Beautiful and Bound

People know the practice of footbinding in Chinese history through the lens of the anti-footbinding discourse that began in the late 19th century. Since modern elites in China and western missionaries problematized the practice for weakening women’s bodies and the Chinese national body, footbinding lost its history and became a representation of oppressive and exotic antiquity. This presentation attempts to introduce the overshadowed history of footbinding, by looking at its various methods and analyzing the meanings of individual practices. It will argue that footbinding, despite its notoriety, actually served to empower women within Chinese society