During the heyday of foot-binding, millions of Chinese girls and women lived with tiny “lotus shoes”. The tortuous and unnatural custom left dramatic morphological changes in their feet.
Bossen’s research shows that foot-binding wasn’t just about sex and beauty. It also served a practical purpose in the countryside where girls as young as 5 spun, weaved and did other work by hand to support their families.
Origin
The exact origins of foot binding are unclear. One theory is that it was inspired by a tenth-century court dancer, who entranced the Emperor with her nimble feet and tiny shoes that had upturned toes. Another is that it was a way to honor the ancient Chinese goddess of fertility, Chang’e.
By the 19th century, many reformers criticized foot binding as backward and un-Chinese. Some, like the empress dowager of the Qing Dynasty, even issued an imperial decree against it. But it was not until the revolution brought about by Sun Yat-sen and the establishment of the Republic of China in 1911 that foot binding really started to die out.
By this time, Chinese society was becoming more modern and Western-educated. Men no longer wanted old-fashioned women with bound feet, and women grew to dislike the severe pain caused by the practice. They also found that it impeded their work in ways that other clothing didn’t—they couldn’t kneel down, couldn’t sit, couldn’t carry heavy loads or do handwork. Even so, women continued to work—they cooked, cleaned, sewed, and worked in the fields. But without bound feet, it was much easier for them to do these things. The last factory producing lotus shoes closed in 1999. Foot-binding is still practiced in some rural areas of China today, although it has declined significantly in urban centers.
Purpose
From a social perspective, foot binding became popular amongst women of all classes as it signified beauty and femininity. It also helped enhance a girl’s chances in marriage as men preferred wives with bound feet.
Some mothers even swathed their daughters’ feet as soon as they were born. This was primarily due to the fact that lower class girls’ families were not as financially stable as their richer counterparts and foot binding would help them attract wealthy husbands2.
The practice grew in popularity as many young girls were eager to please their fathers and husbands and show their obedience. In addition, some girls wanted to resemble their wealthy sisters with their tiny feet.
This desire was fuelled by the societal norm that a woman should be subservient to men and as such, if she had small feet, she would be more obedient. Besides, girls were expected to look after their parents and the family in general so they needed to work hard and contribute to the household income.
However, as the practice was carried out for generations and girls were physically and emotionally crippled by the process, their physical and emotional growth was impeded. This was particularly evident in later periods of foot binding, where the tighter bindings caused the toes to be twisted and deformed. These distorted toes weakened the arch and led to frequent sprains and injuries.
Techniques
Using cotton bandages, girls’ feet were wrapped tightly around the ankles and then up and around their toes, heel and arch. The toes were then bent under and pressed into the sole of the foot to create an arched shape. The process was repeated over the entire foot and then back down to the ankle, tightening each time.
The technique was extremely painful and affected circulation so that the feet became infected. It also caused the toenails to drop off and necrotic tissue to slough off. Despite the pain, most girls were willing to go through the binding process as they believed it would make them more attractive and desirable by potential in-laws and matchmakers.
After the revolution in 1911, foot-binding gradually stopped being practised. By the 1920s, urban elites had almost completely abandoned the practice but rural surveys show that foot-binding continued into the 1930s.
Photographer Jo Farrell met up with some of these women to document their stories and the effects of foot-binding on their bodies. She says the women she photographed felt a sense of pride in their feet and that they were happy to show them off, even decades after the practice was banned. But she also found that they were not able to carry out the work they needed to do because of their bound feet.
Effects
Foot binding maimed the feet of millions of Chinese girls and women for centuries. The tiny “golden lotus” feet achieved by breaking girls’ toes and arches and binding them tighter – a custom that also included wrapping the girls’ legs in cloth – became emblems of femininity, beauty, and sexual allure in a Confucian society. But the bound feet weren’t just a symbol of feminine charm; they were also essential for girls who tended housework and did farm work, Bossen explains in the journal Science Advances.
Despite the social and economic advantages of bound feet, it wasn’t until the Qing Dynasty fell that Western missionaries and Chinese reformers started to speak out against it. The Dowager Empress Cixi did ban foot binding in 1902, but she didn’t enforce it and the practice continued unabated until it was stamped out with the Communist victory in 1949.
A new study shows that lifelong foot binding had detrimental effects on the skeleton, including decreased hip bone density. The team of clinical scientists and bioengineers from Hong Kong and physicians from Mainland China investigated 254 postmenopausal Chinese women with bound feet and 82 age-matched control subjects from Luliang County in Yunnan province, southern China. The researchers used gait analysis, computer models of foot shape and function, and computational stress calculations to compare bone properties of the Chinese women with bound feet and those without bound feet.