(If you have come across this page via a search of the web, please read Chapter 11 first.)

Supplement to Chapter 11

Optional (and lengthy) chapter-within-a-chapter for those interested in examining footbinding in China and some of its implications in greater depth.

This chapter examines footbinding China in greater detail vis-à-vis two broad topics. The first topic is human sexuality. In other words, we take the cultural phenomenon of footbinding and try to place it into the larger realm of human sexuality. By so doing, we stand to gain insights into human nature and grasp at least some aspects of the complex interaction between biology and culture.

Unfortunately, the first topic, human sexuality, topic requires a few words of warning before we delve into it. For those readers raised only on an intellectual diet of what the humanities have to say about sexuality, the inclusion of material derived from the biological sciences might be shocking. (Interesting essay-responses sequence regarding the state of the humanities--scroll down for it). As Steven Pinker, a specialist on the intersection of biology, psychology, and language points out, "the belief, still popular among some academics (particularly outside the biological sciences), that children are born unisex and are molded into male and female roles by their parents and society is becoming less credible. Many sex differences are universal across cultures . . . and some are found in other primates." Scientists like Simon Baron-Cohen argue that biology plays a key role in sex and sex differences, even though no component of human sexuality is 100% biological (see "The Assortative Mating Theory"). Such assertions would have been absurdly obvious among learned people a generation or two ago, but they are highly controversial today, at least in the humanities.

It has become trendy, even at the university level, to shelter students from exposure to anything that might cause intellectual or emotional discomfort (see "A Nation of Wimps" and The Language Police). We do not, however, live in a padded, sugar-coated world full of nice people, nor is this situation likely to change during our lifetimes. Therefore, engagement with new, different, and possibly disturbing ideas is valuable intellectual and life training for most people most of the time. The material here is probably not all that emotionally demanding, even for hard-core humanists. Nevertheless, the simple act of engaging some of these topics may raise the blood pressure of some readers. If you are one of those readers, you can stop now or soldier on and give the matters here some serious thought.

The second topic of this chapter is more conventional, at least for a history course: footbinding as a factor in diplomacy, politics, national identity, and social change. We look at the late Qing/early republican (ca. 1880-1925) discourses on the politics of culture and some of the ways that footbinding played a role in them. In so doing, we discover that the highly negative view of footbinding in modern times is/was a legacy of the so-called May Fourth Movement, which started 1919 and continued for several years thereafter.

The content of this supplemental chapter is based in large part on the following books:

Should you find the topics discussed below especially interesting, you might want to read one or more of these books or some of the others cited in the text . Their notes an bibliographies will lead you to even wider reading. Before examining the two main topics of this chapter, we need to know a few more details about the actual practice of footbinding in China.

Background: More Details About Footbinding

By late imperial times (the Ming and Qing dynasties), footbinding as a form of sexual allure and feminine beauty had become normal, natural, and obvious to nearly all Chinese of all walks of life. One way to appreciate this point is to sample the extent to which bound feet had become part of ordinary language as well as the literary arts:

Not only did the bound foot become the object of literary and erotic fixation, but it also entered the everyday language of the common people: folk art, folklore, songs, riddles, sayings, proverbs, and curses. Women with beautiful faces and natural feet were mocked as "half Guanyin," Bodhisattva with only half of the body. Po xie (torn shoes) was a term that signified a whore, since a prostitute's shoes wore out easily as she had to put them on and take them off many times a day to do her business. Xiao tizi [小蹄子] (little hooves) was obviously meant for the tiny hoof-like feet. The proverb "A lazy woman's binding bandage--long and stinky" mocked any long, tedious speech or lecture. There were also sayings like "Those with big heads are gentlemen, and those with small feet are villains." . . . The bound foot even had a place in the world of death and gods. Female ghosts in stories and goddesses in local temples often had tiny feet. The following folk rhymes (one from Henan Province and the other from Zhejiang), supposedly sung by little boys, show how the concept of tiny-foot beauty had seeped into the consciousness of the Chinese:

Mother, Mother, it's her I must wed,

Her flowered high heels are unparalleled.

While I'm penniless, it's true,

To have her I'll sell all we've held.

 

Her powdered pink face,

Prettier than a peach;

Her twin golden lotuses,

Perfect fit for my hands.

I'll take you home as my bride,

In a colored sedan chair.

(Wang, Aching for Beauty, p. 52, hereafter cited as "Aching")

Ah, those tiny feet--powerful enough in their allure to bankrupt a lusty man! In Chapter Eleven we briefly examined the historical development of footbinding and the basic mechanics of it. Here we expand on those basic points, relying mainly on Dorothy Ko as our guide.

One key aspect of the origins of footbinding that modern people would tend to overlook is that it was closely associated with dance:

Footbinding became an actual bodily practice when men and women sought to act out the poetic images, in jest and with trepidation at first but in a more serious and physical way as time went on. We know close to nothing about how the process happened or its psychological effects, but clearly it is rooted in larger shifts in cultural tastes and involves more than one instigator or location. In all likelihood, this practice began slowly in the eleventh century after the fall of the Tang, most probably first among entertainers and professional dancers, and then spread when respectable housewives chose to adopt the fashion and styles of entertainers. In other words, footbinding originated in a dance culture that translated poetic images of feet and footwear into visual feasts and sensory experiences accessible to all. (Lotus, p. 35)

Later in this chapter when you read about the animal-celestial polarity, keep in mind that it is to these dance-related origins of footbinding that much of the celestial imagery is connected. Ko also points out that during the Tang dynasty there were two different types of dancing. One variety was military dancing in which dancers, male and female, moved vigorously and wore riding boots. It was antithetical to footbinding. The other type of dancing featured women moving slowly and walking with dainty steps. It was this latter type that predominated after the fall of the Tang dynasty.

Now, let us turn to a closer look at feet and shoes, starting with a revisiting of the question of their size. Well-bound feet were indeed very small when measured from toe to heel in a shoe. The shoe was a terribly important part of the size question, as this photograph will suggest. Notice how much larger the bare foot appears than the shod foot--it is as if one of her feet is twice as long as the other. But, as Ko points out:

 . . . [T]he lotus shoes play tricks on our eyes. When we gaze at a pair of lotus shoes in an antique shop or museum, our instinct is to measure its size--the length from tip to heel--and assume that the woman's feet were just as inhumanly small. Four inches, we shudder, that's how much the mutilated girl's feet had shrunk! Without detracting from the strenuous efforts women exerted to make their feet smaller and the pride they felt in their efforts, we should not that most bound feet were in fact bigger than the shoes. The binding cloth manipulated the shape of the foot to conform to a certain shoe style--a gently sloping topline directed the viewer's gaze away from the bulky heel to the pointy toe, for example. In tandem with the binding cloth, the shoes worked like magicians--masters of optical illusion. . . . Illusion lay at the heart of footbinding because in anatomical terms, footbinding did not so much destroy the mass of tissues and bones of the foot as redistributed them. This is done in two ways: In bending the metatarsal into a bulge, binding shortened the distance between the tip of the foot and the heel. The folded digits, in turn, reduced the width of the tip of the foot. (Lotus, p. 98)

So the tiny bound foot was, in substantial part, a visual illusion. It looked smaller and more gravity defying than it really was in the raw flesh. Recall the previous point about the origins of footbinding in dances designed to give visual form to poetry about immortals and other deities gliding along as if unencumbered by gravity. The erotic and aesthetic effects of footbinding had much to do with creating visual spectacles that suggested superhuman attainments.

Bound feet, of course, were ideally supposed to have been very small. And we have seen that there was a tendency to define this smallness in terms of specific measurements. But there was also a wide range of possibilities connected with the very notion of "small:"

Depending on the region and fashion trend, "smallness" could mean primarily a pointy tip, narrow width, slim arch, or slender ankle. In a perfect world an ideal pair of bound feet would be distinguished by all of the above, but the majority of women could only hope to accentuate their best feature while hiding the worst. Initial binding bent the arch of a girl's foot, but assiduous maintenance was needed through her life if her feet were to remain well shaped and functional. (Lotus, p. 99)

Here are two examples of shoe types that well illustrate these points.

Wang points out that a major theme in Chinese writings of an erotic nature was an urge to classify and categorize female body parts: "a fetishistic fixation on female body parts goes hand in hand with the fractal, synecdochic element in much of Chinese male writing when it comes to desire and erotic fantasies. Often, their fetishistic gaze is translated in poetry, essays, and novels as a manic collection--classifying, inventorying, categorizing--a linguistic taxonomy of female body parts." (Aching, p. 101) For example, Fang Xun, a self-proclaimed "Doctor of the Fragrant Lotus," took the basic classification scheme from a famous botanical work, Qualities of Plum Blossoms, and modified it to classify varieties of bound feet. He started with five broad styles: lotus petal, new moon, harmonious bow, bamboo shoot, and water chestnut. He then subdivided each style into specific foot types. Under lotus petal, for example, we find the following taxonomy in descending order of excellence:

"Lotus petal on all sides"--perfectly narrow and arched, three to four inches long.

"Lotus with silk linen sides"--correctly bound, an inch longer, preventing the wearing of sharply pointed shoes.

"Long hairpin lotus"--shaped like a bamboo shoot, but too long and thin to satisfy critical aesthetic standards.

"Single leaf lotus"--soles narrow and flat.

"Buddha's head lotus"--instep very full, hunched like a knot on the head of Sakyamuni.

Piercing heart lotus"--hidden high-heeled shoes.

"Double flowers"--toes pointing outward.

"Intertwined hearts"--callused heels

"Tibetan lotus"--[like a large-petaled flower from Tibet owing to a late start in binding]

"Jade well"--[natural foot disguised by wearing a pointed sandal]

Quoted in (Aching, p. 104)

This example was but one of numerous classification schemes devised by culturally influential men (aesthetic pundits) in late imperial China. Through this process of categorization, the bound foot become a disembodied cultural object. Today, psychologists and other researchers on sex are well aware of a general tendency in human males to fantasize about female body parts, in contrast with female fantasies, which rarely focus on a specific part of the body. (Some scientists have posited that these results reflect well-documented differences in the average compositions of male versus female brains, the former having larger left and right hemispheres and a smaller corpus callosum and the latter having smaller hemispheres but a thicker corpus callosum. The typical male configuration imparts an advantage in spatial analysis and the breaking down of wholes into parts, while the typical female configuration imparts and advantage in verbal skills, communication, and surmising wholes form parts.) The Chinese obsession with the bound foot is surely an extreme case of this general male tendency, but similar degrees of obsession with other body parts, even to the point of classification schemes, would not be hard to find in other times, cultures, and places.

In addition to the influence of personal tastes, another variable affecting the size and shape of shoes and feet was regional style preferences. Ko describes six different regional styles in detail, and interested readers should refer to her book for the details and illustrations of typical shoes. Let us now turn to a more theoretical examination of footbinding, starting with the most basic questions.

Topic One: Sex and Footbinding; Footbinding and Sex

As we have seen, footbinding in China was fundamentally a sexual custom. In wondering why people would do things such as binding their feet, and then looking into possible answers to that question, we are led to such fundamental questions as what is sex? what is nature? what is culture? and so forth. This section is a tentative attempt to deal with these matters. As far as I can tell, nobody fully understands sex, and thus there is no easy way to define it. There can be no serious doubt that human sexuality is a complex mixture of both biological and social elements. Among scholars in the humanities, however, there is an understandable but unfortunate tendency to deny or at least greatly minimize the biological foundations of sex. Therefore, to add some broader perspective to social analyses of footbinding, let us start with basic biology. We gradually move from biology into a social and literary analysis of foot binding and attempt to draw some conclusions at the end of this section.

What is Sex, What Good Is It, and How Was it Connected with Footbinding?

Let us start with what may be the most fundamental question: why should humans go through all the trouble of having sex just to reproduce? Many organisms reproduce asexually, but even a cursory mental survey of the animal world reveals that nearly all of the "higher" animals, mammals for example, reproduce sexually. Surely there must be a good reason, we tend to assume, but coming up with one or more plausible theories to explain why we reproduce sexually has not been easy for biologists.

A theory that enjoyed a long reign but is now largely discredited is that sexual reproduction allows organisms to adapt especially quickly to evolutionary forces. One fundamental flaw in this thinking is its incorrect assumption that evolving was the goal of organisms, an end unto itself.  On the contrary, however, many of the biological processes in individual organisms are designed to ensure stasis and a low--ideally zero--mutation rate. Evolution happens in large part because these processes do not work perfectly. One problem with the very word "evolution" is that it implies some sort of teleological progress. Organisms change and adapt, but they do so mainly in an effort to continue as they are.

Why need organisms go through the trouble of changing and adapting if their goal is to stay the same (and in this respect the coelacanth may be nature's champion organism)? Because other organisms are out to kill them. For humans and many other mammals, the great danger to survival comes from parasites and disease-causing microorganisms. Their presence is the main reason we reproduce sexually. "Sex . . . has nothing to do with adapting to the inanimate world--becoming bigger or better camouflaged or more tolerant of cold or better at flying--but is all about combating the enemy that fights back." (The Red Queen, p. 65) This enemy is parasites and disease-causing organisms, who are constantly trying to adapt to the immune systems of individuals, much like thieves trying to pick locks. Sexual reproduction, in which 50% of the genes are exchanged, is a way of changing the combinations of the locks and thus, hopefully, keeping a step ahead of the predatory organisms. Matt Ridley explains:

Parasites provide exactly the incentive to change genes every generation that sex seems to demand. The success of the genes that defended you so well in the last generation may be the best of reasons to abandon these same gene combinations in the next. By the time the next generation comes around, the parasites will have surely evolved an answer to the defense that worked best in the last generation. It is a bit like sport. In chess or in football, the tactic that proves most effective is soon the one that people learn to block easily. Every innovation in attack is soon countered by another in defense. (The Red Queen, p. 67)

The rush to keep ahead of disease-causing organisms may well be the basic reason for sexual reproduction. But, more fundamentally, there is a basic imperative of Nature (the capital N is intentional): spread your genes, which seems to animate all sexually-reproducing animals. Let us look a little closer at Nature.

We have seen that Daoists tended to assume that Nature was benign and benevolent, a view that happens, accidentally, to resonate with typical contemporary Western views of Nature as well. But stop and think about this matter. What is so benevolent about Nature? When, for example, a male lion kills babies fathered by other males so that he can have a chance at replacing them with his own offspring, he is following the laws of nature. According to a typical description of lions from the Honolulu Zoo: "If a pride is taken over by a new male who has defeated the top resident male, he will most likely kill any existing cubs that are under 2 years old. This rapidly brings the females into breeding condition, ensuring that the strongest male gets to breed and continue his genetic line." Chimpanzees ("Infanticide has been reported for this species, and it happens when an adult male kills the infant of an unfamiliar female [Goodall, 1977; Kawanaka, 1981]." source: http://www.primate.wisc.edu/pin/factsheets/chimp_social_behavior.html) and other male animals behave in a similar, natural fashion. But who or what benefits from this kind of natural behavior? One could say that the genes of the killers (murderers?) benefit in that they are passed on to the next generation. Nature is not a benevolent system; it is intensely competitive.

A close look at Nature might indeed suggest that it is vast, complex arena in which individuals compete in any way they can to pass on their genes. Humans engage in this competition as well, but, in most cases, it is mediated by especially complex social structures. These social structures take many forms. At best, they serve to buffer the relentless laws of Nature and their impact on our lives. Society can mitigate some of the destructive behaviors that derive from Nature's imperative to pass on one's genes as much as possible and through any means available. On the other hand, however, human social structures have themselves been shaped by the sexual competition that is so fundamental to the natural world. The main reason for this intrusion of sexual competition into human society is that human nature is largely the product of sexual competition and selection. As Ridley points out:

. . . we are descended from only those people who sought the best genes, a habit we inherited from them. Therefore, if you spot somebody with good genes, it is your inherited habit to seek to buy some of those genes; or, put more prosaically, people are attracted to people of high reproductive and genetic potential--the healthy, the fit, and the powerful. The consequences of this fact, which goes under the name of sexual selection, are bizarre in the extreme . . . (The Red Queen, p. 14)

Although Ridley does not discuss the specific case of footbinding, it might arguably be one of the "bizarre in the extreme" consequences of sexual selection. We will need to cover more ground to before any links between footbinding and sexual selection will become apparent.

Let us now consider some aspects and implications of sexual selection and competition. Popularized and oversimplified notions of Charles Darwin's ideas have bequeathed to us a strong image of competition between species. Although inter-species competition does take place in some circumstances, intra-species competition--competition between individual members of the same species--is probably the stronger force driving evolutionary processes. Sexual competition is the most prominent aspect of this intra-species competition. It takes place both between members of the same sex and between members of the opposite sex. Social structures help regulate this competition, and they are, of course, especially complex in the case of humans. Remember, according to Nature, the object of the game of life is to pass on as many of one's genes as possible. We might never consciously think this way, and, indeed, this idea may be unpalatable to refined human sensibilities. But the struggle to pass on genes has shaped the human brain (and the brains of other mammals) in fundamental and indelible ways.

One implication of this sexual competition is that males and females often pursue different mating strategies based in large part on the amount of time and energy required to raise young and the division of labor in doing so. Ridley explains:

The goal of every female animal is to find a mate with sufficient genetic quality to make a good husband, a good father, or a good sire. The goal of every male animal is often to find as many wives as possible and sometimes to find good mothers and dams, only rarely to find good wives. In 1972, Robert Trivers noticed the reason for this asymmetry, which runs right through the animal kingdom; the rare exceptions to his rule prove why it generally holds. The sex that invests the most in rearing the young--by carrying a fetus for nine months in its belly, for example--is the sex that make the least profit from an extra mating. The sex that invests the least has time to spare to seek other mates. Therefore, broadly speaking, males invest less and seek quantity in mates, while females invest more and seek quality of mates. (The Red Queen, p. 133)

Here, stated in the relatively blunt language of the scientist, is the essence of the biological conflict of interests that obtains from the combination of Nature's imperative to spread one's genes as far and as wide as possible and the fact that mammalian offspring require a serious investment of time and energy from at least one parent to survive. This required period of care is, of course, longest for humans, thus intensifying this potential conflict of interests in humans compared with other animals. (For more food for thought along these lines, see this interesting NYT article: "For a Good Time, Well, Don't Call Dad.")

The differing mating strategies of male and female is one reason for the common occurrence of polygamy in human history, such as in the case of premodern China. (Polygamy was "common" in the sense that it was widespread throughout the globe, not in the sense that large numbers of people participated in polygamous relationships). From the male point of view, the matter is relatively simple: translate great wealth into more chances to pass on genes. Of course, stating it this way would probably have made little or no sense to anyone in premodern China. This underlying biological imperative would not have been expressed in terms of genes, but in terms of social institutions and social justifications. And, of course, lust and desire would usually come into play. As we will see below, however, insofar as this lust and desire is mediated by notions of sexual beauty, it is also connected to biological selectors of good health. In other words, men sought good looking wives in large part because good looks (however that might be defined) symbolized reproductive health.

From the female perspective (or that of her family), the highest priority would likely have been to find the best husband in terms of his ability to provide for the wellbeing of her offspring. So wealth and power would be high on the list. And, because her entire family would have sought a marriage connection with a family of higher wealth and power than theirs to advance in social status and wealth themselves, the aspirations of both potential wife and her whole family would often have complemented each other. And in the case of women of poor families, becoming a concubine might appear as a viable option, both for survival of her family and for enhancing the chances of survival of her offspring. Bear in mind that polygamous relationships in human societies directly affect only a small percentage of the total populations. Most men and women arrange themselves in monogamous couplings out of necessity. The force of the monogamous bond might range from weak to strong, and either partner might seek extra-marital relations under certain circumstances, but the basic framework for most people has been and is monogamy. (According to some recent research, contemporary social conditions may be changing the classic male vs. female mating strategy equation. See, for example, the final section of this article: http://www.psychologytoday.com/htdocs/prod/PTOArticle/PTO-20030624-000003.asp).

(By the way, in many of today's societies, including the United States, polygamy is prohibited. Is it therefore the case, that there is really no polygamy? Defined narrowly as a man simultaneously married to more than one women, the answer is yes [except perhaps in some remote areas of some western states]. But what about sequential marriages? Suppose we were to undertake a study of the wealthiest 1% of men in the United States to determine how many wives they acquire, on average, during their lifetimes and the average difference in age between these men and their wives. I suspect you could predict the general shape of the results right now.)

But what about other factors besides wealth and power? Biologically speaking, a female would also want (among other things) to see evidence in a mate of good health--physical fitness, in other words. She might well give higher priority to wealth, but fitness is always desirable. Translated into human social terms, the desire for healthy genes would often be expressed as a desire for a mate who looks good (with "good" being defined bio-socially or even entirely socially in some cases). In other words, humans believe--correctly or otherwise--that certain aspects of one's appearance signify good health and good reproductive potential. Good health, of course, is important as a factor in the survival and flourishing of one's offspring. This desire for physically fit mates is almost certainly the underlying reason that people of either sex are often attracted to others they regard as handsome or beautiful. Beauty takes many forms as it manifests itself in different societies, but all societies have standards of beauty. And, as we have seen, people are wont to spend tremendous resources in its pursuit.

Consider, for example, the case of flirting, which is common to all human societies even though the details of its practice might vary widely. In her analysis of the psychological and biological aspects of flirting, Joann Ellison Rodgers points out that:

[F]lirting is nature's solution to the problem every creature faces in a world full of potential mates--how to choose the right one. We all need a partner who is not merely fertile but genetically different as well as healthy enough to promise viable offspring, provide some kind of help in the hard job of parenting and offer some social compatibility,

Our animal and human ancestors needed a means of quickly and safely judging the value of potential mates without "going all the way" and risking pregnancy with every possible candidate they encountered. Flirting achieved that end, offering a relatively risk-free set of signals with which to sample the field, try out sexual wares, and exchange vital information about candidates' general health and reproductive fitness. ("Flirting Fascination," Psychology Today, February 1999, pp. 37-38)

Recall the allure of bound feet as discussed in the main chapter. Under the right circumstances, this allure could have been and was employed in behaviors that would fall under the general category of flirting, even though premodern China among social elites afforded fewer chances for open flirting than our world today owing to the doctrine of separate spheres.

This brief discussion of the bio-social factors that influence mate selection is far from comprehensive. In the main chapter, for example, we examined the rise of the ideal of companionate marriages. The desire for a socially and sexually (in a more recreational sense) compatible mate would have been another element in the mix for both men and women. But we also saw that companionate marriage remained, for most elite Chinese, only an ideal--appreciated through literary works but lamented by many individuals for its absence in their actual lives. Other factors, such as wealth, social status, and beauty typically overrode compatibility, and, because marriages were arranged by families, individuals often had little choice in the matter.

There is one more twist to the topic of beauty as marker of health and thus as object of male-female desire: deception and manipulation. As you might imagine, individuals have long sought to present the best possible impression of themselves. In the process, they have developed a wide variety of strategies to make themselves appear more more alluring or desirable as mates than an "honest" assessment might warrant. Think of courtship as advertising: "In courtship, as in the world of advertising, there is a discrepancy of interests between the buyer and the seller. The female needs to know the truth about the male: his health, wealth, and genes. The male wants to exaggerate the information. The female wants the truth; the male wants to lie. The very world seduction implies trickery and manipulation." (The Red Queen, p. 154) In many cases it is indeed the male who seeks to lie about himself, and, in most such cases, the female has more to lose by falling for such lies. But there are also circumstances in which the female would benefit from misrepresentation herself.

Because of the ever-present possibility for deception, we have developed strong mechanisms to promote what we might call truth in advertising. Flirting activities, for example, often function to portray aspects of one's body that convey "honest" information. According to Rodgers:

If flirting is a form of self promotion, nature demands a certain amount of truth in advertising. "For a signaling system to convey something meaningful about a desirable attribute, there has to be some honesty," explains [Steven] Gangestad, "so that if you don't have the attribute you can't fake it." Just as the extravagant colors of birds that figure so prominently in their flirting rituals proclaim the health of animals so plumed, humans have some signals that can't be faked.

Waist-hip ration is likely one of them. . . . It is a visual signal that not only figures powerfully in attraction, but is a moving force in flirtation. And unless steel-boned corsets stage a comeback, it is an attribute that just can't be put into play unless it is real. ("Flirting Fascination," Psychology Today, February 1999, p. 41)

As Rogers points out elsewhere in her article, the most alluring female waist-hip ratio in our present society is 0.7 according to recent research. And for men, bilateral symmetry is the major attractor, but with this interesting twist: "Recent studies. . . demonstrate not only that women prefer symmetrical men, they prefer them at a very specific time--when they are most fertile." ("Flirting Fascination," p. 65) No account of the social and psychological elements of sexuality would be complete without reference to the evolutionary aspects of sexuality.

Footbinding, too, was caused and sustained, indirectly, by the biological principles underlying human sexuality. But it was mainly a complex social practice, several steps removed from direct contact with raw biological forces. The key point of linkage seems to be the intersections of: 1) the universal practice of sexual advertising (flirting), 2) the tendency for people to find sexy those attributes that convey "honest" information, and 3) the ability and willingness of people to use technological interventions to modify the appearance or composition of their bodies. Notice the reference to "steel-boned corsets" in the passage quoted above. Body modification most often takes the form of temporary adornments, but it can also include permanent alterations such as re-shaping the skull or, in premodern China, re-shaping the feet.

As a form of sexual self advertising footbinding is an extreme case. What exactly might it have advertised? Fitness is one possibility, although this notion might seem strange at first thought. After all, bound feet would tend to render woman less mobile and less likely to be physically fit in the contemporary sense of the term (though modern notions of "fitness," as we have seen in Chapter 11, would have had no appeal to premodern Chinese elites). Recall, however, that women with bound feet were expected to be able to walk and to do all the tasks that they might need to pursue. To get their work done despite the disadvantage of bound feet might have signaled fitness in a manner roughly analogous to classic biological examples of male sexual ornamentation such as the peacock or the stag:

Antlers and tail feathers are known to be attractive to females of their species and are a major machinery of flirtation. But developing and maintaining such extravagant equipment is costly, taking huge nutritional resources and even slowing the animals down, making them more vulnerable to predators.

The only animals that can afford such ornamentation are those with tip-top constitutions. . . . ("Flirting Fascination," p. 64)

But there is a fundamental difference between the cases of animals like peacocks and a practice like footbinding. The body adornments of peacocks and other gaudy (usually male) animals are the result of many years of evolution and are built into each animal's physiology. Footbinding, by contrast, was an acquired characteristic. Although inscribed into the flesh by human will and technology, bound feet had no direct basis in the genes. A woman could not pass on small feet to her female children in a genetic sense (acquired characteristics cannot be passed on in the genes), only as a social practice. In this very important sense, footbinding was quite a different phenomenon from, say, the development of a peacock's tail. Therefore, the peacock's tail and other similar animal examples might serve only as an approximate metaphor for the bound foot.

Although driven at some level by biological imperatives, footbinding was a social practice. What it advertised was not inherited, genetic physical fitness, but what we might call social fitness. A woman with a pair of feet that society regarded as beautiful would almost certainly have possessed self discipline, perseverance, and the ability to withstand severe pain and hardship. She would also have demonstrated a willingness to conform to society's norms, even at the price of great pain. Her feet, in other words, might speak volumes about her character and serve as valuable tools in society's sexual competition. Recall from Chapter 11 the view expressed in women's writing from the late Ming dynasty that while physical attributes such as facial features were beyond one's control, anyone could acquire beautiful feet with sufficient effort and discipline. It is in this sense that the feet advertised one's social fitness.

In pondering these matters, you might wonder why so many women--indeed, nearly all Chinese women by the middle of the Qing dynasty--would have bought into such a bizarre form of sexual advertising and beatification. Certainly from today's vantage point, it might well seem obvious that the game was not worth the cost. But even today, women (especially) and men (to a lesser extent--opposite the case of most other animal species) continue to devote tremendous time, energy, money, and sometimes pain to the quest for beauty. Despite its many cultivated aspects, we tend to regard as natural or normal those aspects of beauty currently in vogue, such as shaved legs, body piercing, augmentation surgery--to name but three. Footbinding is not part of the contemporary mix and therefore seems especially bizarre to us now. Of course, just because many or most people pursue beatification regimens does not necessarily mean that all or any of us must do so. One benefit to examining topics like footbinding is that by understanding the workings of the broader social processes, we are better able to make a conscious choice about the extent of our own participation. But to refuse to participate carries with it some degree of social cost. In premodern China, of course, girls really had no choice, since, in most cases, footbinding was forced on them by mother or other female relatives acting as agents of the broader culture.

Footbinding is an excellent example of what some scholars like to call the "tyranny of fashion." When something is in vogue and is regarded as an integral part of beauty, those who do not conform are at a serious disadvantage in the mating game. This rule seems to apply equally to genetically-based "fashion" such as a peacock's tail or to socially-based fashion such as bound feet or wasp waists. (Male peacocks, incidentally, contribute nothing to the raising of the young. Their only contribution to the process is genetic material. Peahens choose their mates, and they do so solely on the basis of tail size, symmetry, and color. Presumably the more impressive the tail, the better the genes.) One could, of course, try boldly to start a new fashion trend, but what is the likelihood that someone would take the risk. In fashion (broadly defined), most people (and apparently most other animals) rush to follow the established forms. Only major social upheavals are likely permanently to alter the forms of fashion--which is exactly why footbinding quickly faded out in China during approximately the decade of the 1920s.

An expression like "tyranny of fashion" might also bring to mind questions of social power. Premodern China is a classic example of a patriarchal society. Men monopolized nearly all the formal institutions of power such as the civil service examinations, government offices, formal authority in the household, and more. In the realm of academic learning and the literary arts, women sometimes functioned on a par with men, but in terms of sheer numbers, men dominated these realms as well. Because China was a male-dominated society to such a high degree (though not to a higher degree than in many other parts of the world in premodern times), the acquisition of social capital (wealth, power, status, etc.) by women was a precarious and difficult undertaking. But it was possible.

The key was often in women's adroit use of the allure of their small feet. We have already seen this approach and will see more of it below. This fact tended strongly to reinforce the tyranny of fashion in small feet. As odd is it might seem on the surface, male lust for small feet could often work to the advantage of individual women. In what may now seem to us a perverse logic, in the short term, it was to the social advantage of women--both as individuals and as a group--to promote the sense of mysterious allure surrounding their feet. In the long run, bound feet were quite literally a drag on modern China's development, which is a major reason why they quickly went out of style in the early twentieth century. (Another reason is that footbinding had become so widespread in society that it lost all former sense of courtly elegance and elite, glamorous lifestyles.)

Let us pause now to consider polarities. They are not hard to understand, but few of us regularly think in terms of them. The most common example of a polarity may be the positive and negative terminals of a battery. The poles exist at opposite ends of the battery and conduct the opposite type of charge. Notice that the two poles are united by the more fundamental concept of "charge," and that the two poles are complimentary in that they define each other. In other words, neither can exist independently of the other. It is precisely the same relationship that we saw earlier in the case of yin and yang. In the case positive or negative charge, there is really no position between the poles--charge is either positive or negative. In some polarities, however, there is a gradation of possibilities in between the poles. In such cases, the two extremes of a polarity often create a tension that defines a range of possibilities. For example, in the realm of aesthetics, beauty is often a function of the interplay of complexity or gaudiness versus simplicity.

Thinking in terms of polarities is essential for understanding many aspects of Chinese culture. Footbinding can be usefully regarded as having existed at the intersection of several different polarities. One that should be obvious from the preceding paragraphs is biology versus culture. Sexuality is always a complex interplay of these two poles. As a sexual practice, footbinding would fall far toward the "culture" pole. Yet, even as such, it would ultimately have no meaning were it not for the biological imperatives underlying human sexuality.

The Animal ↔ Celestial Polarity

Turning now mainly to literary evidence, let us view footbinding in the context of two more polarities: "animal versus celestial" and "reason versus expenditure." For the insights in these sections we are indebted mainly to Wang Ping's masterful analysis of footbinding in Chinese culture.

We humans are animals, but we often pretend that we are not. In thus pretending, we delude ourselves, for human life and society closely resemble aspects of the individual and social lives of other animals. Consider for a moment the following by Ridley:

In an astonishing study recently undertaken in Western Europe, the following facts emerged: Married females choose to have affairs with males who are dominant, older, more physically attractive, more symmetrical in appearance, and married; females are much more likely to have an affair if their mates are subordinate, younger, physically unattractive, or have asymmetrical features; cosmetic surgery to improve a male's looks doubles his chances of having an adulterous affair; the more attractive a male the less attentive he is as a father; roughly one in three of the babies born in Western Europe is the product of an adulterous affair.

If you find these facts disturbing or hard to believe, do not worry. The study was not done on human beings but on swallows, the innocent twittering, fork-tailed birds that pirouette prettily around barns and fields in the summer months. Human beings are entirely different from swallows. Or are they? (The Red Queen, p. 211)

Thus begins a chapter on human sexuality titled "Monogamy and the Nature of Women." By the end, the close resemblance between the sex lives of humans and swallows becomes abundantly clear. And any dog owner (or, in California-speak, "guardian") knows of the uncanny reflection of typical human desires and psychology seen in the behavior of canines. Nevertheless, by pushing aside and ignoring evidence to the contrary, we often convince ourselves that we are fundamentally different from the other animals. Our social structures reinforce this belief, and indeed really do set us apart from the world of Nature to some extent. Human religions often liken people--or at least some part of people--to a divine or celestial nature. Whether Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, or whatever, devout practitioners of the major religions often believe that they can transcend their animal natures and ascend to a loftier existence. Yet intense religious experience often contains sexual overtones, for it is difficult to conceive of celestial ecstasy without at least some reference to the workings of our animal natures. Could there be "ecstasy" without the animal side? Much of human culture can be seen at least in part as a product of the tension between our animal natures and our celestial aspirations. Footbinding is one such cultural product.

Consider the following poem from the end of the Tang dynasty:

Glowing, glowing, six inches of succulent flesh;

Embroidered slipper in white silk, lined in red.

Not much of a romantic, the southern dynasty emperor,

Yet he prefers the golden lotus to green leaves

(Quoted in Lotus, p. 31)

"This poem," says Ko, establishes the two aesthetic ideals associated with footbinding in the subsequent centuries: the lure of exact measurements . . . as well as the contrast between the bare skin of the foot and the ornamentation of the shoe. This tension between flesh and dress is a sure formula for sensuous appeal." (Lotus, p. 32) Transposing Ko's formulation to the animal-celestial polarity, flesh corresponds approximately with animal and dress with celestial.

The bound foot itself lay precisely at the center of the animal versus celestial polarity. On the one hand, these feet were consistently portrayed in literary and artistic depictions as light, fragrant, and airy, suited ideally to celestial nymphs and beautiful immortals. As Wang points out in Aching for Beauty:

The illusion of overcoming gravity and flying up to the sky is what these tiny-footed ladies aimed to achieve. When Yao Niang, the legendary first footbinder, dances on the golden lotus, she looks as if she were whirling on a cloud. Floating on the clouds or water becomes the clichéd metaphor for describing the walk of bound feet in Chinese literature. Goddesses, female immortals, and girls with special talents in paintings of those periods all show this flying movement and highly aestheticized expression of idealized femininity. Their faces and upper bodies were depicted in detail, whereas their lower bodies, especially their feet, were veiled in clouds of fabrics. Their airy weightlessness, embodied in the darting, floating movement of their bodies on the lotus feet that are both there and not there, is the emblem of a femininity purged of earthly dross and carnality. (Aching, pp. 9-10)

Notice the obvious similarity between the image of women with bound feet described here and Daoist immortals. Recall also Ko's point about the origins of footbinding in the stage enactments of poetic images by professional dancers. The very name "golden lotus" suggests that these feet transcend the mundane world of reality and enter the realm of Buddhist enlightenment. Bear in mind as well that bound feet would have almost never have been seen in their raw flesh except by the woman herself and perhaps a servant. To the world--even the "inner" world of the household--such feet would always have been carefully presented in elegant shoes and wrappings. Such bound feet would indeed have appeared elegant, particularly in a cultural environment in which small, well-adorned feet were the very essence of feminine beauty.

But there is another side to beauty and sexual allure: the animal aspect. Consider this passage from George Bataille, speaking generally, not specifically about bound feet or China:

The image of the desirable woman as first imagined would be insipid and unprovocative if it did not at the same time also promise or reveal a mysterious animal respect, more momentously suggestive. The beauty of the desirable woman suggests her private parts, the hairy ones, to be be precise, the animal ones. . . . But above and beyond the sexual instinct, erotic desire has other components. Beauty that denies the animal and awakes desire finishes up by exasperating desire and exalting the animal parts. (Quoted in Aching, p. 11)

Following up on this insight, Wang explains: "In the eye of the beholder, bound feet represent a true celestial being for the main reason that they never have to touch the dirt, being wrapped in bandages and covered with embroidered shoes even during sleep. Yet at the same time, such a foot resembles the hoof of an animal, not the hoof of a cow or a horse, but the foot of a fox or hoof of a deer, which is associated with the myth of footbinding." (Aching, p. 11)

Let us consider these two animals. Recall that the deer is a standard symbol of longevity in Daoism and came originally from Buddhism. Wang points out that the very term "golden lotus" probably originates in an Indian tale of a deer lady recorded by the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuan Zang (596-664). The gist of the story is that a Buddhist priest saw a deer give birth to a human girl. The priest raised the child, and, when she walked, she left the impression of lotus flowers in the ground. She grew up and gave birth to a thousand sons, each seated on one petal of a thousand-petaled lotus blossom. The lotus is a common symbol of Buddhist purity because it is a white, pink, or red flower that grows out of the mud of ponds. The deer-woman was a divine being, part human and part animal. This tale inspired the "golden lotus" dancing apparatus that palace dancers sometimes strapped to their feet--a precursor of binding the feet themselves. And, of course, actual human bound feet do indeed resemble animal hooves.

And what about the fox connection? Foxes are known throughout East Asia as shape-shifting trickster animals (more details). In a typical example, foxes appear in the guise of a beautiful woman and thereby ensnare men for one purpose or another. Such encounters are often fatal for the men. In this sense, foxes are yet another manifestation of the classic male fear of the power of female sexuality. One characteristic of these fox-women is that they cannot completely hide their animal features. Sometimes their true nature can be seen in their shadows; in other cases, some part of their body retains its fox form. In Chinese lore, the feet were often the part of the body that retained their fox features, as Wang explains:

Chinese folklore and mythology tend to represent the hoof-footed female figure as fox-footed femme fatales. These foxes, such as Da Ji of the Shang dynasty, were often sent by gods to bring down a corrupt dynasty. They could transform themselves into beauties beyond human measure except for their feet, which refused to be metamorphosed. Just as humans have completely erected themselves from the earth except for the feet that stubbornly remain horizontal, the feet of foxes alone fail to assume human shape. Yet it is exactly this stubborn animality that gives off the strongest, most irresistible sexual allure, and it is this base animality than has brought down many kingdoms, many civilizations.

How well Chinese women know this secret weapon! When they call one another xiao tizi [小蹄子]--"little hooves"--whether as a curse or endearment, they are fully aware of the power of this animality in the guise of high civilization, morality, and divinity. . . . A tiny-footed beauty appears to be restricted (as well as restricting: the feet, once bound, become taboo for the male gaze and touch) and celestial, away from the muddy, decaying, and excremental quality of sexuality. Yet she provokes more erotic desires by promising a mysterious animal aspect and turning her body into prohibition, taboo. In other words, the lotus foot exasperates and exalts desire for flesh by diminishing and covering the flesh. The tension of such a flux from animal to the celestial, and from the celestial to the animal, is the key to the erotic attraction of bound feet in the eye of the lotus lover. (Aching, pp. 12-13; I have added emphasis to the last sentence.)

Indeed, the production of erotic attraction by creating a polarity between the celestial and the animal, while especially apparent in the case of bound feet, is not limited to them. Human sexual allure or beauty in general is, at least in part, characterized by some degree of celestial-animal tension.

In the passage above, Wang refers to Da Ji as a fox-woman. Hopefully her name rings a bell in your mind. If not, take a moment to review what we have already read about her. The account of Daji earlier in this textbook comes from Biographies of Exemplary Women. Chinese literature contains other accounts of her life, one of which portrays Daji as a fox sent by Heaven to destroy the Shang dynasty, which had grown corrupt under King Zhou. Because she could not transform her feet into those of a human, she wrapped them tightly. The other women of the court followed suit, seeing hoe much King Zhou liked Daji. This practice was the start of the custom of footbinding. Of course, we know that footbinding started much later, but having become firmly entrenched in Chinese culture, it was common to regard the practice as "natural" and thus to assume that it must have been around for nearly as long as civilization itself.

The celestial-animal polarity and its association with foxes and thus deadly sexual allure is a theme in the literature of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Perhaps the best example is Pan Jinlian, a major character in the novel Jin Ping Mei 金 瓶 梅 (title uses parts of the names of three concubines of the wealthy playboy Ximen Qing; the book's title is often translated as The Golden Lotus):

Pan Jinlian is the most deadly and licentious female character in the erotic novel The Golden Lotus (Jin ping mei). She got her name Jinlian, Golden Lotus, from her pair of perfectly bound feet. And she certainly lives up to that name and image--as the symbol of eroticism and object of desire. In the story, Jinlian was sold as a child and raised to be someone's concubine. Almost every character in the book, male or female, meets a deadly end, including her first lover, her first husband, Wu Da, her maid, and her second husband, Ximen Qing. (Aching, p.24)

The animal-celestial polarity, and the general qualities associated with it, is not unique to China or East Asia. Mermaids are one obvious example, but we need not consider only women. Another example is Pan, the pastoral deity of fertility:

Pan, the pastoral god of fertility, was originally an Arcadian deity, later associated with the Greek Dionysus and with the Roman Faunus, both fertility gods. He is depicted as a merry, ugly man with the horns, ears, legs, and hooves of a goat. All the myths about him deal with his amorous affairs. He invented the panpipe, a musical instrument made of reeds, for the beautiful nymph he loved. The nymph fled, leaving him nothing but a lonely sighing in the wind. The mysterious fear that comes from no known cause is called a panic fear. And fear is one of the indispensable ingredients in the working of eroticism: the fear of chaos and violence, of blood and rotting, of death, and the fear of female sexual power yet at the same time the longing for it. (Aching, p. 13)

Returning to China for another male example of the celestial-animal polarity, consider the example of Wieyang Sheng, protagonist of Li Yu's early Qing erotic novel, The Carnal Prayer Mat (Rou putuan 肉蒲團). Weiyang is handsome, wealthy, and witty, and he decides to undertake a quest to have sexual relations with all of the most beautiful women in China. When Weiyang asked a friend how best to accomplish such an ambitious goal, the friend asks to see Weiyang's tool. Upon seen the small organ, the friend advises Weiyang to give up his plans. But Weiyang was not one to be dissuaded easily. He found a doctor who specialized in enlarging men's genitals and arranged to have a dog's penis surgically implanted into his own. In classical Chinese lore, size mattered much, as did stamina and strength. The operation was a success (I wonder if any of the "enlargement" services offered on the web employ this method?):

The success of the operation gives Weiyang the same power that a woman gains through footbinding: the appearance of high civilization--a fair-skinned scholar with a primary reproductive apparatus empowered by a dog penis. The first sexual attractor [being fair-skinned] is powerful enough if Weiyang were satisfied with sex within bounds, that is, with his wife and concubine maids. But if he wants to fulfill his ambition of sleeping with all the beautiful women in China . . . he needs a sex organ that is not only large in size but also assimilates the shape and power of a beast. Thus Weiyang turns himself into something quite monstrous--a half-human, half-animal creature, a  scholar [exam passer] with a dog penis. (Aching, p. 16)

Again we see the celestial (handsome, exam-passing scholar) versus animal (dog penis) polarity at work in the world of sex and eroticism. This novel, incidentally, was not only popular in China, but it was translated into Japanese in the eighteenth century and became (by the standards of the time) a best seller there as well. And feel free to read it yourself without fear of prurient corruption, because it is a wholesome, religious book. After Weiyang travels throughout China working hard to accomplish his goal, he eventually comes to realize the emptiness of it all. He enters a remote Buddhist monastery, and, having become disgusted with the "animal" part of his nature, divests himself violently of his mighty tool. This operation was also successful: "Evidently he was destined to shed his animal fate and to be transformed, for the amputation did not feel terribly painful. From that time on, his desires ceased and his moral purpose gained in strength, and the perceptiveness shown in his religious studies grew steadily." (Li Yu, The Carnal Prayer Mat, translated with an introduction by Patrick Hanan, [Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1990], p. 306). Having trouble concentrating on studying, you say? . . . Well . . . try cold showers first!

Wang makes several further points about Weiyang's case that bring out some of interesting points about constructions of gender and views of the body as both a biological unit and a social unit:

Such obsession with sex organs reflects a general anxiety among the literati over gender and hierarchy confusion. Ming and Qing erotic prints show how little difference there is between the naked bodies of scholarly men and women. Both have smooth skin and feminine, slender body lines [typical example]. The only male figures with muscles, beards, and body hair who seem to be filled with virile power are the Mongols. These horsemen warriors were considered barbarians, closer to animals than civilized Chinese were thought to be. No wonder the fair-skinned scholar Weiyang needs to borrow a dog penis, which grows big, hot, and alive once inside a woman's body. And women love this half-human, half-animal phallus just as much as men love women's half-human, half-hoof lotus foot. (Aching, p. 16)

There is one final and very important point about the erotic allure of lotus feet. I am sometimes asked in class whether, perhaps in the throes of the sex act, men ever saw and touched the bare foot? I usually answer like a politician, saying something like "Well, I will leave that detail to your vivid imagination!" But that seemingly evasive answer is also precisely the point. As long as the contents of those small shoes and perfumed wrappings remained a sequestered mystery, they were alluring in the extreme. Revealed as bare feet--raw flesh--the mystery vanishes along with the sight of a lump of semi-decayed flesh and bones. It would be a case of the animal side of the polarity dominating completely, eclipsing the celestial pole, and, therefore, eroticism itself. Eroticism might get a charge from veering close to the animal pole, but it always needs the celestial pole to maintain at least some sense of the mysterious unknown.

A quick search of the Web will reveal plenty of old photographs of women at the end of the Qing dynasty revealing their bare feet for the voyeuristic lens of foreigners' cameras. These photos would probably have struck most Chinese at the time as being the ultimate in pornography, but more in the sense of grotesque excess rather than sexual allure. Most men and perhaps some women might have wanted to take a peek at them out of a sense of lurid curiosity, but, because of the collapse of the animal-celestial polarity that viewing such photos would cause, any titillation they might initially offer would quickly have dissipated. And why did these women allow their feet to be photographed? Poverty was severe and widespread during the waning years of the Qing dynasty, and foreign photographers were able to find destitute women who would reveal their feet for money. These grotesque photos of bare lotus feet--completely removed form their social context--helped create a negative image of China in the eyes many Western observers. Indeed, it is mainly for this reason that the very existence of a chapter like this one would not meet with approval of some Chinese even today: footbinding is still a taboo subject.

It should be obvious at this point that footbinding is a highly complex topic, which constantly shades off into issues of broader Chinese culture and even into fundamental questions of human nature and sexuality. And there is more. Let us turn now to another polarity into which bound feet were enmeshed: reason versus expenditure.

The Reason ↔ Expenditure Polarity

The two terms of this polarity are unlikely to make immediate sense by themselves. "Reason" refers to rational calculations of personal gain and loss and also implies the discipline to abide by such calculations. Expenditure is the impulsive, irrational aspect of human nature. In today's world, for example, rational calculations might well lead to the conclusion that one should eat moderately, exercise regularly, not smoke, drink minimally, (for students) study several hours a day even when no exam or assignment is looming, spend little and set aside money for savings or investment on a regular basis, and so forth. How many people in fact live like this? Many people do many of these things some of the time, and a very few people do all of them most of the time (or most of them all of the time). But most people are not as "reasonable" as they could be in the pursuit of their daily activities.

Instead, we sometimes--or often--buy on impulse, eat on impulse, do other things on impulse, turn away form facing difficult tasks, and otherwise act according to our desires, urges, or what is convenient at the moment. Such action is often at odds with rational calculations of our best interests. It is the "expenditure" polarity. Most people live their lives somewhere in between the two poles. Those consistently at or close to the reason pole tend to be high achievers but might well seem to lack enjoyment or spontaneity. In extreme cases, they tend to resemble machines. Conversely, it is hard to imagine how the slaves of their weaknesses and desires huddled around the expenditure pole could possibly be happy--not to mention the least bit useful for anything. The extremes of expenditure lead to ruin. It might well be the case that adroit traveling between these two poles is the key to a highly satisfying life. But to narrow our focus, let us apply this polarity to footbinding, with Wang as our primary guide.

She applies the polarity first to late imperial Chinese society in general:

Throughout the late imperial period, China oscillated between the high moral restriction and purification of neo-Confucianism and the corrupting of the flesh; between the urge to make boundaries for gender and hierarchy, to hold things in their fixed places through language; and the blur of all divisions, the flow of their contents out of their containment, and the destruction of all barriers. Chinese society oscillated between the rapid growth of the economy and commerce that led to a great abundance of wealth, and the urge to spend, a frenzy of squandering resources. . . . The oppression of women also deepened: the spread of footbinding as a way to confine them to their inner chambers, and the flourishing of exemplary women to keep them chaste. Royalty, officials, and rich merchants, however, turned the race of expenditure into great competitive spectacles, wallowing in sensual pleasures--food, drink, sex, art (poetry, music, dance), craftsmanship, and the construction of grand gardens and monuments. . . . For the noble and the rich, mere idleness was not enough: leisure had to be coupled with the obvious waste of valuable resources as a means of putting one's wealth and power on social display and gaining reputability. . . . While women became one of the most valuable human goods in the expenditure spectacle, as active agents of consumption themselves they began to reshape the definition of womanhood. Talent was not added to virtue and beauty for the new ideal of femininity . . . . Greatly encouraged to cultivate their talents in poetry and art as well as their beauty, women participated both as objects and subjects of the spectacular cultural and economic consumption through footbinding (beauty) and writing/publishing (as well as being written and published about). (Aching, pp. 56-57)

Within the oscillation between reason and expenditure, bound feet were all over the place. In other words, they could and did represent both poles. On the rational side, footbinding was a an application of technology and knowledge in the service of improving the body both aesthetically and morally. One example of the moral improvement was that footbinding helped clarify the boundary between men and women. Although in today's society (or at least in today's academic world) there is a distinct tendency to celebrate the blurring of such boundaries, for elite Chinese, maintaining the boundaries between men and women was part of the bedrock of social morality. In a social context in which neither men nor women wore form-revealing clothes, bound feet certainly helped make clear who belonged to which group. Even when the feet/shoes were not visible, the distinctive walk of someone with bound feet was a major marker of female gender.

On the "expenditure" side, bound feet were the objects of erotic desire. And, Wang points out (with the help of Bataille):

the realm of eroticism is that of extravagance, expenditure, chaos, transgression, and ruin, set in contrast with the realm of reason: work, accumulation of wealth, respect for taboos, order, and kindness. "Erotic conduct," as Bataille points out,

is the opposite of normal conduct as spending is the opposite of getting. If we follow the dictates of reason we try to acquire all kinds of goods, we work in order to increase the sum of or possessions or of our knowledge, we use all means to get richer and possess more. Our status in the social order is based on this sort of behavior. But when the fever of sex seizes us we behave in the opposite way. We recklessly draw on our strength and sometimes in the violence of passion we squander considerable resources to no real purpose. . . . Our only real pleasure is to squander our resources to no purpose, just as if a wound were bleeding away inside us; we always want to be sure of the uselessness and the ruinousness of our extravagance.

. . . In the case of footbinding, no matter how men try to gear the practice into usefulness and the control of women, sexuality overflows the tiny lotus shoes, flooding away the barriers and outer limits, the legal, the moral, and cultural restrictions. Once footbinding enters the domain of compulsive consumption of all resources, including the flesh itself, it takes on a life of its own, recognizing neither reason nor logic, dissolving the boundaries not only between gods and humans, monsters and animals, dead and living, but also between nature and culture. In the course of this violent squandering and consumption, the flesh picks up speed toward annihilation, and nothing can stop it until death swallows everything, be it an individual, a country, or a dynasty. (Aching, pp. 57-58)

Let us consider the case of an emperor to illustrate this general point. When it comes to examples of the  "expenditure" pole, the Ming dynasty emperors stand out head and shoulders above all others. Wuzong 明武宗, for example, ascended the throne at age 14, in 1505. By 1521, at age thirty, he was dead. He was not laid low by an accident or a tragically random disease. Instead, he "expended" himself to death in the form of wild orgies, often conducted in the "Leopard House" that the emperor built for himself and his ministers to enjoy the company of numerous young women--which the emperor kidnapped, sometimes personally, from various parts of his domains. Yes, that's right, he enjoyed nothing better than bursting into the home of an unsuspecting subject and heading straight for the women's quarters.  Add few musicians and some kinky Buddhist priests to this mix of imperial officials and captive women a to spice things up, and you have . . . well, among other things, an emperor dead at the ripe old age of thirty. What about the "reason" side of the polarity in Wuzong's life? Well, . . . let's see . . . the official name (= motto) of Wuzong's reign was "Zhengde 正德," which means something like "rectification and virtue!"

The notion of killing one's self in such a manner was well entrenched in Chinese popular thought by the Qing dynasty if not earlier. Yuan Mei 袁枚 (1716-ca. 1800) wrote a series of short stories, many involving ghosts and spirits, under the shockingly iconoclastic title Zi bu yu 子不語. The title literally means "He did not say," or something to that effect, but it actually comes from the Confucian Analects in the context of a passage explaining that Confucius did not speak of ghosts, spirits, and other such supernatural phenomena. In a spirit, the book discusses those things about which which respectable people would be reluctant or afraid to speak. Satirical commentary on human behavior is common in the stories, which were banned by the Qing government (though widely read nevertheless--and also in Japan). Here, for example, is the complete tale entitled "The Human Prawn:"

At the beginning of the current dynasty there lived an old man who wanted to make the ultimate sacrifice--taking his own life--to display his unbounded loyalty to the previous Ming dynasty. He was, however, too scared to commit suicide. He didn't fancy the idea of using a knife, nor did he care for the idea of hanging himself. Incineration was similarly unappealing.

Eventually, he struck upon the notion of emulating a certain Minister Xinling, who had apparently committed suicide by indulging in an excess of wine and women. Thus resolved, our Ming loyalist brought in several concubines and mistresses and thereafter indulged himself in unlimited lascivious pursuits.

This went on for years, yet still he showed no signs of dying from his excesses. The only effects on his body were that his nerves were shot, his head protruded at an unusual angle, and his back developed a hump. Indeed, he was so badly hunched over that he looked for all the world like a giant cooked prawn.

His crooked gait was almost a crawl on all fours, so people in the region called him the Human Prawn. He stayed in this prawnlike state for over twenty years and died at the ripe old age of eighty-four. My friend Wang Zijian told me that he had seen this old man with his very own eyes when he was just a young boy. (Kam Louie and Louise Edwards, trans. and eds., Censored by Confucius: Ghost Stories by Yuan Mei [Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996], 39)

Of course, this piece pokes fun at the suicide method selected by the brave Ming loyalist, but it makes sense only in the context of numerous literary and even real-life examples of men who did die at young ages owing to sexual excess. And even here, the loyalist literally got bent out of shape (looking more animal than human) as a result of his indulgences.

In this spirit, recall Ximen Qing, the wealthy merchant in the novel Jin Ping Mei. His rational mind and disciplined business habits helped him acquire vast wealth and power. But after acquiring Pan Jinlian, a small-footed concubine, Ximen became obsessed with pleasures of the flesh. He sought out ever more elaborate and bizarre sexual practices (all described in detail in the text of the novel) and used drugs to enhance their intensity. He died while in the midst of a sexual marathon, his penis literally erupting with pus and blood after days of continuous orgasms. Pan Jinlian, the tiny-footed femme fatale, left another man dead in her wake. In the end, she, too, met a violent end, murdered by Ximen's brother. Once Ximen started on the expenditure spiral, he lost control and quickly spun to his death. As Wang explains: "In the beginning the novel presents Ximen Qing as a rational merchant. The women he marries . . . all bring him social or economic benefits. . . . Toward the end of the novel, his entire being is consumed by drinking, eating, and sex--until death, the most luxurious consumption of energy resources, swallows him up. Even his death takes place in the manner of an excessive eruption." (Aching, pp. 71-72)

For those who like the world to exist in neat, clearly-defined categories, it might seem contradictory that bound feet were both rationality and expenditure par excellence. But they were. As aspects of the rational polarity, they stood for hard work, discipline, virtue, purity, moral training, and so forth. As Ko explains:

. . . [F]ootbinding was and entirely reasonable course of action for women who lived in a Confucian culture that placed the highest moral value on domesticity, motherhood, and handwork. The ideal Confucian woman was one who worked diligently with her hands and body, and those who did were amply rewarded in terms of power in the family, communal respect, and even imperial recognition. The binding of feet created a woman who fit these ideals. (Lotus, p. 15)

On the other hand, of course, bound feet stood for all the destructive excesses of prurient passion discussed above as part of the pole of expenditure. Ko, again, in a continuation of the passage quoted above:

Yet such is  the contradictory nature of footbinding that it can be a profoundly anti-Confucian amoral undertaking. Maiming one's own body, the progeny of parents, is anti-filial, as is often charged in modern anti-footbinding literature. Furthermore, when practiced by the "wrong" women--prostitutes and other temptresses--footbinding could distract the good son and husband form his Confucian duties, leading to the downfall of the family. This double-faced image of footbinding stems from the conflicting nature of demands placed on the Chinese woman, who could be either the saintly mother or the temptress, but not both. (Lotus, p. 15)

Many complex social phenomena, especially those in the realm of sex, operate this way: as simultaneously both one thing and its polar opposite. Indeed, consider the last sentence of the passage quoted above in terms of today's society, changing the word "footbinding" to "sex" and the words "the Chinese woman" to "the American woman." What do you think?

Finally, consider the origins and development of footbinding in terms of the reason-expenditure polarity. Ko does not use this exact term, but it is essentially what she means by the "Janus-faced nature of footbinding." The ca. 940s anthology, Among the Flowers, contains songs and dances with sexual overtones. Han Wo was one of the poets whose work it featured:

It is undeniable that footbinding was born of a male fantasy that turned women into objects of their amorous desires. As natural as these desires may be, if left unchecked they threaten to destroy the harmony in family and society. This is why from the start there is an unseemly undercurrent to footbinding: moralists for whom sex was only good for procreation repeatedly chastised Han Wo and many poets of Among the Flowers. In the late eleventh century, in one of the earliest references to footbinding as a practice, scholar Zhu Xi (1028-1103) praised a widow who "cannot spare a moment to bind her two feet, her only concern is putting the four limbs to good use." For as long as it lasted, footbinding was condemned as a frivolous pursuit that distracted the family son and daughter from productive use of their bodies. Such us the Janus-faced nature of footbinding that the impulse that brought it into being cannot account for its spread and long history, which is essentially a history of domestication. As it migrated from the palace to respectable households, the blatant sensuality had to be draped in the mantle of domestic values. (Lotus, pp. 44-45)

To transpose (at the risk of stating the obvious): the "blatant sensuality" would correspond to the expenditure pole, and the "mantle of domestic values" to the rational pole. And, perhaps needless to say, the "draping" process Ko mentions was always imperfect.

Food, Footbinding, and Language

In analyzing the animal-celestial and reason-expenditure polarities, the emphasis has been on bringing the two poles--and their often conflicting or contradictory imperatives--into sharp focus. In actual life in premodern China, however, the use of language tended to do the opposite. In other words, language often served to minimize the dissonance between the two poles. One way that it did so was to employ metaphors to describe and discuss bound feet. "Lotus" or "golden lotus" are obvious examples. Wang insightfully points out the key roles of cooking and food metaphors in this obscuration process. Cooking is a human activity of fundamental importance, which has recently attracted the attention of evolutionary biologists. Several of these scientists have posited that, more than anything else, it was the ability to cook that gave rise to the modern human species (example 1; example 2; example 3).

Consider the basic process of cooking: turning some raw plant or animal that cannot be eaten (owing to its being too hard, indigestible, poisonous, etc.) into something edible. In China the cooking process became a symbol for other types of transformations. And the realm of food in general was ripe with opportunities to demonstrate the excessive "expenditure" discussed previously. Therefore food and sex were closely associated with each other. As you might imagine, common metaphors for bound feet were often connected with food and cooking:

The connection between food and foot seems only natural and inevitable since food and sex always go hand in hand in the Chinese history of expenditure. Once the lotus foot enters the realm of food, however, it is immediately associated with all the signs, functions, and rituals of food culture in China. As cooking is the symbolic process of transforming nature into culture, savage into civilization, footbinding "cooks" the raw, savage female body into something that can be consumed for pleasure as well as for political and moral purposes . . . . The obsession of metaphorizing bound feet as food marks two opposite transformations; first, it transcends flesh, the primitive, nature, and death, transforming them into spirit, civilization, culture, and immortality; second, footbinding marks a descent from the most complicated human body to the primal sense of being--plants and things--through imitation and euphemization. . . . Language, through metaphor and euphemism, functions as a medium that allows the link and constant flow between sex and food, foot and mouth, transcendence and descent, nature and culture--a "cooking furnace" where all the opposites dissolve, fuse, and start all over again. (Aching, pp. 79-80)

And what were some of the common euphemistic metaphors for bound feet? Other than lotuses and lilies, food images were most common. Examples include bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, dumplings, and red beans. Consider this title: "Twofold Joy of Bamboo Shoots." Might it be a menu item in a Chinese restaurant? Perhaps it could be, but, in this case, it comes from Chinese a sex manual and is the title of one of the exotic varieties of intercourse described therein. Food, sex, and feet often merged in the language of late imperial China.

Recall the theme of male fear of the power of female sexuality, which has come up in several parts of this textbook. Just as the literal cooking process renders inedible or even dangerous things into edible food, a metaphoric "cooking" process rendered wild, dangerous female sexuality into a (relatively more) safely consumable form:

[Euphemism] works as a furnace to transform the raw, the wild, the untamed into the cooked and civilized. Women (beauty, femininity, sexuality) are like wild beasts: they look beautiful but are dangerous and contaminating. Such is not true beauty, because it cannot be used or consumed. Beauty is good only after it has gone through the "furnace" of language/euphemism, where feet are transformed into lotus, red beans, water chestnuts, dumplings, and so on, all cooked an edible. Xiu se ke can--beauty is edible--is thus not a casual Chinese saying. It carries all the significance and meaning of how language works and functions in aesthetics, sexuality, and daily life of the Chinese. (Aching, p. 93)

Obviously, footbinding was the major means by which late imperial Chinese society transformed the female body into consumable beauty. As pointed out previously, however, this transformation was not total. The wild, the animal, the dangerous aspects of female sexuality were still present amidst the elaborate wrappings and elegant shoes, a point of which both men and women were well aware.

Amidst all this discussion we should not lose sight of the ingredient of violence. Ordinary cooking is a violent process, although the violence is typically hidden from ordinary view. Likewise, the "cooking" of the feet, of course, was a violent and painful process:

Both cooking and footbinding mark the first stage of transformation: fire cooks the raw into edible food while binding turns the female body into beauty. This stage involves unspeakable violence. For cooking, it involves slaughtering, skinning, and dissecting animals, then all the boiling, broiling, grilling, sautéing; for footbinding it means crying, bleeding, rotting putrefying, and deforming the feet. . . . Further violence lurks behind the mild, tasteful presentation of food on the table, behind the layers of wrapping and the beautifully embroidered shoes, threatening to break through all these civilized "cover-ups." Such food and beauty are still not consumable until they are further "cooked" through words--prayers or euphemisms. Language here works as a final barrier that keeps the unspeakable violence at a safe distance, an outermost skin to cover (or seal) the killing, blood, pus, disease, and death. Through euphemism, the harsh, violent, and unspeakable reality becomes acceptable and speakable and it is therefore ready for consumption. (Aching, p. 94)

The end result of this violence--if properly applied--was beauty. Let us now conclude this examination of various aspects of sex and bound feet with some remarks about the light that bound feet might be able to shed on the nature of beauty.

Beauty

Despite the obvious importance of beauty in human affairs, the term has never been easy to define or understand. We often apply the idea of beauty--whatever it might be--to a wide range of things in the world around us such as landscapes, paintings, objects of daily life, or even things like mathematical formulas or personality types. Although humans have extended the idea of beauty such that it might conceivably apply to almost anything, its origins are almost certainly to be found in the physical appearance of human bodies, both nude and adorned in various ways. In this core meaning, beauty is nearly synonymous with sexual attractiveness, although we often claim (falsely, in my minority view) that beauty is somehow more lofty, noble, and sublime than mere sexual allure (example: the alleged distinction between "naked" and "nude"). But the tendency to extend the idea of beauty metaphorically from the body to a vast array of tangible and intangible things is a significant characteristic of humans. Indeed, the line between "body" and "other things" is nearly impossible to draw. Is a metal ornament affixed to the body through piercing part of the body? Human beatification typically involves complex modification and adorning of the body as we have seen. In practice, the biological and the social constantly merge, mix, and influence each other.

Foot binding is not an anomaly. While, it was a relatively extreme form of body modification with respect to the pain and effort required to attain the desired result, footbinding falls within the wide range of temporary and permanent body modifications that men and women have pursued throughout the world and throughout recorded human history in the quest for beauty. Today, we would not bind our feet. But we would do--or at least consider the possibility of doing--a large number of other things such as liposuction, breast enlargement surgery, penis size increase regimens, botox injections, all manner of crazy diet programs, and much more. So people continue to do things like footbinding--they always have and probably always will.

One reason for the universality of body modification (broadly defined) in the pursuit of beauty is that sexual competition in the effort to spread our genes far and wide is hardwired into the human (and all other) species. That much is certain. But the wide variety of such body modifications should at least sew some seeds of doubt vis-à-vis claims--often made these days--that there is a universal human beauty standard. These claims might be correct, and there is some intriguing evidence in support of them. For example, sophisticated studies of facial features (using computer-generated composite images) strongly suggest that large numbers of people from different parts of the world agree on the general contours of an "attractive" face. But is this widespread agreement the result of genetic "wiring" or the result of mass media images, which, for better or worse, are pervaded by contemporary Western ideals of beauty. In the few studies that I have seen, I was not convinced that cultural influences had been (or could be) filtered out of the selection process. The boundaries between biology and culture will be very difficult to map, though attempts to do so are likely to yield useful knowledge. (For an interesting book that proposes--but does not prove--that art has shaped the reproductive goals of Western society, see George L. Hersey, The Evolution of Allure: Sexual Selection from the Medici Venus to the Incredible Hulk [Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996].)

To return to footbinding, in a very basic sense, it is the result of a biological imperative. In other words, humans have been driven to modify their bodies as a result of sexual competition, and this competition has a biological basis. Thinking in terms if a culture-biology polarity, however, the practice of footbinding would surely fall close to the "culture" pole. In other words, footbinding was many steps removed from basic biological imperatives even though ultimately connected to them, as are most sexual practices. As a cultural phenomenon, footbinding was especially complex, and here we have touched upon only some of its multiple dimensions.

Footbinding was a major element of glamour in late imperial China, which we might define as the intersection of sexual allure, wealth, and social status (though the idea of sexual allure almost necessarily includes some consideration of wealth and status). As such, it was also an integral part of female identity and the strategies available to women who sought to advance socially in a world dominated by men. Footbinding is a lens through which we might usefully view many aspects of premodern Chinese culture as well as basic questions about human nature and human culture. At a minimum, the case of footbinding is evidence of the extraordinarily wide range of manifestations of beauty in human history. Take a moment now to revisit the contemporary phenomenon of cosmetic leg lengthening and compare it with footbinding.

One value in studying body modification, beauty, allure, and related topics is that it allows us as individuals to make conscious choices about the extent to which we chose to participate in these cultural activities. Chinese girls, of course, had no choice in the matter of footbinding. In today's United Sates, and in many other parts of the world, we enjoy vastly more freedom of choice regarding lifestyles. But without some understanding of the forces at work shaping our notions of beauty, these notions can become oppressive. Indeed, it is not unusual for feminist writers to argue that beauty oppresses women and is an obstacle toward their advancement in many social realms. Such critiques typically locate the problem deep within the basic values of society. In other words, if an individual women decides to reject prevailing standards of beauty, she is likely to suffer severe social consequences as a result. And indeed, studies by a variety of groups have shown what most of us already know (even if we do not want to admit it): how one looks is terribly important for such purposes as getting a job, advancing in a job, finding mates, and even in influencing the outcome of a civil or criminal trial. For better or worse, beauty matters in our society. And there is no simple or easy-to-apply formula for determining the extent to which a thinking individual should resist this reality, passively accept it, or actively embrace it--or employ some combination of these three responses.

It is not surprising, however, that most men and women reject the extreme doctrines of the neo-Puritan variety of academic feminism, which typically demands that we do away with beauty, radically redefine it, or at least greatly minimize its role in society. For all its very real potential to be oppressive, beauty also makes life interesting. With good reason, few of us would willingly wear Mao suits or their equivalent. Consider Jin Wenxue's (b. 1962) recollections of the sexless, beauty-less situation prevailing in the days of China's Cultural Revolution:

In the 1970s, when the famous Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution had reached a feverish intensity, I was attending an elementary school in China. I still remember with great clarity the absurd sight of the old, the young, men, and women, all without distinction wearing identical outfits amidst the whirlpool of the revolution. In the name of the lofty-sounding expression "equality among men and women," all of China's citizens wore a kind of civilian uniform [i.e., the Mao suit]. Its color was navy blue or gray, possibly green. There were absolutely no pinks, reds, or colors of that sort.

It was nearly impossible for women to get perms or to wear their hair playfully in a manner resembling a style. They all looked identical in their so-called "Revolution heads" 革命頭, a kappa-like hairstyle. One hardly ever saw anyone wearing a skirt because skirts were regarded as clothes of the capitalist class and their use was prohibited. Looking this way, just glancing at someone was often insufficient to determine whether that person was male or female. In a word, it would not be wrong to say that the Chinese people were living in an era when everyone was the same sex 同姓時代. (Kōshoku, p. 2)

It seems that in the case of beauty, extremes of either pursuing it or denying it--especially when accompanied by de jure or de facto coercion--tend to interfere with the general pursuit of happiness within society. For more possible food for thought regarding human beauty generally, see the following items, not all of which agree with each other:

 

Topic Two: Footbinding and National Identity in China, ca. 1890-1930

<<Forthcoming--some day>>

This page is part of www.east-asian-history.net. If you arrived here via a web search or an external link, click the icon at left to go to the home page or click this link to go to the index page for the textbooks: www.east-asian-history.net/textbooks/.