Women have long been known to go to great and sometimes horrifying lengths to achieve the beauty ideals of the day. Nowadays those lengths cover the gammut from application of cosmetics and make-up all the way through to plastic surgery. It turns out that this has been going on all through history. Some examples are foot-binding in China, stretched necks amongst Thai and Burmese women, lip stretching in Chad, head elongation in the Congo and head flattening in Mayan culture. These might seem like bizarre extremes to the Western world, but when you consider the implants, injections and procedures women in our society are willilng to undergo, is shows that this obsession with beauty spans the entire globe.
On display are lotus-feet shoes used for foot binding—once considered erotic—as well as heavy brass coils worn around the neck by some Thai and Burmese tribeswomen, who sought to push down their shoulders and ribs and create a long-necked look... Moulding of the skull and the practice of head flattening was common among Mayan society and has been used in Eastern countries...
Elongated heads have been as popular as flattened heads. A Congo woman with an elongated head would be thought very beautiful by her people... Similarly a Chad woman would have had her lips supported and stretched by metal rings since early childhood. In adulthood her stretched lips would express the ultimate in beauty. Western society has not gone quite this far, but it is now fashionable for some women to have collagen injections and implants to enlarge the lips.
(msnbc.msn)
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