By Aungelina Dahm
Executive Sports Editor|
The tradition of brides wearing a veil at their wedding was something that symbolized the husband taking over her instead of the father. When the veil would be lifted up from her face by the father it would be known that the husband would now be responsible for her.
Personally, being the extreme feminist that I am, I see that as such a put down to women. After I heard this, I made the promise to myself that I will not wear a veil covering my face at my wedding. The idea that the bride has to be “owned” by a man is astonishing and just plain wrong.
I thought our modern society was done with the inequality to men and women. Hell, a woman ran for president for goodness’ sake. Many women now even have their own careers and refuse to give that up for their families. Good for them. If men need to have that “superior” feel towards their wives, then go marry a dog. That way when you try to order it around, it won’t be able to defend itself.
If you think about it, weddings have another point of inferiority towards women. In the vows the person marrying the two has to say, “I now pronounce you man and wife.” Uh, why does the women’s title changes and not the man’s. . .? I’ve heard it be husband and wife, so can’t we go back to that?
Recently in my AP World History class, I have learned about the ancient Chinese tradition of footbinding. Many many years ago, mothers would bind their daughter’s feet backwards to make their feet virtually lose half of their size. Know why? Because the emperor thought it was attractive.
He saw a girl with really tiny feet one day and thought, “Hey, wouldn’t that be cute if all the girls in the empire had really tiny feet?” So he argued that men were not the cause of the breaking and bending of the foot and all the pain and immobility these girls had to go through. He argued the mothers were the ones doing the binding, so he had nothing to do with it.
When in reality, the mothers were only doing it so their daughters would be found attractive to wealthy men and they would get married. So of course, the men got away with it like always.
Footbinding made women totally immobile. They had to rely on their husbands for everything. If they even wanted to get up from a chair to go get a glass of water, the husbands had the option to simply say no. They often chose that option.
Independency was lost for women. They could no longer fend for themselves because they needed to fit the needs of the men in order to be worthy of their standards.
This is ridiculous. When I see women and girls today being controlled by their husbands or boyfriends, it makes me sick. We have the power to stand up for ourselves against them.
I see girls in high school get a new boyfriend literally every week because they feel it’s necessary in order to feel complete. It’s not.
It’s obvious to anyone who knows me that I am probably the most independent person you will ever meet. I don’t need others to do stuff for me, I can figure it out by myself thank you very much.  The key is to find the self-confidence that is deep inside all of us and to use it everyday.
Even though footbinding was made a tradition thousands of years ago, a form of it can still be seen today. Girls, can you think of a painful shoe that distorts your foot, was made to make your legs look longer and comes to a point at the front of the shoe making the toes look smaller, like footbinding? Yes, HEELS.
High-heels are so cute and great for a formal occasion, but they kill so bad that I secretly take them off underneath the table until I have to get up.
According to the Northwest Center Against Sexual Assault, women are abused every nine seconds of every day. In health class, a speaker came from the center to talk about this subject. Women and girls should be more aware of their surroundings and know that these things are closer to home than they think. We need to step up and defend ourselves against men. Then, women will have the equality they deserve, and the inferiority will soon disappear.