Society is known to be a bit controlling when it comes to appearance. There are many examples of social control in the past. Nowadays social control is still alive, thought it is not so physically brutal, as it was in the past. A very bright example is the so called "foot binding " in Ancient China, during the Confucian period of hierarchical patriarchal authority. During this period (1,000 years) women in China were physically crippled on purpose. The purpose for crippling your daughter's foot was because the society "said " that a smaller foot is always more beautiful, than a bigger one, and this only applied to women. Women were often not so mobile and were doing only house work, like handcrafting, chores and etc. This ritual started from the court of China, where the dancers there intentionally were wrapping their feet in order to imitate pointed, sickle moons. The people of the Court and the upper class considered this a symbol of beauty and called it the "Lilly foot " or "lotus foot ". The "symbol of beauty " spread all over China in no time and aimed to make women inferior to men, by immobilizing then and restricting them to do men's job. It seems that, back then, China was a men's society aiming to control the "lower beings ". But why it took so long for women to stop crippling themselves in order to be accepted in society? The real reason was that in order for the girl to get married in a middle class, or if lucky in an upper class family, she must have a "lotus feet ". This is how the Chinese society i.e. men, managed to control women for so long.
Another example of social control is corseting. Women of the ninetieth century were expected to be pale, fragile and with especially tiny waists, so tiny so as their husbands could encircle them with their hands. Again, like in Ancient China, the smaller, the better was considered a symbol of beauty. Even though so, this symbol of beauty was painful and uncomfortable for women, sometimes it was even killing them.