Snowflower and the Secret Fan

Last Tuesday, my not-so-secret book club met to talk about our latest book Snowflower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See. Set in China at the height of footbinding practice, two girls enter into a contract of being laotongs, a pair of old sames, and promise to be true friends for life. Very graphic descriptions of the pain of footbinding start off the book. I'm sure my fellow El train riders noticed the cry of yuckiness from me as I reached the passages on the book when they intentionally break the bones of 6 year old girls so as to tuck the toes under. Imagine your feet looking a clenched fist. Lily, one of two main characters and is the lucky of the two, was divined by the diviner at age 6 to have the kind of feet that would be small and dainty. The smaller the feet (we're talking 7 centimeters) the better the prospects are for marriage. So it follows the fate of Lily as she rises from being a middle-class family in a so-so village to becoming the most prominent member of the Lu family in a the highclass village of Tongkou. How a small feet determines your fate is hard to comprehend. Yet on the day of the book club, I wore my "barbie heels". They are white strappy sandals with wooden pointy heels 3 inches long. I regretted it as soon as I was out the door but I was already late for work and I had been wearing my teva-types in my daily commute and felt very "plain" looking in them. So really it's not a leap of imagination afterall to think that even centuries later, we still ascribe to the same faulty logic of footbinding only it's in the form of strappy white leather sandals with 3 inch platforms that pinch the nerves of your little toe. So sexy, but ouch!