While the Manchus legislated against binding, some of their leaders privately conceded the superior merits of the tiny foot. The renowned statesman Li Hung-chang, for example, once covered his mother’s feet with his sleeves in audience with a subordinate because he was ashamed of their largeness. To the critic who commented on the loss of natural beauty caused by footbinding, the apologist brought out the fact that hair-dos, eyebrow plucking, and confining of the breasts were all violations of the natural order. “Permanents and plucked eyebrows were imported from abroad. If China were now the greatest power in the world, wouldn’t every foreign women today be studying footbinding?”
The rationale behind the practice was woman’s desire to please. By changing the shape of the foot, it was argued, an interest in the bizarre was added with which to attract men. The binding served as a sort of matchmaker intended to increase male desire, and the flesh which it concealed remained a mystery. The woman of imperial China was taught to esteem chastity, and the golden lotus was regarded as an exclusive possession of her husband. Even close relatives avoided the woman’s tiny feet; their being rubbed by a man was regarded as an act of ultimate intimacy. If one other than her husband rubbed the foot or stole her shoes, the properly-reared woman felt extreme embarrassment and shame.
Not allowing binding in childhood was advocated as the humane way to eliminate it. The coercion of grown women led to such unhappiness and bitterness that the means in effect defeated the end. Moderation was proposed so that binding would die out naturally and without causing undue social upset. Women were willing to endure all sorts of physical suffering to be considered beautiful, and the hypothesis was set forth that they and not men were responsible for the origination of binding.
Later Ruler Li did not have his concubine start this, but she did it herself and endured the pain to excite the sovereign’s interest. How could she have known that this would influence countless numbers of posterity? . . . The one to blame is not Ruler Li but the concubine. He probably only said that he approved in order to compensate her for the suffering she had gone through in order to please him. Even the concubine was guiltless, for she did not purposely encourage others to imitate her.
The writer concluded that footbinding had nothing to do with imperialism, feudalism, private and public possession, or economic dependence, but was a manifestation of the difference in man and woman. Since it was instinctive for women to use adornments to win the male, binding served this instinct. By destroying a part of their bodies women caused men to love this part even more, to the point of madness. The way it rose and declined was predictable: “The poor copy the rich; the rich copy the courtesans.” With both courtesans and the well-to-do favoring natural feet, it was only a matter of time before the masses would follow their lead; the end of footbinding was inevitable. “Why disturb the peace and interfere? If we say that binding must be eradicated because foreigners ridicule us for doing this, it must be admitted that they ridicule us for other reasons as well.”
The tendency of contemporaries to divorce tiny-footed wives was deplored as a barbaric act, out of keeping with a civilized and compassionate society. For how could a person cruel enough to cast aside his wife because she was old fashioned talk about improving the nation and the general welfare?
I have heard of highly educated, modern young girls who tempt their lovers to divorce bound-foot wives so that they can take their places. This conduct is both inconsiderate to their own species and thoughtless. Because one should realize that the man who is irresponsible to his first wife will act the same way towards his second one. A girl cannot always be fashionable; how can she fail to think of the day when she is out of fashion and must give way to a more modern successor?
The sexual attraction of footbinding was noted by the occasional Western observer. In 1928, a German scholar named H. Laderland wrote that the fundamental meaning of this injurious practice was the arousing of male lust. With the feet bound to an excessively small degree, he went on to say, the section from knee to ankle became stunted in growth; as a consequence, when walking weight had to be placed on the thighs and hips. And as the woman walked, the outer folds of the vagina rubbed against one another. Laderland stated that a footbound woman could press her hips together forcefully during sexual intercourse and therefore had greater sexual desire than the natural-footed. His thesis supported the assertion that the tiny-footed woman was eagerly sought after as a bedmate because she gave the same sensation to the male as a virgin (due to the pressure which she was able to bring to bear upon the male member).The French doctor Matignon, writing on the subject about thirty years before Laderland, dismissed as groundless the hypothesis that deformity of the foot led to further development of the thighs and the Mount of Venus. But the fact which particularly interested him was the way in which the foot sensually excited the Chinese male. He had seen many pornographic drawings in which the male was voluptuously manipulating the woman’s foot, and he felt that the foot in the hands of a Celestial affected him as much as the caressing of young and firm breasts did the European. The Chinese gentlemen whom he questioned were unanimous in their praise: “Oh! The small foot! You Europeans can’t understand how exquisite, agreeable, and exciting it is!” Matignon mentioned that during his stay in China (about 1895), he often heard about Chinese Christians who had admitted during confession to having thought evilly about a woman’s foot. The caressing of the foot by the woman to stimulate the male was also mentioned in a modern Chinese short story, which described how a man, who was forced into an arranged marriage by his parents, was seduced by his spouse when she took his feet, held them close to her warm breasts, and started to rub them with her hands. This gave him a feeling of such tenderness and warmth that his repugnance toward his arranged bride was overcome and he had relations with her for the first time. Tanizaki’s short novel about sexual passion, The Key, describes in some detail attractions felt by a Japanese man who desired ardently to lavish caresses upon his wife’s feet.
An American lotus lover who had lived in China for twenty years always elected tiny-footed prostitutes for his pleasure. As the custom dwindled and approached extinction in the thirties, the American would sigh and complain to his Chinese friends that it was inconceivable for vast China to be utterly devoid of tiny-foot areas. Upon being queried, he confided that footbinding’s wondrousness was “in the wondrous place,” leading the commentator to conclude:
It may have been a young monk turned profligate who left behind a treatise on how to manipulate the tiny foot as an aid to love-making. The story was told of a southern monk named Ti Ming, who lived in a temple along the lower reaches of the Pearl River. He was attractive in appearance and a persuasive speaker. A youth with whom Ti Ming had had homosexual relations once told him about the pleasures to be derived from tiny-footed maidens, saying that they were kinder to men than the Buddha. Ti Ming invited a young lady to the temple and, as the story goes, grasped her feet, feeling that their warmth and softness were unforgettable and unique. The fragrant foot aroma fascinated him, and he felt that she was an immortal to whom he could entrust his life. The woman proved adept in love-making and, while he put her tiny toes in his mouth, she placed his jadestick in hers. They did not arise until noon of the following day. Ti Ming built special rooms within the temple and had them elegantly furnished. He consumed aphrodysiacs and had relations with seven or eight women a night. Rubbing the tiny foot helped him forget fatigue and prepared him for the next encounter. Ti Ming claimed that the tiny foot was the best aphrodysiac of all. He made love at all hours and seasons, and in spare time recorded his experiences. He was finally poisoned by a gentleman who resented his having seduced several concubines. By this time, Ti Ming had had relations with over a hundred women, with as many as ten in bed at once, wearing different colored shoes. Ti Ming’s favorite before he died was a tiny-footed woman named Hsu. She attended him in his dying days and inherited his writings. His parting words were that the visual attraction of tiny feet was minor when compared with its emotional appeal. Miss Hsu instructed ten prostitutes in the sexual advantages of the tiny foot, using Ti Ming’s writing as a manual to be understood thoroughly and memorized. The course was completed in three months, after which brothel training commenced. A few years later, the trainees were all intimate favorites of the influential and wealthy.