeat, no girl is going to be a five-foot-four, fully grown woman and have feet that are what looks like a size four.

Look, it's got to start somewhere, so I'm saying it here: Disney, I'm super looking forward to this new movie of yours; I love the art I've seen so far, I love the focus on it being a sister story, and I love that it's gonna be a musical (and that Idina Menzel and Jonathan Groff and Josh Gad are in it ... AGH! What a cast!! :D) ... I just hope that, in the future, those leading ladies will have feet that are big enough to support their weight. I can promise you, your ladies will still be great dancers, will still be considered dainty and adorable, and will still steal the hearts of millions of little -- and all grown up -- girls across the world. Without making them wonder why their feet have no chance of ever being the same size.

--Tiffany