Foot Binding Remains One of Essay

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Foot binding may have been one of the most powerful reminders of misogyny, as the practice placed irreversible physical limitations on females and restricted their role in society. As if other biological markers like breast size or genitalia were insufficient to denote gender, contorted feet serves a disturbing reminder of how females have been thoroughly subjugated. The practice of binding, remind Steele and Major, meant that women could barely walk. Their movements can of course be controlled and scrutinized; their freedoms overtly limited. That women still wanted their feet bound shows a lack of ability to conceive of a world any different than the one in which they lived. Neo-Confucian values permeated Chinese society and so few women would have been so bold as to question the validity of female inferiority or the morality of foot binding.

Foot binding was "never mandated by any Chinese government" (p. 182). The practice was purely social and cultural. Female inferiority was considered so much a fact that no laws were needed to mandate the practice. Only after encounters with outsiders did the Chinese capitalize on foot binding as a means to distinguish their culture from others. Foot binding became not only an issue of gender and social class but of ethnicity as well.

Xenophobia and fear of cultural annihilation led the Chinese to cling to the practice of foot binding as a means to preserve their unique culture, suggest Steele and Major. The practice became one way to physically "distinguish between Chinese and non-Chinese," during threatening times (p. 179). Foot binding was therefore a type of political resistance against foreign invaders, especially during the Manchu Dynasty. As it literally marked Chinese women, the practice of mutilating their feet also denoted control over the Chinese gene pool.

Foot binding was far more than a fashion trend during the height of its popularity, Steele and Major suggest in "China Chic." The practice marked the differences in status between males and females, wealthy and poor, Chinese and outsider.

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Foot binding was also much more than a symbol of female inferiority even though it did reflect sexism. Scholars studying foot binding should place the practice within historical and sociological contexts to help understand how its relative chicness reflected changes taking place in Chinese history.

For example, when foot binding reached its peak the practice was at its most salient in preserving Neo-Confucian values, enforcing strict codes of gender behavior for women, and distinguishing between various social classes in Chinese society. Moreover, foot binding was most important when China contended with foreign invasions. In short, foot binding was used during conservative times in China. Globalization, industrialization, modernization, and increased openness to non-Chinese cultures have all brought about significant shifts in the Chinese perception of foot binding. Foot binding became regarded as "feudal" and "barbaric," a hindrance to Chinese civilization and its flowering (p. 182).

Thus, the authors suggest that the elimination of foot binding reflected the modernization of Chinese culture, its desire for social as well as economic progress and to be viewed favorably by outsiders in an age of globalization. Just as foot binding once reflected the insularity and xenophobia of Chinese culture, the backlash against foot binding today indicates social progress and change. Although sexism prevails, it also does in Western societies. Foot binding should, according to Steele and Major, be examined as one facet of Chinese history, as a means to track….....

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