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A Response To Every Step A Lotus

Dorothy Ko, in the introduction of her book Every Step A Lotus, makes clear why the Chinese social phenomena of the practice of footbinding deserves a close attention and a serious study. It is an issue controversial in today's society drawing opinions from between two extremes of moral outrage and admiration. And because the practice was not exclusive to a few groups outside the main population in China but deeply rooted in the cultural history and practiced by a large number of women as an ordinary custom, an understanding of the origins or foodbinding is also important.
Ko uses shoes as text which means that she would try to gather any information or clues about footbinding that the shapes, artwork, size, the owners, time periods, and the locations of the shoes can reveal. She starts by studying the shoes found in Lady Huang Sheng's tomb. She concludes that the shoes were intended for everyday use and not ceremonial purposes by observing other items found in the tomb. But that only proves the existence of footbinding in her era and does not address the question of why and how it was practiced. She goes on to study shoes found in other women in different time periods like Madame Zhou of the 11th century. The details of the shoes give some clues about how the feet that they once contained must have looked like and what kind of women bound their feet. But still, the questions regarding reasons and origin for footbinding becoming a social norm remain unanswered.
The next part of the chapter addresses the role folktales, poetry, and literature might have played in shaping the general public's thoughts on women's feet and in particular their size. The story of Chinese Cinderella revolves around a girl with small feet. The story's ending implies that the value of a girl is relative to her feet size (smaller the better) and also makes a connection between small feet and princely romance. Lyrics of Goddess of the River Luo written by Cao Zijian is fixated on the...