Escaping Liberation: Reexamine "Natural Foot" & "Natural Breast" Movements

• In Event: Emerging Scholars Lightning Round: Undergraduate Research

Abstract

This study will analyze "Natural Foot" and "Natural Breast" movements that occurred successively in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China by adopting the paradigm of historical institutionalism. The "Natural Foot" movement began from the late Qing Dynasty and was aimed to eliminate the women's practice foot-binding. The "Natural Breast" movement began in late 1910s and was aimed to eradicate the skin-tight plastron worn around women's chests to create a flatter appearance.
The two events are symbols of a radical change that took place in the gendered social institution (hereinafter referred to as "GSI") practiced in Chinese society. Men and women, the two major genders, are the actors in the GSI. This study views the launching of "Natural Foot" movement as a "critical juncture" that marked the beginning of the institutional change of GSI. Plastron-wearing, a practice revitalized by female actors, could be seen as the derivation of the previous GSI. The responsive "Natural Breast" movement represented the successful practicing of the new GSI.
In the original GSI, men, as the dominant sex, were beneficiaries of the institution. In contrast, women's victimhood was clear, but they somehow found an acceptable way to adapt to the institution. Most women, whether forced or voluntary, competed to bind their feet into smaller sizes as a means to demonstrate feminine virtue and social status so as to secure better marriage prospects. Women engaged in self-mutilation and constant self-discipline in exchange for survival within the GSI and some slight chances of profiting from it. Meanwhile, male beneficiaries utilized this GSI to confine women within their households, engaging them in reproductive and manual labor, and diminishing any perceived threat they posed.
In late Qing Dynasty, influenced by dramatic changes in domestic and international politics, a group of Chinese male elite intellectuals first began to question the past GSI. They recognized that such institution was so inefficient that it would hinder national progress, which was against their newly altered interests. Consequently, these men, who were dominant actors of the previous GSI, initiated spontaneous reforms against it.
The revised GSI correlated women's physical practice with nation-building. It not only matched with the new reason of state of China, but, more importantly, justified and institutionalized the measures of taxing, fining, monitoring and correcting female victims because of the specific forms of their bodies and their private conduct. The new GSI relocated women's bodies into new social spaces, destroying the old institutional path women had depended on. It gave play to women's function of participating in socially productive labor, while further exploiting their reproductive ability. Women, however, feeling reluctant to give up on the old path, turned to the ruins of the previous GSI and revived the self-torturing fashion of "chest-binding" which was like the "reprint" of foot-binding. The trend of chest-binding and plastron-wearing first arose in urban girls' schools, where the idea and practice of abolishing foot-binding should have been most widespread. The trend toward chest-binding was a silent resistance to institutional changes by female actors who had not recognized their victimhood in the old GSI. They weren't ready to bear the costs of entering a new institution that wouldn't offer women a clear path to social advancement as the original one had done.
The novelty of this study is shown in the following two aspects. Firstly, it takes the "natural foot" and "natural feet" movements as a continuum of related events, rather than separate parallel aspects of women's liberation in late Qing and early Republic of China, which helps infer the unspoken attitudes of women towards GSI reforms. Secondly, this study adopts historical institutionalism as an analytical framework and aims to reveal the underlying nature behind two socially significant movements whose chronological order tells neglected details. It provides insight into the question why non-dominant actors engage in actions that uphold the existing institution.
In contrast to other studies on the women's liberation movements in China, this study clearly opposes the traditional progressive tone while also avoiding a revisionist stance that blindly interprets seemingly proactive choices made by women as a rise of their subjectivity. The significance of this research lies in uncovering the fact that even when an existing institution has begun to change, the manner in which it changes remains heavily constrained by itself, limiting all actors, whether dominant or non-dominant.

Author

• Yihao Lu, East China Normal University