The Cultural Body: Alterations
Footbinding
| For a thousand years the Chinese have viewed the sculpted female foot as a mark of beauty. When a girl attained the age of five or six, mother and aunts began the process of folding back and taping her toes under the soles of her feet. This would be repeated throughout her girlhood, causing her considerable discomfort. Her big toes, which she needed for maintaining balance when walking, were left untouched. As her feet grew, they pushed against the tight bandages until the heels and toes nearly met. Deformed ankles, constant infections, and limited mobility resulted. |
 99. Women with bound feet
c. 1890
China
Photograph courtesy of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library,
West Branch, Iowa. |
 100. X-ray of bound feet
Photograph courtesy of National Museum of Health and Medicine, Washington, D.C. |
The best-shaped feet were tiny--no more than three inches long--and were referred to as "golden lotuses." They were considered a woman's most desirable feature; without the lotus foot, most aristocratic Chinese women were unmarriageable. The bound foot was intensely erotic to Chinese men. A bound-foot wife was also a symbol of a man's wealth and status, as evidence that he could support an idle woman. Foot binding was officially forbidden in the late nineteenth century by China's Manchu emperors, but the practice continued into the early twentieth century. |
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