292 Part IV: East Asian Civilization
for the larger group. A Confucian proverb encouraged mothers to oversee both
protracted struggles: “If you care for your son, care not that he suffers in his
studies. If you care for your daughter, care not that she suffers in her feet”
(Blake 1994). As boys suffered to join in the authoring of the world, girls suf-
fered to submit to it.
The custom of foot binding may have begun among dancers during the
Song dynasty. In one of the earliest references, eleventh-century writer Su Shi
(Su Shih) found a dancer’s bound feet objects of wonder and wanted to hold
them in his hand to get a better look. The foot was deformed to feed male
erotic fancy; it took years of “painful, bloody, and terrifying labor [to make]
the brute nature of her feet materialize into an object of beauty, mystery, and
discipline” (Blake 1994:688). A man longed to touch the “golden lotus” of his
lover; sexual play included kissing and nibbling on the curved toe; he might
wash her feet or sip wine from her three-inch slipper. He rhapsodized over
them as “bamboo shoots in winter.”
The girl’s ordeal finished about the time she reached puberty and thus
was a prelude to sexual maturation. It was thought to enhance fertility by
concentrating blood in the upper legs and pelvis, working like pruning of trees
to concentrate the sap for production of fruit. Soon she was ready for mar-
riage in a family of good standing, and it was this essential goal of making aThis photograph from 1874 depicts a
servant in a rich house, whose tiny
“golden lotuses” may be seen beneath
her robe. A three-inch foot was achieved
only with years of painful binding of the
feet of young girls, which resulted in
breaking the arch and the loss of several
toes. Beautiful handmade slippers were
worn by women who could barely walk.
The custom began among elite women
who were not expected to work but
gradually spread to the servant and
peasant classes.