Bound to Please

CMNS 428: Seduction & Fashion

BOUND toPLEASE Social Significance and Seduction of Tight-Lacing & Foot-Binding

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Nothing can permanently please, which does not contain in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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The Fashionable yet Deformed Female Bodies in History n the book Fashion and Eroticism, Valerie Steele asks the important question: Why do we look the way we do at any given point in time? She writes, “[our] appearance is a form of self-presentation, a look that has meaning, involving a compromise between who we are and who we would like to be, our personal self image and a ‘self-for-others’ ... No matter how apparently ‘natural’ or ‘functional,’ clothing is always a social attribute” (Steele 46). Surely, it is usually not too difficult for people to date photographs just by looking at how people, as a group, dressed in the pictures: size of the shoulder pads (if any), collar style, dye colour, fabric, hemline, folding, cutting, etc. – all can provide distinctive fashion features and details that are specific to a given period. Roach and Eicher describe the collective behaviour of fashion as a special kind of social movement:

According to Blumer the fashion movement has a unique character: The participants are not recruited through agitation or proselyting. No esprit de corps or morale is built up among them. Nor does the

fashion movement have, or require, an ideology. Further, since it does not have a leadership imparting conscious direction to the movement, it does not build up a set of tactics. People participate in the fashion movement voluntarily and in response to the interesting and powerful kind of control which fashion imposes on them. (Roach and Eicher 282-283) In short, despite the existence of notions like ‘slave of fashion’ and ‘fashion victim,’ people do not simply conform to a particular fashion style of the time. Fashion style cannot be forced upon people; fashion can only seduce people, through the negotiations of values, into believing that it is a social norm, that it is one of the few appropriate ways of presenting oneself. As Steele observes, “[our] appearance is neither the ‘spontananeous emanation from inner character’ nor ‘the inevitable consequence of what society requires’” (46). While people can present their ‘unique identities’ through fashion, ultimately they are still required to choose within an existing code in order to be perceived as a valid member of a given social group or class.

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We believe it is exactly this social pressure that makes even the cruellest fashion style adopted and perceived as acceptable, and even desirable, within the social context.

Restrictive clothing and the practice of restructuring to the extent of deforming the body through clothing exemplify these powerful social dynamics. While it is our interest in this essay to investigate the fascination behind two particular fashion styles that involves body deformation, particularly on the female body – foot-binding and tight-lacing (or corset-wearing) – it is important to note that the craze for the ‘unnatural’ and the ‘deformed’ bodies has an origin that could be traced back to the ancient times. More than two thousand years BC, ancient inhabitants of Minoan Crete had adopted the practice of “extreme waist constriction in both sexes – produced not by corsets but by tight metal belts” (Flugel 43) (Figure 1.1). Bearing in mind that fashion styles often reoccur or metamorphose into different forms after their initial life-span, we attempt to look at tight-lacing and footbinding as social practices based on their social contexts, while examining their origins, social values attached, and what have become of them after their initial ‘extinction’ in the

Figure 1.1. Minoan Snake Goddess wears the fashionable costume for high-born ladies of Crete 14th century B.C.

contemporary society. The premise of this paper is that neither foot-binding nor tight-lacing were universal practices; their social values and meanings change with time and place.

Since there is no single cause that leads to these fashionable practices, it is important for us to adopt the women’s perspectives in order to understand the acceptance and popularity of these fashionable yet cruel practices.

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Origins of the Lotus Feet And the Corseted Waist oot-binding was a

practiced on women for approximately one thousand years in China, beginning in the 10th century and ending in the early 20th century.

In Chinese footbinding, young girls, usually at the age of five to eight years old, started to wrap their feet in tight bandages so that their feet could not grow normally but become highly deformed to only three to six inches. Foot-binding was a lifelong practice for those who would like their feet remain small. While there are multiple accounts attempting to explain the origin of the lotus feet, a strong textual evidence for the custom indicates that this practice began slowly in the tenth century among entertainers and professional dancers. The practice was then spread when respectable housewives chose to adopt the style as a fashionable statement.

Poetries and lyrics that were written by Chinese intellectuals often lauded the feminine beauty and sensuality of the entertainers who “ties her feet” and “[walks] every step a lotus,” using custom

the term “three-inch golden lotus” when they made reference to women’s attractive bound feet (Ko 35). In short, foot-binding was originated from a dance culture and was translated, and interpreted by poetic images of the feet and footwear, into a fashion and sensory experience accessible to upper-class women. However, peasant daughters from the seventeenth centuries onwards emulated this elite upper-class practice, while still participating in both the biological production and the economic production in their lifetime (Blake 430).

Contrasting foot-binding, the introduction of corsetry in the West has more to do with support and protection than aesthetics and style. The use of corsetry can be traced back to the Middle Ages in which male soldiers wore tight-fitting corsets so that their outer armour could fit closer to the body and give better protection for them in the battlefield (Broby-Johansen 123). Before the beginning of the nineteenth century, corsets were worn by males and females, children and adults of the middle and aristocratic classes, as outer garments in which “[their] display was part of social etiquette” (Summers 63). However, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, corsets

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had “inexplicably become an undergarment” and “[they were] both compulsory and gender-specific” (Summers 63). While in contemporary society we have Barbie dolls to educate teenage girls in consumption and fashion, dolls in the nineteenth century also demonstrated the importance of corsetwearing as a “body code” (Summers 71) (Figure 2.1-2.2). Girls laced their corsets as tightly as possible and competed among one another for the smallest waist (Steele 177178). From prisons to asylums, ballrooms to chateaus, female inmates, middle-class women, courtesans, and even the Queen alike embraced corset-wearing as a cultural and social norm. Despite the fact that corsetry was mainly designed for European climate, the 1850 The Domestic Economist writes that many British women in India remain loyal to the garment, since “[clothing] was, for hale and many working- and middle-class women throughout the empire, considered a barometer of morality” (Summers 19). It is important to note that this association of morality and clothing can in fact be applied to foot-binding as well, and that the notion of morality actually plays a vital role in creating both pressure and class incentive for females to accept these fashion styles as ‘natural.’

Figure 2.1-2.2. Parisian Doll in original corsetry c. 1865. The corset laces at both back and front, is corded and shaped to tightly fit the body of the doll.

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Appeal & Sexualization of the Garments: Psychology behind the Clothed and the Unclothed Body o show, or not to show:

that is the question. When we talked about garments that are heightened with sexual overtones, it is hard for us to not to imagine what the person would look like without them.

Indeed, the undressing of the garment, or the imagination of the undressing, often contributes to the seductive power of the garment. Steele writes, “[as] an item of lingerie, [corset] was associated with intimate moments and the act of making love” (174). Quoting the story “La Corbeille de Mariage” from the periodical La Vie Parisienne, Steele presents a case in which the erotic lingerie and the unlacing of the corset contribute to the marital satisfaction of the protagonists in the story: Trembling, happy, your husband unlaces you with an uncertain and clumsy hand, and you laugh, mischievously, joyously ascertaining that his confusion is caused by the sight of your beauty. You are happy to feel your omnipotence: you take care not to

help him untie the knots or find his way among the lace-holes; on the contrary, you take pleasure in prolonging his tentative gropings, which tickle you deliciously. (qtd. in Steele 175) However, not all body parts are appealing to look at when the sexual garment has been removed, especially when the body has been deformed. This is exactly the case for the lotus feet. Chinese women wore sleeping shoes when they slept with their husband, since the modified feet were not pleasant to see when they were naked. Thus the fantasy of the feet was translated into footwear with beautiful design.

Lotus feet help to display the female body in the most flattery way which could act as poetic images in aesthetic and historical imagination. Enhancing women’s ability to manipulate the perceptions of others, lotus shoes work in much the same way as any fashion items. The notion of ‘shoes as fashion items’ has an important implication for the foot-binding practice, since, ultimately, footbinding is more about shoes than the body.

In contemporary society we tend to focus more on the deformation and pain of the

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feet, but in traditional China, foot-binding was a tradition that had been passed down from generation to generation, and shoes, as cultural artifacts, lay at the heart of foot-binding’s attraction and meaning. The dynamics between the spectacle of the shoes and the concealed flesh generated so much curiosity and eroticism for foot-binding to men.

A legendary story of the first foot-binder in Chinese history was about Yao Niang who danced on the golden lotus and looked as if she was whirling on a cloud (Figure 3.1).

Floating on clouds or water became a cliché metaphor for describing the walk of those who had bound feet in Chinese literature.

In Chinese paintings, goddesses, female immortals, and girls with special talents are all shown in such flying movement as a highly aestheticized expression of idealized femininity. The airy weightlessness embodied in the darting and floating movements of the lotus feet that are both there and not there, which “is the emblem of a femininity purged of earthly dross and carnality” (Wang 10).

The poetic images and idealized femininity in literature were acted out by the foot-binding practices of average women. A pair of bound

Figure 3.1. Li Yu (937-978), the second emperor of the Southern Tang Dynasty, compelled his favourite concubine, Yao Niang, to bind her feet and dance on the image of a large lotus flower.

feet has become the standard of beauty and the passport to marry into a wealthy family.

Such beauty is created, however, through sheer violence. Violence renders the feet sacred. When naked, they become taboo for men. Women guard them as if they were guarding their lives. They hide the decay and broken bones under the adornment of the shoes, which are never taken off, not even in bed. The husbands must not remove the bindings to look at their wives’ bare feet.

They must remain satisfied with the external appearance and enjoy the outward impression (Wang 24). If the bare feet were seen, the aesthetic feeling would be destroyed forever.

Indeed, Chinese pornographic paintings and prints freely presented men’s and women’s naked bodies and genitals, yet they never crossed the boundary of baring a woman’s naked lotus feet. The removal of the shoes’ mask is the end of eroticism and seduction (Figure 3.2).

Figure 3.2. South Village, print from Erotic Art of China. In most of the erotic paintings of late imperial China, naked lotuc feet remain clothed. Also, the only obvious bodily feature that marks the difference between naked men and women is their feet (see Part 6).

Since bound feet were masked by shoes, shoemaking became an important art for women to cultivate their body and mind, as well as showing their talent as means to express their hopes and wishes. Daughters usually received their first gift of lotus shoes from

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their mother on the Daughter’s Binding Day. From then on, the mother would teach her all the necessary skills to be a good woman, beginning with sewing and shoe-making.

Thus, shoes have special emotional meanings to a woman beyond the material aspect: the first binding shoes received from the mother were a mother’s labor of love (Ko 69). Girls and adult women also made shoes as gifts for distant friends and nearby relatives. Literate daughters sewed letters and poetry on their elegant shoes to speak through the shoes they made (Figure 3.3). As products of a woman’s hands, a pair of lotus shoes is an extension of her body and her medium of communication.

Women also created patterns and style for their shoes that indicated their talent in fashion design and as expression of their good wishes (Figure 3.4). The bride-to-be would also lavish attention in her own wedding shoes. Since she was not supposed to loosen her foot-binders even for her husband, a pair of soft, sock-like sleeping shoes would serve as the focus of his amorous attention. The bride’s sleeping shoes were designed to appeal to the sensory experience of touch besides the visual (Ko 70).

Figure 3.3. Tiny votive shoes with embroidered prayer. The prayer on the right shaft reads: “Who on heaven,/ Can I lean on?/May you go in peace,/ Across the waves.” On the left shaft: “May god bless you,/ ‘Til we meet again,/ Meet again,/ Meet again.” Length 5.7cm.

Late 19th century.

Figure 3.4. Shoes in dark blue satin with embroidered motif of a successful examination candidate returning home on horseback, expressing a bride’s desire for her husband’s career success. 20th century.

A woman’s face may wrinkle, but her feet that have overcome pain in the creation would never fade or age; instead, they become immortal.

Feet are separated from the body and are served as a fixed object of fetishism. Tiny feet were the most important object of beauty and eroticism in China. Women of different classes spared neither expense nor time in washing, trimming, massaging, binding and unbinding their feet, or embroidering shoes. Some went to such an extreme that caring for their feet became an obsession, which could turn to be a compulsive act. Yan Xian told a story of a woman of leisure pampering her feet: She sat near the sunny window, unbinding the bandages. Soon her white feet were all exposed. She looked at them from different directions, then massaged every inch from toe to heel, as if she were playing with some toys. After a while, she rebound her feet very slowly and carefully, then put on a pair of red shoes. Gently, she stepped onto the floor, staring at her feet with full concentration and admiration. Half an hour later, the woman unbound her wrapping for the second time. She admired and played with her feet like this ten times a day.

(Wang 65)

This fetishism of tiny feet is contributed by the benefits and power that bound feet can bring to a woman in the male dominant society, even though a woman’s morality can also be judged through the size and shape of their bound feet, which might contribute to helping her find a good family to marry. What is more is that the naming of the lotus feet, the buying and selling of tiny-footed women as commodities, the collecting of shoes, and the accumulating of knowledge of foot-binding have became a domain of entertainment for upper-class men (Wang 111). The Three-Inch Golden Lotus describes women competing ferociously during foot contests that were organized by men to show off their knowledge of bound feet and their ability to name, invent games, and write poems on the lotus feet. Tong Ren’an, the main character of the novel, created a phallic woman, Fragrance Lotus, through her feet. Once she was made the champion, she was automatically the acknowledged-head of the inner chambers and was later powerful enough to take over the entire household and Tong Ren’an’s business, including his body (Wang 116).

This examplifies that foot-binding not only provides women with an opportunity to cultivate their beauty but also allows them

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to exercise some control of their destiny regardless of their social class or physical appearance.

The appeal of the corset is a lot different from that of the lotus feet. Even though both tight-lacing and foot-binding cause actual deformation of the body in various degrees, the corseted figure maintains the relatively normal human proportion that is essential for the ‘perfect beauty’ and, therefore, is still pleasant to look at when naked. As mentioned before, corsetry has been transformed back and forth as outer and inner garment. As the use of the garment become more genderspecific, corsetry was made as ‘feminine’ and decorative as possible, contrasting the ‘simple,’ ‘clean’, and ‘authoritative’ male clothing (Craik 121). The nineteenth century was considered the rising age of advertisement. Looking at posters and newspaper ads at the time, it is important to note that this visual, promotional medium has in fact contributed greatly to the growing popularity and fascination of corsetry. Illustrations are often an important component of corset advertisements. Steele observes, “[prior] to the mid-1880s, most advertisements did not portray the corseted

female figure, but rather only an illustration of the corset itself, sometimes accompanied by a picture of a clothed female figure;” but at the turn of the century, corset advertisements started to include erotic and highly sexualized images of corseted females, to the extent that certain corset advertisements at the time were censored due to the provocative images used in the ads (203) (Figure 3.5-3.6). Mulvery argues that these “sexualized representations of women were, and still are, often publicly positioned to elicit, allow, and encourage male voyeurism” (qtd. in Summers 183). This is exemplified in the “The Secret Out At Last” corset card of the mid-1880s, in which “a women was peeking through a key-hole into Mrs. Brown’s bedroom” when Mrs. Brown was only wearing her corset (Steele 203). The 1901 advertisement of “The Specialitè Corset is a Dream of Comfort” also shows an erotic representation of women that is highly charged with sexual connotation (Figure 3.7).

Summers argues that Victorian corset advertisements, in fact, “functioned as a disguised (or at least oblique) but culturally sanctioned avenue of examining areas of the female body that were generally withheld from view” (205). She observes that prior to the early

Figure 3.5. (left) This PD corset illustration of the haughty, sexually provocative Gibson Girl lookalike was published in Woman’s Sphere, 1904.

Figure 3.6. (right) Late Victorian erotic postcard. Note the positions of the arms.

Raising the arm above and behind the head levers the breasts into a upright position favoured by photographers and advertisers alike.

Figure 3.7. (bottom) ‘The “Specialite Corset” is a dream of comfort’ runs around the engraving. The erotic of the Dickins and Jones advertisements is now associated with dreams and sex (c. 1900).

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nineteenth century “[women] were rarely depicted in the press (at least outside of the pornographic canon) as naked or semi-naked objects” (197), and that corset advertisements have taken “the most intimate signs of feminine domesticity and sexuality” from the private sphere and “‘delivered them into the public realm’ for general consumption” (qtd. in Summers 200). This is perhaps the reason why the display of corsetry is still consider erotic to this date, since it is the display of a female privacy – the display of an intimate item that should only be seen by the wearer and the lover.

What makes the display of this garment more seductive than displaying the naked body alone? Craik points out that “[by] not showing the body, the image [of the garment] further festishized the body and its sexuality” (121). Indeed, the notion of ‘sexual curiosity’ aroused by lingerie has been a widely discussed subject especially among psychoanalytic scholars. In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Freud suggests that “clothing is erotic because it arouses curiosity about the ‘hidden parts’ (the genitals), and by a process of sublimation, curiosity about ‘the body as a whole’” (qtd. in Steele 42).

Figure 3.8. The New Temptation of St. Anthony. Caricature from Le Rire (1895), Paris, reproduced in Friedrich Wendel, Weib und Mode.

Steele further writes, “[by] concealing the body, clothes excite sexual curiosity and create in the viewer the desire to remove them, “to reach the source of erotic attraction” (42). This argument is exemplified humourously in The New Temptation of Saint Anthony, as the saint was portrayed as “immune to the charms of a totally naked woman, but sexually excited when she redonned her underwear” (Steele 42) (Figure 3.8).

(133). However, these observations could not solely explain the sexualization of the childsize waists, since some Victorian women were so eager to ‘construct’ a tiny waist of their own that they would have their bottom rib physically removed (Figure 3.9). Summers writes:

Figure 3.9. The corseted waist can be achieved by having the bottom rib removed.

Since the Middle Ages, one main reason for corset-wearing is to draw attention to the breasts, a practice that is still welcomed to date.

By constraining the size of the waist, corsets create a strong contrast on the body figure where both the breasts and the hips of the wearer appear larger. Horn also observes that, through tight-lacing, “the breathing activity [of the wearer] is displaced upward, thereby rendering the breasts even more prominent”

During [the eighteenth-century period], children’s corsetry was [fundamentally intended] to encourage good posture and strength… The ‘fashionable’ waist was at that time a negligible sexual asset. [It was not until 1830 when the waistline settled at its more or less natural location that] it became imbued with a sexual valency it had not previously experienced. (Summers 79) In the 1889 Beauty and How to Keep It, “A Professional Beauty” argued that, “A pretty figure is really a much more valuable gift than a pretty face, as it lasts so much longer.

With a good figure no woman can possibly be plain” (qtd. in Steele 120). The objectification of the child-size waist has, thus created a new fascination among both males and females, and in turn inspired Victorian women to mimic such ideal feminine figures through corsetry.

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When the sexual division of labour in the home melts away, so will beauty problem.

Rhona Mahony, Kidding Ourselves (1995)

Part 4:

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Marriage, the Disciplined Body, and the Duty to Please ne fundamental

that is universal to all restrictive clothing is ‘tightness’.

Flugel writes, “[tightness], by its firm pressure on the body, may symbolize a firm control over ourselves, [as] the opposite of that ‘looseness’ or ‘dissoluteness’ that we associate with immorality” (76). Indeed, notions of ‘discipline’ and especially ‘self-discipline’ in fashion have been frequently discussed among historians and scholars: feature

The abandonment of breeching at the time when corsetry was adopted almost solely for female children and women was not coincidental. It reveals that female rather than male gender identity was perceived as threateningly fluid and that femininity (unlike masculinity) required the implementation of boundaries to effectively define and contain it. (Summers 67).

Interestingly, this Western interpretation of fashion can also be applied to the practice of foot-binding in the East. A daughter’s first binding experience usually takes place in the depths of her quarters under the directions of her mother, sometimes assisted by grandmothers and aunts. Foot-binding entailed intense and protracted physical pain that tamed, purified and disciplined the daughter’s mind and body. The continuation of this tradition was made possible only by the fact that all acts of the mother were to be considered caring at the time (Blake 434). A truly loving mother must teach her daughters how to endure pain physically, emotionally, and mentally. Such ‘love’ was certainly mixed with unspeakable pain and violence, yet was presented through the knowledge and skills passed down from mothers to daughters during the initial months and years of binding (Wang 6). In a sense, foot-binding is a physical practice and training that teaches daughters about proper behaviors and morality, as well as the way to succeed in a patriarchal environment. Foot-binding also prepares daughters for her sexuality, marriage, reproduction and motherhood.

In short, once being taught the practice of foot-binding, Chinese girls were expected to

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endure the pain endlessly like heroic warriors until the day they die.

The Chinese often say that “beating is caring, scolding is loving” when they beat their children. The conundrum of a mother’s care, in which her care has the ability to nurture yet simultaneously causing intense pain to the daughter, is contained in a single word tung which refers to hurting and caring, or a conflation of both, in the same act. In the ordeal of foot-binding, the exchange of tung between mother and daughter was highly reflexive. In the novel The Three-Inch Golden Lotus, Feng Jicai uses the word tung to describe the physical pain Fragrance Lotus felt when her grandmother began binding her feet. Later in the same paragraph, he uses tung to refer to the conflation of care with pain that Xianglian began to perceive behind her grandmother’s grim countenance (Blake 435).

While there are also frequent records of mothers helping daughters putting on their first tight corsets, the association of pain, discipline, and maternal care does not usually apply to corsetry, even though there were incidences when baby girls’ waists were

tied with a belt after birth to permanently alter them into the ideal female form (Bolin 83). Still, social pressure and expectations of corset-wearing are not usually applied by the immediate family but society in general, since the West is less of a family-orientated but an individual-based civilization. Moralist, a correspondent of a publication in the nineteenth century, writes, “[the] ‘discipline of the corset’ implied that ‘a valuable lesson of self-abnegation has been taught; that patience and endurance of pain and inconvenience for the sake of others has been inculcated; that the crude spirit has been ... tamed’” (qtd. in Steele 182). In this light, with the ‘training’ of corsetry, Victorian girls are expected to be submissive, instead of being “strong-minded [women]” in his terms. While Spooner argues that the corset is a garment that “[tropes] on a form of physical imprisonment and bodily torture that our enlightened age no longer inflicts on women” (16), we would add to it that it is also a form of psychological imprisonment for women, for it is not only the body, but also their independence of mind that is being restricted, or expected to be restricted, by the use of the garment.

The critique of female appearing as sex object is never new. Summers writes: Corsetry was ... instituted [like] foot-binding to regulate and sculpt the female body into a shape that was widely admired by men. Rituals of female mutilation, whether involving the foot [or] the waist were (and are) instituted and perpetuated to appease male fantasies of power, ownership, and sexual desire. (Summers 195) However, Harms considers “[the] display of physical attributes through the use of clothing” a “positive and natural feminine manoeuvre,” since females are “by custom restricted to the less direct approaches in heterosexual relationships” (qtd. in Horn 6). Indeed, exhibitionism of feminine beauty is almost considered as mandatory practices for women in the nineteenth century. John Robert Powers wrote in 1960 that “[it] is a woman’s birthright to be attractive and charming. In a sense, it is a duty as well” (qtd. in Beckingham 109).

While many scholars and even feminists answer outright the question “who are women trying to please?” with a single word “men,” it is not just any men they please. In the 1987 publication Woman as Chameleon, Melissa Sadoff wrote,

“[a] real woman would want to dress, not for herself, not for other women, not for the sake of fashion, but for her husband” (qtd. in Beckingham 110). While fashions could be an incitement to sin, priests were advised to adopt a relatively tolerant attitude toward the women who wore these styles, if only they were dressing up to please their husbands, or to win husbands (Steele 133). This association of female beauty, and fashion, to marriage, can be demonstrated by the many corset advertisements in the period where cupid imagery was included (Figure 4.1). Steele explains: From a practical point of view, to be as beautiful as possible was important for the Victorian woman, because to a considerable extent it was through her appearance that she won “admiration and affection” ... Throughout much of the nineteenth century, there were few pleasant alternatives to marriage, since the number of reasonably lucrative professions open to women was limited ...

In a sense, woman’s profession was to be beautiful, to please, and to marry. (Steele 105)

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While this is an observation of Victorian women, it is interesting to see that Chinese foot-binding was also embedded with similar values about marriage.

Figure 4.1. Warner’s corset advertisement featuring the double cupids in Harper’s Bazaar, 1881.

Part 5:

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Sexuality and Morality: The Paradox of Representations

volutions in beauty culture

often provide new ways for people to understand and interpret social and gender roles of women, particularly motherhood.

Steele writes:

In the nineteenth century, women were widely regarded as both ‘the ornamental sex’ and the morally superior sex. They were supposedly drawn ‘naturally’ toward both the beautiful and the good. This idealization [of woman] was often associated with the glorification of domesticity and sexual purity. But it was also frequently recognized that female beauty and sexuality were closely related. (Steele 107)

The arbitrary linkage drawn between female beauty and morality demonstrates exactly the paradox of female clothing. Corsetry acted as a “sexualizing device” by emphasizing the

sexual features of the female body; but corsetwearing was considered moral practice since it was “a necessity if a woman was to be decently dressed” (Steele 161). Steele further adds that, “[both] the symbolism of the corset and the ideal of femininity were ambiguous, embracing at the same time the erotic and the respectable” (161), while women were “caught between the contradictory demands to be both physically desirable and morally proper” (89).

This paradox of morality and sexuality can also be found within marriage. For young Victorian women, wearing their first tight corsets was a legitimate symbol of being a “grown-up woman, with a sexual role to play within marriage” (Steele 176). However, while sexuality within marriage was considered acceptable and often desirable, the subject of pregnancy remained a taboo in Victorian society. Contrasting the Chinese view that pregnancy means good fortune, pregnant bodies in the West were “considered by polite society to be somewhat repugnant and best kept from view” (Summers 37), even though “pregnancy can be interpreted as the most significant indicator of obedience to biologically determined female gender roles” (Summer 42), which is consistent with the

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reproductive features of the female bodies that corsets celebrated. Summers explains: Pregnancy taboos were implemented and obeyed for several reasons. They operated primarily to ensure that an image of womanly innocence was maintained despite evidence of sexual experience. They were essential too in perpetuating the illusion (and male fantasy) of the continued ‘virginality’ and ‘innocence’ of married women despite the somatic betrayal that revealed they had indulged in, and possibly enjoyed, sexual intercourse. (Summers 39) This perhaps explains why women in the nineteenth century continued to tighten their lace even when they were pregnant, since corsets provided the perfect disguise which women could use to hide their ‘swollen’ abdomens – a figure that is opposite to what was considered attractive at the time – even risking miscarriage (Summers 49). The contradictory representations of corsetry – feminine beauty (the reproductive figure), sexuality (sexual experience in marriage), and morality (sexual innocence) – remains a problematic mystery till this date.

In contrast, the practice of foot-binding did enhance a daughter’s marriage prospects.

The desirability of a bride with bound feet is not the same as that of a sexually attractive wife, because an openly seductive bride was considered to be threatening to family harmony.

Also, in any case, sons did not have any right over the choice of a spouse. Marriage was a family-to-family affair that was decided by parents who were supposed to know this matter better and demonstrated their authority on their children. Future in-laws desired brides with bound feet because it signaled modesty and morality. The domestication of foot-binding was associated with women’s textile work, which enjoyed high cultural and economic value in Chinese Confucian society (Ko 54). In addition, foot-binding was considered a process for young girls to cultivate their body and mind as well as to learn morality in order to be a good woman from their mother. As a result, food-binding does not indicate the same paradox of sexuality and morality as corset-wearing Even though lotus shoes that masked the deformed bound feet played a role in eroticism and seduction, they worked in much the same way as any fashion items (“to show or not to show” as discussed in Part 3), rather than playing the role of a ‘sexualizing device’ like corset does.

Part 6:

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Gender, Class, and Social Distinctions in Fashion of foot-binding for women, Horn argues that “[the] social restraints imposed upon women were symbolized by their bound feet and cumbersome robes, both of which reflected a physical and mental withdrawal from the outside world” (70). Similarly, corsetry, as fashion style, also embedded certain social values of the nineteenth century. Noting that most corset advertisements portrayed women in “idealized indoor settings rather than in active outdoor activities,” Summers argues that “they persistently reflected traditional genderrelated assumptions and values, and [in turn] reinforced rather than altered or questioned theses assumptions about women’s rightful sphere” (177) (Figure 6.1).

nineteenth century still wore corsets under their suits (Figure 6.2). Still, the genderspecification of these garments contributed greatly to the construction of gender difference and power relations in society. The simplistic design of masculine clothing of the 1890s was adopted to show respectability and authority of men, contrasting the feminine, flowery, and decorative design of female clothes of the time which represents a completely different ideology (Craik 186187). Quoting Phelps, Summers states that, “corsetry and tight clothing undermined women’s ability to achieve political gorals, or indeed any goals outside the private sphere…

The garment’s role in sexualizing the body diminished any chances of the sexes ever interacting as equals, specifically because in sexualizing the body, corsetry unnaturally heightened physical differences between the sexes” (131). Yet, it is interesting to note when Kidwell points out that the masculine body figure with shoulder pads has an awfully similar “hourglass figure of the fashionable women” (qtd. in Craik 186-187).

Both corsets and lotus shoes were garments that were considered fundamentally feminine at their times, even though some males in the

Sexual difference is also an important subject when examining the social aspects of foot-binding. Erotic prints of the Ming

iscussing the social

significance

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and Qing Dynasties show that there was little difference between the naked bodies of scholarly men and women; both have smooth skin and feminine slender body lines (see Figure 3.2 in Part 3). The only male figures with muscles, beards and body hair who seem to be filled with virile power are Mongols who were horsemen warriors and considered barbarians, closer to animals that civilized Chinese men were thought to be (Wang 16). Thus, the practice of foot-binding for women was encouraged to eliminate the general anxiety among literati over gender and hierarchy confusion. As Francis Hsu points out, “foot-binding seemed to be a reasonable addition to differences between the sexes” (Hong 48). It helped to maintain a clear divide between men and women and emphasized conformity that women had to differ from men in every visible physical aspect. Gender insecurity of Chinese men also reflects a masculine fear for woman’s competition for supremacy, that she may subvert the patriarchal order. Therefore, footbinding has a certain amount of hostility that were enforced on women (Blake 437).

Figure 6.1. Advertisement for the London Corset Company’s Tricot Corset, 1905. Women are often shown in indoor, domestic settings in corset advertisements.

Figure 6.2. Full-page advertisement for Madame Dowding from Society. Both men and women are shown to be wearing corsets.

Differentiation between the notion of masculinity and femininity was reinforced by corsetery and foot-binding as well. Referencing to Novarra’s interpretation of ‘femininity’ and ‘sex appeal,’ Bechingham points out that “what appeals to male chauvinists is weakness in all the areas in which they pride themselves on being strong. A ‘feminine’ appearance, therefore, becomes a symbol of this weakness” (112). This seems to shed some light on the enchantment of the practice of tight-lacing and foot-binding, since the notion of “fragility” and “seduction” are often associated closely with these garments.

Regarding foot-binding, the ‘perfectly’ bound feet must meet seven qualifications – small, slim, pointed, arched, fragrant, soft, and straight – in order to become a piece of art and an object of erotic desire (Wang 3). In addition, illness and melancholy were two other important elements of feminine aesthetics.

Songs, especially those written by female poets, were filled with sick and sad beauties: “I’m thinner than the chrysanthemums,” “fearful that the boat from Shuangxi cannot carry so much sadness,” “how could the word sad describe all” (Wang 49). It is, thus, no surprise that the bound feet, being so tiny, broken,

deformed, delicate, and most important of all, so pitiful, became a dominant symbol of feminine beauty.

This display of “weakness” is also reflected by corsetry. Leoty Ernest writes, “[the] corsetière makes the woman – a living status carved by Nature – into a statuette of gracious fragility, of conventional form, but so seductive” (qtd. in Steele 174). In some cases, female display of such ‘physical weakness’ might not be solely imaginary. Bolin explains that the custom of tight-lacing “inhibited women’s consumption of food” (83). Steele further adds that “restriction of the chest led to upper diaphragmatic breathing, while the constriction of the waist and abdomen probably caused digestive problems, such as constipation” (170). Summers argues that, however, for many women throughout the nineteenth century, “to look ill, vulnerable and/or near to death [remains] a goal to be achieved at almost any cost” (127). Despite the fact that there were warnings given about the damaging of tuberculosis caused by tight-lacing, the exposure of this ‘blood spitting’ injury “did little or nothing to reduce [the popularity of corsetry] and, according to historian Helene Roberts, may have actually

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served to increase the practice of tight lacing” (138). She further explains: Fainting’s valency as a cultural enactment of feminine death (or near death) revolved around the binary tensions it demonstrated. The ‘life and death’ appearance of fainting elicited permutations around feminine fantasies of submissions and masculine fantasies of power. This is evidenced by the rigidly gendered nature of the event. Men did not faint into women’s arms. Women fainted into the arms of men, and in conditions that glamorized their vulnerability, vulnerability so perfect that it mimicked the complete passivity of death.

(Summers 138) Whether the craze for Victorian women to appear sick is an act to gain empathy or attention, it is difficult to know. Yet, it exemplifies, and confirms, Steele’s conclusion in Fashion and Eroticism, that “clothing of the Victorian woman reflected not only the cultural prescriptive ideal of femininity, but also her own aspirations and fantasies” (100).

Class distinction also remains an important subject when studying fashion culture. Crane writes, “[clothing], as a form of symbolic communication was enormously important in the nineteenth century as a means of conveying information about the wearer’s social role, social standing, and personal character” (100). Since industrialization had removed most women from participating in the economy, “[aristocratic] idleness was considered the suitable activity for middleand upper-class wives”, which leaves them an “enourmous amount of time and money to [create elaborate] wardrobes [to show their social status]” (Crane 100). Summers notes that “[middle-class] women … used corsetry to strengthen and protect their class hegemony, while working-class women corseted … to obfuscate or escape their working-class origins with the hope of entering the world of their ‘betters’” (9). It is, therefore, not difficult to understand the hostility middle-class women had towards the ‘democratization’ of corsets – the time when accessibility and popularity of ready-made corsets increased greatly due to industrialization – in which even prostitutes could dress “professionally as ‘ladies’” (Summers 15; Steele 71, 134). However, Steele also points out that even though fashion leaders, such as

courtesans and actresses, were not afraid to look attractive, “most women [were constricted] by the fear of looking immodest or conspicuous [if they dressed too fashionable]” (131).

Social theorist Thorstein Veblen argues that the society was shaped by the law of “conspicuous leisure” as well as “conspicuous consumption” (Ko 2). For the noble and rich, mere idleness was not enough. Leisure had to be displayed by the obvious waste of valuable resources as a means to exhibit one’s wealth and power in order to gain reputability (Wang 56). While women from leisure class performed a role as both an active agent of consumption and an object of desire in Chinese patriarchy society, they were encouraged to cultivate their beauty through foot-binding as a sign of their upper-class status. In the seventeenth century, working class women began to emulate this practice in growing numbers and in the nineteenth century, foot-binding grew so popular that it went into irrevocable decline and became the opposite of its former meaning.

Foot-binding, as a practice of conspicuous consumption in the old days, reminds us of the consumer culture in China today. While the world famous brand name purses such as Louis Vuitton and Prada are desirable commodities

for the Chinese middle-class, illegal businesses produce high quality counterfeits to meet the needs of supply and demand; therefore, those luxury products are made available and affordable to many Chinese.

These brands became so popular that no one would even believe an authentic purse to be ‘real’. As a result, the rising Chinese middleclass begins to purse authentic Asian or other local brands that are much more affordable than the Western brands, or the counterfeits.

However, those high quality counterfeits are still the best type of souvenirs from China for Western tourists, because they represent the same value as the authentic ones – counterfeits are less commonly found in Western world; not many people can distinguish between a real and a fake. .

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Clothing is a tangible, visual symbol of the ideas and values that typify the times.

Marilyn J. Horn

Part 7:

H

The Transformation from the Past to Contemporary Society istorian Nancy Cott argues that “women, too, were and are neither ‘passive receivers of changing definitions of themselves,’ not ‘totally mistresses of their destinies’” (qtd, in Steele 246). After examining the social perspectives of foot-binding and tight-lacing, it is our understanding that females, while lacking other forms of social power, continued to participate in the public sphere through fashion, even though the style required a certain degree of bodily ‘sacrifice’. Indeed, Steele demonstrates that women are often willing to overcome a certain level of discomfort, or even pain, as long as the self-image that they are ‘buying into’ through tight-lacing or foot-binding outweighs the inconvenience. Fashion is a form of selfexpression, and “it was fashion ... that serves as the most insistent and increasingly popular way of drawing attention to a woman’s presence” (qtd. in Bechingham 52).

So what has these fashion styles become of now? The fear for women’s competition for supremacy, mixed with beliefs in female power and equality, and the anxiety over blurred gender boundaries, greatly affected Chinese men’s psyche, emotions, and attitude toward women’s bodies and minds. The spread of foot-binding to low social class in China in the eighteenth century served as a mask to disguise women’s contribution to economic production (Blake 435). During the late imperial society, the family-based agricultural system was increasingly integrated by an expanding “petty capitalist” economy. The stability and wealth of the empire depended on the dignity of women’s handiwork; meanwhile, women were also responsible for the biological production in giving births, particularly to boys, for the labor-intensive economy. Thus, foot-binding helped to cover the process by which the products of women’s bodies were appropriated into the male dominated family system, especially masking women’s labour power.

As a result, men kept their role as the only economic contributors to their family as well as their authority in the patriarchal society.

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The development of agriculture and commerce as well as arts during that era brought great material abundance and artistic richness to China. Meanwhile, the Chinese also faced severe invasions by foreign cultures. From Song Dynasty (thirteenth century) onwards, China was under constant siege by Qidan (Khitan), Nuzhen (Jurchen), Mongols and Manchus. By the seventeenth century, the Manchu had taken over the whole country and established the Qing dynasty which is the last monarchy of China. The Qing rulers forced Chinese men to cut their hair in the Manchu style and banned Chinese women from foot-binding in order to assimilate Han Chinese into the Manchu culture. However, Chinese people rebelled against the foreign reign and fought against the new laws.

All their efforts failed, except for women’s resistance to the royal ban on foot-binding practice (Wang 70). Chinese men hailed this as a great achievement in resisting the foreign rule as well as in preserving Chinese culture and tradition.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, when Western countries started to trade and invade China, Chinese intellectuals launched an anti-food-binding propaganda

campaign as part of the movement of reform and modernization. The main arguments were that “foot-binding made China an object of ridicule in the world, prevented the nation from taking its rightful place in international affairs and weakened the country to perilous degree by producing weak offspring” (Wang 37). Thus, bound feet became a scapegoat for the empire’s downfall, a symbol of women’s victimization, while natural feet were used to represent women’s liberation and China’s modernization.

The practice of foot-binding for women in China has lasted approximately one thousand years; when this practice reached its peak as a national fashion and a cultural tradition in the late imperial China, lotus feet have become the symbol of beauty, morality, femininity, hierarchy and eroticism. In other words, feet were the place of honour, identity, and means of livelihood for many women (Wang preface/ xi). After this fashion faded out due to Western influence in the early twentieth century, the perception of foot-binding has transferred from a demonstration of Confucian civilization to a symbol of national shame. In 1911, after the fall of the last dynasty Qing, the new Republic of China government banned foot-binding. In 1949, when the Communists took power in

China, they maintained the strict prohibition on foot-binding that is still in effect today.

While foot-binding has been abandoned, corsets gradually evolve into different forms of body-structuring undergarments (Steele 191). With corsetry being translated into one of the fundamental pieces of Gothic fashion, the fascination and the aortic aura of the garment remains. The introduction of corsetry, as seen in the lively history of the garment, however, was never simply out of explicit eroticism. Social meaning of corsetry has changed with time: first being a fashion item, then as a symbol of social status, self-discipline, and morality, and later as a sign of submission and conformity to masculine power structure by bourgeois women (Cavallaro 85). Cavallaro observes that it was not until the popularity of corset-wearing fades, alongside its original social meaning, that “its extraordinariness is able to recharge an erotic current because it is made to appear personal” (85-86). Once corset-wearing has become voluntary and less of a social convention, the garment is charged with new meanings of eroticism, and perhaps fetishism, due to its different relationship between the body, gender, power, sexual freedom, and society.

In Fashion and Eroticism, Steele asks the question: The issue of clothing choice is significant, but how is the choice being made?

Robert and Lauer argues that fashion is “[a] process of collective definition in which a particular alternative in a set of possibilities is selected as appropriate,” which is based on “an ‘ideological evaluation’” (qtd. in Steele 157). Although foot-binding and tight-lacing are fashion practices that are specific to a particular time period, the concept and practice of enduring violence and pain, mutilation and body modification in the name of beauty and attractiveness can be found in almost every culture and civilization in the world. Today, in our modern and highly civilized society, body modifications that help ‘improve our appearance’ still exist in various forms. Not to mention the costly plastic surgeries, high heel shoes can be seen as the most popular and common practice in fashion history. Anyone who has ever worn high heels knows that they are uncomfortable at best and painful as worst; they slow down the gait and make it virtually impossible for the wearer to run (Sugiyama 12). However, high heels create an appearance of instability that conveys a general sense of delicate grace as well as makes men feel that they are in

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control of female sexuality; in a sense, this social meaning is the same as the banned foot-binding practice and fading trend of corset-wearing.

Foucault argues that the nature of fashion is to make ordinariness of the body extraordinary and thereby establish a power relation between the people who consume it and the people who see it (qtd. in Cavallaro 85). Though the body and the garment remain unchanged “in physical terms” when the body is clothed, it is “not the same body”, nor is the garment (Cavallaro 85). Cavallaro explains: The meaning of both body and garments is produced by their juxtaposition, and that meaning changes according to the context in which it is worn. The erotic is not an attribute of any of the three elements of body, garment or context, but comes into existence at their junction.

(Cavallaro 85-86) This is exactly this relationship between fashion, the body, and the context, that neither foot-binding nor tight-lacing should be considered practices that exist solely for the pleasure of males. Fashion style is never

forced upon people – women with either lotus feet or corseted waists also participated in the negotiation of values and power at their time, arguably to a similar degree to their male counterparts’, if not more. The seductive power of fashion also lies in its time. Foot-binding might be considered sexually appealing to those in China from 10th to the early 20th century, but it is likely that it would be considered cruel by most in our contemporary society. On a similar note, the corseted waist might still be considered attractive to this date, but the practice of constricting the pregnant abdomen for the sake of presenting sexual purity would probably be considered an act of abuse or violence against women. ‡

WORKS CITED:

Beckingham, Carolyn. Is Fashion a Woman’s Right? Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2005.

Blake, C. Fred. “Foot-Binding in Neo-Confucian China and the Appropriation of Female Labor.”

Oxford Readings in Feminism: Feminism and the Body. Eds. Londa Schiebinger. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Bolin, Anne. “Vandalized Vanity: Feminine Physiques Betrayed and Portrayed.” Tattoo, Torture, Mutilation, and Adornment: The Denaturalization of the Body in Culture and Text. Eds. Frances E. Mascia-Lees and Patricia Sharpe. New York: State University of New York, 1992. 79-99.

Cavallaro, Dani, and Alexandra Warwick. Fashioning the Frame: Boundaries, Dress and Body.

New York: Berg, 1998.

Craik, Jennifer. The Face of Fashion: Cultural Studies in Fashion. London: Routledge, 1994.

Crane, Diana. Fashion and its Social Agendas: Class, Gender, and Identity in Clothing. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Flugel, J. C. The Psychology of Clothes. 4th ed. London: The Hogarth Press, 1966.

Hong, Fan. Footbinding, Feminism and Freedom: the Liberation of Women’s Bodies in Modern China. London: Frank Cass, 1997.

Horn, Marilyn J. The Second Skin: An Interdisciplinary Study of Clothing. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1968.

Hurlock, Elizabeth B. “The Arbiters of Fashion.” Dress, Adornment, and the Social Order. Eds. Mary Ellen Roach and Joanne Bubolz Eicher. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965. 346-357.

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Ko, Dorothy. Cinderella’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding. University of California Press, 2005.

Ko, Dorothy. Every Step A Lotus: Shoes for Bound Feet. University of California Press, 2001.

Kunzle, David. Fashion and Fetishism: Corsets, Tight-Lacing and Other Forms of BodySculpture. Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2004.

Lang, Kurt, and Gladys Lang. “Fashion: Identification and Differentiation in the Mass Society.”

Dress, Adornment, and the Social Order. Eds. Mary Ellen Roach and Joanne Bubolz Eicher.

New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965. 322-346.

Roach, Mary Ellen, and Joanne Bubolz Eicher. Dress, Adornment, and the Social Order. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965.

Spooner, Catherine. Fashioning Gothic Bodies. New York: Manchester University Press, 2004.

Steele, Valerie. Fashion and Eroticism: Ideals of Feminine Beauty from the Victorian Era to the Jazz Age. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Sugiyama, M. S. “Woman Bondage: the Eroticism of Feet in the House on Mango Street.” The Midwest Quarterly 41.1 (1999): 9-20.

Summers, Leigh. Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset. New York: Berg, 2001.

Wang, Ping. Aching for Beauty. London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.

ILLUSTRATIONS LIST:

Figure 1.1. Minoan Snake Goddess. Body and Clothes (1968), 73.

Figure 2.1-2.2. Parisian doll in original corsetry. Bound to Please (2001), 72.

Figure 3.1. Yao Niang. Footbinding, Feminism and Freedom (1997), 23.

Figure 3.2. South Village. Aching for Beauty (2000), 17.

Figure 3.3. Tiny votive shoes with embroidered prayer. Every Step A Lotus (2001), 65.

Figure 3.4. Shoes in dark blue satin. Every Step A Lotus (2001), 68.

Figure 3.5. PD corset illustration. Bound to Please (2001), 199.

Figure 3.6. Late Victorian erotic postcard. Bound to Please (2001), 201.

Figure 3.7. The specialite corset. Fashion & Fetishism (2004), 190.

Figure 3.8. The new temptation of St. Anthony. Fashion and Eroticism (1985), 43.

Figure 3.9. The bottom rib removed. Body and Clothes (1968), 206.

Figure 4.1. Warner’s corset advertisement. Bound to Please (2001), 191.

Figure 6.1. London Corset Company’s Advertisement(1905). Fashion and Eroticism (1985), 217.

Figure 6.2. Advertisement for Madame Dowding from Society. Fashion and Fetishism (2004), 195.

Š 2008 Simon Fraser University Carmen Hung & Cancan Yu