twin pillars o f these twin pillars. Here we have the joining together of politics and morality, coupled to produce their inevitable offspring—the oppression of women based on totalitarian standards of beauty and a
rampant sexual fascism. In arranging a marriage, a
male's parents inquired first about the prospective
bride’s feet, then about her face. Those were her human, recognizable qualities. During the process of footbinding, mothers consoled their daughters by conjuring up the luscious marriage possibilities dependent on the beauty of the bound foot. Concubines for the Imperial harem were selected at tiny-foot festivals (forerunners of Miss America pageants). Rows upon rows of women sat on benches with their feet outstretched
while audience and judges went along the aisles and
commented on the size, shape, and decoration of foot
and shoes. No one, however, was ever allowed to touch
the merchandise. Women looked forward to these
festivals, since they were allowed out o f the house.
The sexual aesthetics, literally the art o f love, of
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the bound foot was complex. T h e sexual attraction o f
the foot was based on its concealment and the mystery
surrounding its development and care. T h e bindings
were unwrapped and the feet were washed in the
woman’s boudoir, in the strictest privacy. T h e frequency o f bathing varied from once a week to once a year. Perfumes o f various fragrances and alum were
used during and after washing, and various kinds o f
surgery were performed on the callouses and nails.
T h e physical process o f washing helped restore circulation. T he mummy was unwrapped, touched up, and put back to sleep with more preservatives added. T h e rest
o f the body was never washed at the same time as the
feet, for fear that one would become a pig in the next
life. Well-bred women were supposed to die o f shame
if men observed them washing their feet. T h e foot
consisted, after all, o f smelly, rotted flesh. This was
naturally not pleasing to the intruding male, a violation o f his aesthetic sensibility.
T h e art o f the shoes was basic to the sexual aesthetics o f the bound foot. Untold hours, days, months went into the embroidery o f shoes. T here were shoes
for all occasions, shoes o f different colors, shoes to
hobble in, shoes to go to bed in, shoes for special
occasions like birthdays, marriages, funerals, shoes
which denoted age. Red was the favored color for bed
shoes because it accentuated the whiteness o f the skin
o f the calves and thighs. A marriageable daughter made
about 12 pairs o f shoes as a part o f her dowry. She
presented 2 specially made pairs to her mother-in-law
and father-in-law. When she entered her husband’s
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home for the first time, her feet were immediately
examined by the whole family, neither praise nor
sarcasm being withheld.
There was also the art of the gait, the art of sitting,
the art of standing, the art of lying down, the art of adjusting the skirt, the art of every movement which involves feet. Beauty was the way feet looked and how
they moved. Certain feet were better than other feet,
more beautiful. Perfect 3-inch form and utter uselessness were the distinguishing marks of the aristocratic foot. These concepts of beauty and status defined
women: as ornaments, as sexual playthings, as sexual
constructs. The perfect construct, even in China, was
naturally the prostitute.
The natural-footed woman generated horror and
repulsion in China. She was anathema, and all the
forces o f insult and contempt were used to obliterate
her. Men said about bound feet and natural feet:
A tiny foot is proof of feminine goodness.. . .
Women who don’t bind their feet, look like men,
for the tiny foot serves to show the differentiation.. . .
The tiny foot is soft and, when rubbed, leads to
great excitement.. . .
The graceful walk gives the beholder mixed feelings o f compassion and pity.. . .
Natural feet are heavy and ponderous as they get
into bed, but tiny feet lightly steal under the coverlets.. . .
The large-footed woman is careless about adornment, but the tiny-footed frequently wash and apply a variety o f perfumed fragrances, enchanting all who
come into their presence.. . .
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T h e natural foot looks much less aesthetic in walk-
ing. . . .
Everyone welcomes the tiny foot, regarding its
smallness as precious.. . .
Men formerly so craved it that its possessor
achieved harmonious matrimony.. . .
Because o f its diminutiveness, it gives rise to a
variety o f sensual pleasures and love feelings.. . . 8
Thin, small, curved, soft, fragrant, weak, easily
inflamed, passive to the point o f being almost inanim ate—this was footbound woman. Her bindings created extraordinary vaginal folds; isolation in the bedroom increased her sexual desire; playing with the shriveled, crippled foot increased everyone’s desire.
Even the imagery o f the names o f various types o f foot
suggest, on the one hand, feminine passivity (lotuses,
lilies, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts) and, on the other
hand, male independence, strength, and mobility (lotus
boats, large-footed crows, monkey foot). It was unacceptable for a woman to have those male qualities denoted by large feet. This fact conjures up an earlier assertion: footbinding did not formalize existing differences between men and women —it created them.
One sex became male by virtue o f having made the
other sex some thing, something other, something
completely polar to itself, something called female.
In 1915, a satirical essay in defense o f footbinding,
written by a Chinese male, emphasized this:
T h e bound foot is the condition o f a life o f dignity
for man, o f contentment for woman. Let me make this
clear. I am a Chinese fairly typical o f my class. I pored
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too much over classic texts in my youth and dimmed
my eyes, narrowed my chest, crooked my back. My
memory is not strong, and in an old civilization there
is a vast deal to learn before you can know anything.
Accordingly among scholars I cut a poor figure. I am
timid, and my voice plays me false in gatherings of
men. But to my footbound wife, confined for life to
her house except when I bear her in my arms to her
palanquin, my stride is heroic, my voice is that o f a
roaring lion, my wisdom is of the sages. To her I am
the world; I am life itself. 9
Chinese men, it is clear, stood tall and strong on
women’s tiny feet.
The so-called art of footbinding was the process of
taking the human foot, using it as though it were insensible matter, molding it into an inhuman form. Footbinding was the “art” of making living matter insensible, inanimate. We are obviously not dealing here with art at all, but with fetishism, with sexual psychosis. This
fetish became the primary content of sexual experience
for an entire culture for 1,000 years. The manipulation
of the tiny foot was an indispensable prelude to
all
sexual experience. Manuals were written elaborating
various techniques for holding and rubbing the Golden
Lotus. Smelling the feet, chewing them, licking them,
sucking them, all were sexually charged experiences.
A woman with tiny feet was supposedly more easily
maneuvered around in bed and this was no small advantage. Theft of shoes was commonplace. Women were forced to sew their shoes directly onto their bindings. Stolen shoes might be returned soaked in semen.
Prostitutes would show their naked feet for a high
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price (there weren’t many streetwalkers in China).
Drinking games using cups placed in the shoes o f prostitutes or courtesans were favorite pastimes. Tiny-footed prostitutes took special names like Moon Immortal, Red Treasure, Golden Pearl. No less numerous were the euphemisms for feet, shoes, and bindings.
Some men went to prostitutes to wash the tiny foot and
eat its dirt, or to drink tea made from the washing
water. Others wanted their penises manipulated by the
feet. Superstition also had its place —there was a belief
in the curative powers o f the water in which tiny feet
were washed.
Lastly, footbinding was the soil in which sadism
could grow and go unchecked —in which simple cruelty
could transcend itself, without much effort, into
atrocity. These are some typical horror stories o f those
times:
A stepmother or aunt in binding the child’s foot
was usually much harsher than the natural mother
would have been. An old man was described who delighted in seeing his daughters weep as the binding was tightly applied.. . . In one household, everyone
had to bind. T h e main wife and concubines bound to
the smallest degree, once morning and evening, and
once before retiring. T h e husband and first wife
strictly carried out foot inspections and whipped those
guilty o f having let the binding become loose. T h e
sleeping shoes were so painfully small that the women
had to ask the master to rub them in order to bring
relief. Another rich man would flog his concubines
on their tiny feet, one after another, until the blood
flowed. 10
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. . . about 1 9 3 1 . . . bound-foot women unable to Bee
had been taken captive. The bandits, angered because
o f their captives’ weak way o f walking and inability to
keep in file, forced the women to remove the bindings
and socks and run about barefoot. They cried out in
pain and were unable to move on in spite o f beatings.
Each o f the bandits grabbed a woman and forced her
to dance about on a wide field covered with sharp
rocks. The harshest treatment was meted out to prostitutes. Nails were driven through their hands and feet; they cried aloud for several days before expiring.
One form o f torture was to tie-up a woman so that her
legs dangled in midair and place bricks around each
toe, increasing the weight until the toes straightened
out and eventually dropped off. 11
END OF F O O T B I N D I N G E V E N T
One asks the same questions again and again, over
a period o f years, in the course of a lifetime. The questions have to do with people and what they do —the how and the why o f it. How could the Germans have murdered 6, 000, 000 Jews, used their skins for lampshades, taken the gold out of their teeth? How could white
people have bought and sold black people, hanged
them and castrated them? How could “Americans”
have slaughtered the Indian nations, stolen the land,
spread famine and disease? How can the Indochina
genocide continue, day after day, year after year?
How is it possible? Why does it happen?
As a woman, one is forced to ask another series of
hard questions: Why everywhere the oppression of
women throughout recorded history? How could the
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Inquisitors torture and bum women as witches? How
could men idealize the bound feet o f crippled women?
How and why?
T h e bound foot existed for 1, 000 years. In what
terms, using what measure, could one calculate the
enormity o f the crime, the dimensions o f the transgression, the amount o f cruelty and pain inherent in that 1, 000-year herstory? In what terms, using what
vocabulary, could one penetrate to the meaning, to the
reality, o f that 1, 000-year herstory?
Here one race did not war with another to acquire
food, or land, or civil power; one nation did not fight
with another in the interest o f survival, real or imagined; one group o f people in a fever pitch o f hysteria did not destroy another. None o f the traditional explanations or justifications for brutality between or among peoples applies to this situation. On the contrary, here one sex mutilated (enslaved) the other in the interest o f the art o f sex, male-female harmony, role-definition, beauty.
Consider the magnitude o f the crime.
Millions o f women, over a period o f 1,000 years,
were brutally crippled, mutilated, in the name o f
erotica.
Millions o f human beings, over a period o f 1, 000
years, were brutally crippled, mutilated, in the name
o f beauty.
Millions o f men, over a period o f 1, 000 years,
reveled in love-making devoted to the worship o f the
bound foot.
Millions o f men, over a period o f 1, 000 years, worshiped and adored the bound foot.
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Woman Hating
Millions of mothers, over a period of 1, 000 years,
sake o f a secure marriage.
Millions of mothers, over a period of 1, 000 years,
brutally crippled and mutilated their daughters in the
name o f beauty.
But this thousand-year period is only the tip of
an awesome, fearful iceberg: an extreme and visible
expression of romantic attitudes, processes, and
values organically rooted in all cultures, then and
now. It demonstrates that man’s love for woman, his
sexual adoration of her, his human definition of her,
his delight and pleasure in her, require her negation:
physical crippling and psychological lobotomy. That is
the very nature of romantic love, which is the love based
on polar role definitions, manifest in herstory as well
as in fiction —he glories in her agony, he adores her
deformity, he annihilates her freedom, he will have her
as sex object, even if he must destroy the bones in her
feet to do it. Brutality, sadism, and oppression emerge
as the substantive core of the romantic ethos. That ethos
is the warp and woof of culture as we know it.
Women should be beautiful. All repositories of
cultural wisdom from King Solomon to King Hefner
agree: women should be beautiful. It is the reverence
for female beauty which informs the romantic ethos,
gives it its energy and justification. Beauty is transformed into that golden ideal, Beauty —rapturous and abstract. Women must be beautiful and Woman is
Beauty.
Notions o f beauty always incorporate the whole of a
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given societal structure, are crystallizations o f its values.
A society with a well-defined aristocracy will have aristocratic standards o f beauty. In Western “democracy”
notions o f beauty are “democratic” : even if a woman is
not born beautiful, she can make herself attractive.
T h e argument is not simply that some women are
not beautiful, therefore it is not fair to ju d ge women on
the basis o f physical beauty; or that men are not judged
on that basis, therefore women also should not be
judged on that basis; or that men should look for character in women; or that our standards o f beauty are too parochial in and o f themselves; or even that judgin g
women according to their conformity to a standard o f
beauty serves to make them into products, chattels,
differing from the farmer's favorite cow only in terms o f
literal form. The issue at stake is different, and crucial.
Standards o f beauty describe in precise terms the relationship that an individual will have to her own body.
They prescribe her mobility, spontaneity, posture,
gait, the uses to which she can put her body. They define
precisely the dimensions of her physical freedom. And, o f
course, the relationship between physical freedom and
psychological development, intellectual possibility, and
creative potential is an umbilical one.
In our culture, not one part o f a woman’s body is
left untouched, unaltered. No feature or extremity is
spared the art, or pain, o f improvement. Hair is dyed,
lacquered, straightened, permanented; eyebrows are
plucked, penciled, dyed; eyes are lined, mascaraed,
shadowed; lashes are curled, or false —from head to
toe, every feature o f a woman's face, every section o f
her body, is subject to modification, alteration. This al
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teration is an ongoing, repetitive process. It is vital to
the economy, the major substance of male-female role
differentiation, the most immediate physical and psychological reality of being a woman. From the age of 11 or 12 until she dies, a woman will spend a large part