Howard S. Levy

This book aims to give a comprehensive overview of a practice that all of us consider medieval, but was practised in China until the 1930's.

Rooted in dance taken from India, "lotus feet" subjugated women, gave face to men, often offered a smelly perversion to "connaisseurs", and was thought to make women's bums bigger and their private parts tighter. It was opposed as much by Westerners as by Manchu rulers. Eventually, the deeply-engrained habit was brought to an end quickly by the Republican government when it became an apparent loss of face to the Chinese nation.

The book contains lots of illustrations and is certainly not aiming at hypochondriacs.… (more)

Levy’s work is an impressive attempt to force a reexamination of the practice of footbinding. The introduction states that, “Most Westerners who saw bound feet did not try to find answer to their questions, but simply detested and deplored the custom.” Levy attempts to rectify that oversight by examining a variety of issues surrounding the custom.

Levy’s work is an impressive meld of primary sources and secondary scholarship. His most interesting sources are the early twentieth century reminiscences of Chinese men who lamented the loss of footbinding, though these had very little to do with the anti-footbinding movement. For that, he uses publications within the anti-footbinding movement, both Chinese and foreign, as well as Chinese secondary scholarship. Levy’s work was the first comprehensive work on footbinding.… (more)