No matter how or why the tradition began, there is no question, no
argument to be made about the fact that it swept across China binding the
feet of all the women in its path. Long after it came into existence,
it began to pick up speed and influence under the Mongol rule of the Yuan
dynasty. Then by the time the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), footbinding had
become the accepted practice for women in China (Ping 32). Just as
with the origins of the custom, there are also many other theories as to
why it became so popular for Chinese women to bind their feet. The
one that seems to attract or convince most people is that of the beauty
and sexual elegance of these tiny feet. No matter which tale of the
origin of footbinding is taken to be believed, they all relish in the beauty
and rarity of small feet. Like with many customs throughout history
and around the world, once it became socially acceptable and a symbol for
beauty, women everywhere bound their feet. Soon after this, the beauty
of bound feet became a symbol for sexuality. It became sexy in some
eyes for women to force their feet to be as small as possible. As
this was seen as beautiful and sexy, it became what women wanted to be.
Some scholars theorize that part of the fetish with bound feet is that
the bound foot, when out of its bindings, the most secret and sacred of
all things, resembled female genitalia. And to counteract that, the
bound foot in its wrappings resembled a man’s penis (Ping 14). The
sex appeal of the bound foot is quite possibly the most well known source
of the custom of footbinding but it definitely is not the only one.
It was much more engrained in society than many people know.
The next step in the progression of footbinding, as it became more and
more culturally accepted and admired, was that it became a tool of marriage.
Men looked for women with bound feet and thus women more and more increasingly
began to bind their feet in order to please their new husband. It
is important to point out that because many marriages at this time were
arranged, it wasn’t necessarily the man the bound foot was attracting,
it was his family. “Footbinding spread from the thirteenth to fifteenth
century because it enhanced a daughter’s marriage prospects, as is often
said…In fact, future in-laws desired brides with bound feet because it
signaled not sexuality but modesty and morality” (Ko 52). This meant
mothers and fathers who wanted to marry their daughter off well were encouraged
to bind her feet.
Another step in the development of the practice was that this custom
became a status symbol for women. In the beginning, it was only the
women of the higher classes that could afford to bind their feet.
Unlike their poorer counterparts, these women did not have to do hard physical
labor and their work was not depended upon to help the family stay afloat.
This meant that men of higher classes looked for women with wonderfully
bound feet to marry. However, it did not take long for the practice
to exceed the limits of class. Because rich families were looking
for women with bound feet to marry their sons off to, young girls in lower
class families began to bind their feet. This was a great sacrifice
for lower class families. Each child a family lost to the binding
of feet was considered money taken away from the family because once their
feet were bound they were all but crippled and unable to do work in the
fields. One girl from Tong’an’s account of her experience with footbinding
exemplifies this point, “Father took me to Xianmen once, when I was quite
small. I saw girls with tiny feet, in lovely shoes, and I wanted
my feet bound to be beautiful like them. I begged Mother to bind
me, and she agreed, saying that if I could stand the pain, a rich man might
marry me, because I had a pretty face too” (Gates 51). The story
goes on to tell of how horrible the pain of binding was and that she wanted
to change her mind once her mother started the process but her mother said
they had to keep going. It goes even further to explain how the father
was furious when he found out his daughter’s feet were bound because she
couldn’t work for him anymore and ordered the mother to stop the binding
(51). To bind or not bind women's feet was a huge decision for many
families to make. It was to some people's advantage to bind their
girls feet because if her feet were bound it might have meant that if they
could marry their daughter off well, the family might be able to profit
from the marriage dowry. This is a very sad but true fact; the woman
was objectified to the point where she was all but sold off for the betterment
of her family’s financial situation.
The role women played in Chinese society had a lot to do with marriage
customs in China and thus with footbinding. It is no secret that
China is a patriarchal society. Men for centuries in China dominated
not only the country but the women of China as well. For example,
it is also theorized that men wanted to marry women with small feet because
then it was harder for her to run away from him and his family. I
think this says a lot about how women were treated in China. I also
think that it is important to state that men in China, never have had to
have bound their feet. This was only done to women, women were the
ones who had to reach some sort of beauty threshold by doing this to themselves
and their daughters.
 It is also
important when learning of the practice of footbinding to have a good idea
of what the women actually went through to achieve this status of beauty
and appeal. The practice of the binding itself is quite a gruesome
and hard to stomach experience. Usually when a girl was between the
ages of five and seven, old enough to know the meaning of the experience
but yet young enough for her feet to be easily molded and broken, her feet
were bound for the first time. This was a very important step in
a woman’s life. As Dorothy Ko depicted it, “The daughter’s first
binding took place in the depths of the women’s quarters under the direction
of her mother, sometimes assisted by grandmothers and aunts; no men were
privy to the ceremonial process. It was a solemn occasion marking
the girl’s coming of age, the first step of her decade long grooming to
become a bride-a prelude to a sweet-sixteen party” (Ko 54). The tools
used to bind the feet were ones that the women used every day and were
found around the house. They bound the young girls feet with cloth
and used thread to sew her feet in tight. The purpose of this binding
was to bend the toes completely under the sole of the foot and then pull
the whole front of the foot as close to the heel as possible, creating
a “perfect” three inch foot. This experience is graphically detailed
byWang Ping in her book Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China:
For about two or three years, little
girls go through the inferno of torture: the flesh of her feet, which are
tightly bound with layers of bandages day and night, is slowly putrefied,
her toes crushed under the soles, and the insteps arched to the degree
where the toes and heels meet. Loving mothers suddenly turn into
monsters that beat their sobbing girls with sticks or brooms, forcing them
to hop around to speed up the rotting flesh and made sure the bones are
broken properly. (Ping 3)
Having such a vivid picture in one’s head of the torture that these women
went through really helps to understand just what it was that these women
were willing to sacrifice for cultural acceptance and so called beauty.
Now that the pain of the practice has been explained, it is important
to understand that there was much more to the practice than just the rotting
flesh and the broken bones. This custom was much more deeply engrained
in society than many people know or like to admit. Part of the importance
of the ritual were the shoes themselves. The shoes that women created
to cover their bound feet were called Lotus Shoes, and they became one
of the most important things in their lives. As Dorothy Ko put it,
“Shoes thus have special emotional meanings to a woman beyond the marital
aspect. We may say that votive shoes are expressions of her religious
devotion, and the first binding shoes are a mother’s labor of love.
Girls and adult women made shoes as gifts for distant friends and nearby
relatives. As a product of a woman’s hand, a pair of lotus shoes
is not an inanimate object but the material extension of her body and her
medium of communication” (Ko 69). These shoes became a very important part
of Chinese culture. Women were often judged by their Lotus Shoes,
especially by matchmakers and in-laws. As was explained earlier,
acceptance by one’s husband or in-laws was of great importance. The
shoes that one made to wear or the ones that were made and given as gifts
could greatly improve their status in the family and in society.
This was true for many years; that is until things in China began to change.
The years between 1860 and 1900 were a time of great change in
China. Outside influence and crumbling from within had forced China
into change in many different sectors. Cultural customs were no different.
The practice of footbinding soon came under public scrutiny from foreigners.
Like many parts of Chinese history, influence from the outside changed
the way the practice was seen. The economy was changing with the
times and foreign influence had also reached new heights. This practice
was just one example of old China and was a custom the west found particularly
unappealing. During this time there was a great movement of missionaries
into the country and these missionaries also worked to abolish the practice
of footbinding. Missionaries and others worked for years to ban the
practice and they achieved their goal, the custom was officially banned
in China in 1902 (Hong 291). Even though it was officially banned,
women did not stop binding their feet. This “liberation” process
for the women of China took quite a long time. “Under the Qing dynasty,
imperial edicts banning the practice were ineffective and the practice
continued. By the close of the nineteenth century, many Chinese and
foreign reformers were calling for the eradication of footbinding, yet
they encountered considerable resistance” (Bossen 37). It ended quite
a bit faster in the cities, especially coastal cities, but in the countryside
the practice continued for many years and didn’t really come to and end
until the 1950’s. The pain did not stop when the practice did.
For women whose feet were already bound, it was quite a bit more painful
to let their feet out of their bindings than to leave them in. So
once again, if they were forced to let their feet out they were submitted
to more and more pain.
The practice of footbinding in China was a very important part of the
culture while it was in style. It has remained historically important
as a guide of beauty and sexuality and an example of what people are willing
to do for beauty or marriage or to be accepted in their own culture.
Even though the origins and reasons behind it are not all that clear, it
is clear that women in China bound their feet and experienced pain the
rest of us cannot imagine, this is no mystery, this is no lie.
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Footbinding
in China is a topic that has interested, repelled, and perplexed people
throughout its history. The practice of binding ones feet in order
to achieve a certain length has all but disappeared from modern-day China
but it was once the accepted and promoted practice of many Chinese women.
How and why the custom began is somewhat of a mystery, but there are many
theories as to why women began to bind their feet. The reasons why
women began binding their feet is not the only area of interest, why it
became so prevalent for women to bind their feet, how and why it became
so engraned in Chinese culture and the aftermath of such a practice are
studied as well. It was also vital to the history of footbinding
that when the West got word of such a practice, they set out to put an
end to the tradition they found demeaning and degrading. That is
one reason why footbinding slowly faded out of China but not the only one.
There was a push against it from within as well. When studying the
practice of Chinese footbinding, it is also important to know that some
scholars argue that there is much more to the story of bound feet than
the broken bones themselves. They say that people often get caught
up in the image of crippled feet of barely four inches and do not investigate
the history of the practice. This paper, however, will look closely
into the origins, development, consequences, and aftermath of the culture
of foot binding in China. 
Footbinding
has left quite a mark on not only the history of China but on the world.
When practices like this are brought to light, it forces all cultures and
civilizations to look into their own history and question or investigate.
Such customary traditions that force beauty on women are or were found
in many societies around the world. China is not alone in her quest
for the perfect woman. The use of corsets in Europe and even early
America, in order for women’s waists to appear as small as possible is
one custom that comes to mind. Some women were even known to take
out ribs in order to make their waists look smaller. Even in our
modern day societies, things like this still exist. Women in particular
are singled out to portray this beauty. They must always fit some
ideal of what a woman is supposed to be. Although the images and
ideals of this perfect woman changes, it is important to keep in mind that
woman all over the world are forced or at least pushed by society to strive
for some sort of beautiful conception of a woman. Many times this
involves pain or hard work. I think it is important to think about
the role beauty has played in all societies when discussing the practices
of one society, and especially when talking about the practice of footbinding
in China.