“These incongruities bring to the fore the contradictions that a woman had to embody as remnant of the old order and bearer of the new”1
Within the book ‘Cinderella’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding’ I found the Tianzu movement to be a double-edged concept which Dorothy Ko analysed from a controversial perspective. Ko regarded that alongside anti-footbinding movements being chiefly male organised they were also misonganistic in their approaches to foot binding. As they did not take into account the irreversible nature of the process or the pain these woman had experienced, but rather the male “Chinese elite” wanted to distance themselves from the backwards tradition of foot binding.2 As they recognised this tradition as halting their advancement in the modern world. The Anti-footbinding movements that gathered urgency during the early Twentieth Century were known as Tianzu, meaning literally “heavenly foot”.3 Through the use of Dorothy Ko’s book we can reflect on the paradoxical issues that accompanied the work of male Chinese abolitionists to reveal the historical implications of Tianzu and the enforcement of unbinding.4
“One womans pride and freedom was prediction on another woman’s shame and bondage”5
The humiliating view of women who had their feet bound became a hallmark of Chinese modern nationalist discourse. Ko sort to present an alternative to the transitional period that was the end of foot binding, by revealing the true and authentic female voice that demonstrates the complexity of Tianzu.6 One of the chief outcomes of this process was the criminalisation of foot binding, and to enforce this social surveillance was used to check that the process was being stamped out.7 For example newly installed authorities were able to “scrutinise and look” to gather the number of footboard females in their area.7 However, this surveillance was humiliating, and treated women as objects to be gazed at. One of the key factors behind the aura of foot binding had previously been the concealment of the flesh by bindings. However these checks meant that women were forced to show their feet in public, and felt ashamed rather than liberated. Ironically this had a more humiliating effect as it was public, resulting in issues of groping during inspections. Alongside this, the bureaucratisation of feet inspection led to ambiguity between the aims of the movement, as rather than freeing women it led to a misogynistic attitude towards those with bound feet as they were called “parasites and femme fatales harmful to the nation”.5
This humiliation, however, did not stem from the abuses and imperfect method of inspections, but rather from a culture of national shame that resulted in an urgency to unbind feet. This reveals that the tactic of these campaigns was paradoxical because the female suffering, that had previously provoked people to challenge traditional thinking, stressed the link of femaleness with victimhood.8 And in this way the experiences and pain of these women were adopted by anti-foot binding movements that dictated the response to foot binding, resulting in those who had undergone the irreversible process being branded as symbols of China’s backwardness.