6. A museum built to celebrate feminine beauty
In Melaka (Mallacca) Malaysia, which is somewhat off the beaten path for most, is the Museum of Enduring Beauty. The museum occupies the third floor of the People’s Museum, which contains four autonomous museums. One of the others is dedicated to the history and science of kites. The Museum of Enduring Beauty, which opened in 1996, explores the concepts of beauty across different cultures and throughout history. Many of those cultural concepts seem torturous. Lip shaping, for instance, using disks of bone, metal, or wood. Compressing the head to create an oval shape. Various piercings, although in modern society the practice seems to have returned with a vengeance. The Victorian practice of corseting, to create an hourglass shape with an impossibly small waist. All are explored at this museum. One can easily confuse beauty with torture.
The Chinese practice of foot binding is depicted. Foot binding in ancient China consisted of breaking the feet of young girls, after which they were painfully bound. The practice produced the small feet believed by culture to be beautiful. The process began between the ages of four and eight, or thereabout before the arch had fully developed. Another practice presented in the Museum of Enduring Beauty is that of covering the body with tattoos. Expansive tattooing was prevalent throughout Polynesia, Australia, and the remaining Pacific Islands, as well as among the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean and elsewhere. However, as with piercing, expansive coverage of the skin with permanent ink no longer seems so bizarre to a large part of the population.
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