Dorothy Ko's Article: The Body As Banning In Seventeenth-Century China

In her article "The body as attire," Dorothy Ko (1997) reviewed the history about foot binding in seventeenth-century China, and expressed a creative viewpoint. Foot binding began in Song Dynasty, and was just popular in upper social society. With the gradually popularization of foot binding, in the end of Song Dynasty, it became generally popular. In Qing Dynasty, foot binding was endowed deeper meaning that was termed into a tool to against Manchu rule. The author, Dorothy Ko, studied from another aspect which was women themselves to understand and explained her shifting meaning of foot binding. Dorothy Ko contends that “Chinese Elite males in the seventeenth century regarded foot binding in three ways: as an expression of Chinese wen civility,

Shunzhi 1 ( 1644 ), the army of Qing Dynasty defeated the Ming army, and became the ruler of China. At the beginning of Qing Dynasty there were two orders. One was for men to cut the hair to a special Manchu hair style. Another one was for women to prohibit the foot binding. However, the order for women was defeated in Kangxi 7 (1688) because of a great degree of resistance and the worry from ruler. Practically speaking, mandatory haircut caused a lot of tragedies like "Jiading Three Slaughter" which is most famous event that lots of people were killed. Although all men cut the hair finally, it caused social unrest, and added to the discontent of the people. At this time, foot binding had lodged itself in the public mind and women as keeping foot binding as a tool to express the protest about rebelling Qing Dynasty rule. Kangxi thought that would appear worse social unrest if the policy was carried out. The result of this smokeless war was foot binding was kept, and ruler failed. By the way, most Manchu women did not light the feet to binding. In Han people 's view, foot binding or not was a way to separate Han women and Manchu women who they thought were