Women’s Bodies as Political Battleground:
Patriarchal and Nationalistic Motivations behind Chinese Women’s Anti-Breastbinding
Movement
Carly O’Connell
Women & Love in Chinese Literature
CHIN 316-02
Professor Lunpeng Ma
April 28, 2014
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Decades after Chinese women stopped binding their feet, they were still wrapping other
parts of their body tightly in cloth to conform to societal standards of beauty. They used binding
cloths or vests to flatten their breasts against their chests, hiding the distinctive features of their
sex in an elegant symbol of their own continued suppression. Like footbinding, this practice had
health detriments and came to be seen as an oppressive feature of imperial gender norms. In the
Republic of China, a call was sounded for all women to abandon their binding cloths and vests,
and let their breasts be natural. The anti-breastbinding movement is the much-overlooked sister
to the anti-footbinding campaign. In both cases, women’s bodies were discussed as an issue of
national concern and bodily regulations were imposed on the women by the predominantly male
government. Both campaigns were painted as efforts towards women’s liberation. Yet rather than
giving women control over their own bodies, the anti-binding campaigns, especially antibreastbinding, cast women’s bodies as the battleground for political agendas.
First, I will briefly review the history of footbinding for the sake of comparing it with
breastbinding. Footbinding first became popular during the Song Dynasty – the same period that
gave rise to breastbinding. By the Qing Dynasty, any woman who hoped to make a good
marriage broke her toes when she was young and wrapped her feet so tightly in cloth that they
bent unnaturally. Yet towards the end of the dynasty, people became aware of a need for change.
Not only was footbinding a painful and dangerous process that “hinders the movement of
females and maims their bodies,” but it also was not practiced in the West, whose modern ideas
where quickly inundating China (Ko 51). In 1898, the first anti-footbinding society was formed
(Ko 38). The practice of footbinding was considered an object of shame for the Chinese nation.
Chinese nationalists feared that their country would appear backwards and uncivilized compared
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to other countries, especially in the West. So the government began to address the issue in a
movement that would be echoed decades later by the anti-breastbinding campaign.
Aside from the initial grassroot anti-footbinding societies, the anti-footbinding campaign
was largely a top-down process. Its aim was to rid the nation of a shameful habit as quickly as
possible, without taking women’s personal feelings or welfare into account. Yan Xishan’s
campaign to eliminate footbinding in Shanxi province from 1917 to 1922 is a good example of
the typical methodology and attitude of the movement. Government officials entered private
homes, inspected the women, and collected binding cloths or levied fines on those who did not
comply with the new policy (Ko 52). Such actions were usually considered extremely shameful
to the women involved, because exposure to the public eye was unseemly for females. Older
women who had been binding their feet their whole lives found unbinding to be excruciatingly
painful and so were often reluctant to abandon the practice. Women who refused to comply with
the new policy were condemned as “parasites and femme fatales harmful to the nation” (Ko 68).
They were “infantilized and humiliated” in public displays to discourage other women from
following their example (68). Thus, the anti-footbinding campaign, allegedly a campaign for
women’s liberation, actually condoned misogynistic behavior towards women. The method of
footbinding, x-rays of bound feet, and body odor from binding cloths were all exposed to the
general population and circulated as anti-footbinding propaganda. In this way, the female body,
once considered one of the most private things in Chinese culture, was invaded and exposed as a
battle ground on which the fight for modernity would take place.
Breastbinding followed the same general path as footbinding, from beginning as an
aesthetic practice, to a concern of class, to a mark of the backwardness of the Chinese nation.
The health risks were exposed and grassroots movements to abandon the practice began to pop
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up. However, none of these movements were particularly effective until the central government
took over the problem. Under the aegis of acting for women’s own good, the government
legislated against certain bodily practices and enforced the new laws with fines. Together with
short hair, unbound feet and unbound breasts became symbols of women’s liberation in China.
However, I will argue that the natural feet and natural breasts were not results of freedom gained
by women, but rather continued patriarchal body regulation conducted by the government for the
sake of modernization and improving the nation.
Breastbinding began as a matter of philosophy and ethics but later developed into a class
symbol and fashion. It first became widespread during the Song Dynasty between the tenth and
thirteenth centuries as a result of Neo-Confucian thought. One of the core principles of this
school of thought was the destruction of human desire. Thus, breastbinding was introduced to
“flatten women’s breasts to prevent stimulating sexual desire in men” (Yen 176). Breastbinding
was also thought to curb women’s own desire and prevent them from using their bodies to entice
men (Zhang 7). Nevertheless, slim bodies with bound breasts soon came to be the feminine
aesthetic that Chinese men of that time period found desirable. Women who were “sickly, weak,
languid, and fragile” were considered attractive, which allowed practices like footbinding and
breastbinding to thrive, because they hindered a woman’s health and made her appear more
delicate (Zhang 9).
In more modern times, long cloth bindings fell out of use, but women continued to flatten
their breasts with tight vests worn under the clothing called xiaobeixin or xiaomajia.
Breastbinding by this time came to index a woman’s social standing; “a flat chest was
considered a standard of beauty for urban, educated women and became a symbol of class status
that distinguished urban educated women from rural peasant women, whose natural breasts were
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seen as vulgar and uncivilized” (Yen 177). The fashionability of this flat-chest aesthetic was then
reinforced by the rise of the qipao during the Republican era. At that time, darts were not used in
the qipao’s design to accommodate curves. Women could use a special ironing trick to slightly
stretch the fabric, but it was easier to simply eliminate the curves by binding the breasts (Finnane
163). Following in the footsteps of footbinding, breastbinding was initiated by patriarchal control
of women’s sexuality, but was propagated and internalized by women themselves in order to
meet societal standards of beauty and civility.
Breastbinding shared a further feature with footbinding in the health risks it imposed on
women. A contemporary magazine called New Life declaimed the little vest as “clothing that
impairs physiology” (Wang 470). It limited breathing and was believed to contribute to certain
lung diseases such as tuberculosis (470). In another magazine, called Shenghuo, a medical
student published an article about further dangers of breastbinding. He claimed that tight binding
was the cause of 25% of the breast complaints at his school’s clinic (Finnane 165). Furthermore,
binding inhibited proper development of the breasts, thereby impairing women’s ability to
breastfeed their children. It inhibited mammary secretions and could even cause inverted nipples,
which could make breastfeeding difficult or even impossible. The fact that breastbinding was
“injurious to women’s children” became a major issue later when national crisis made strong,
healthy citizens a major concern for the state (165). Although not quite as gory and debilitating
as footbinding, breastbinding did contradict women’s best interests in terms of comfort and
health, and it also theoretically endangered the strength of the nation.
For the above reasons among others, a movement against breastbinding began in the late
Imperial period. Early reformists included Kang Youwei and Lian Qichao, who were involved
with the Hundred Days’ Reform in 1898. They pursued various interests of gender equality and
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women’s liberation but made little difference in the number of women who continued to
breastbind (Zhang 12). Western influence and the May Fourth movement had much larger
impacts. With the influx of Western media, women were exposed to a culture in which
protruding breasts were considered attractive as opposed to unseemly (Wang 470). The qipao
was redesigned to emphasize womanly curves instead of ignoring them, and this design
reinforced the incoming Western ideal of a “full-figured feminine shape” (Yen 177).
Furthermore, because breastbinding was practiced mainly by the upper class, it came to be
associated with “urban decadence” and bourgeois values (Yen 172). The May Fourth movement
called for women to abandon traditional practices of feminine beauty, including such luxuries as
jewelry, makeup, fancy clothes, long hair, and breastbinding (177). At this stage, those urging
against breastbinding were often fellow women, including the activists Lin Shuhua and Liang
Zhuxin (Zhang 19-20). Nevertheless, many women continued to strap down their breasts in order
to deemphasize their sex in the interest of gender equality (Yen 182). Unlike footbinding,
breastbinding had the unique characteristic of making women less differentiated from men. In
ancient times, breastbinding sometimes allowed women to transgress gender boundaries by
cross-dressing as men (Zhang 10). In more modern times, many women would not go so far as to
pretend to be men, but rather would conform to a male standard of appearance in the hopes of
receiving equal treatment. Qiu Jin was one such woman. This unique gender-blending
characteristic of breastbinding is one of the reasons the practice lingered long after footbinding
was erased.
Nevertheless, given the similarities between breastbinding and footbinding, one might
think that they would have been abandoned around the same time. One male contemporary sums
up the irony of eradicating footbinding while maintaining breastbinding: “nowadays the New
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Women cry for gender equality and women’s liberation. They get rid of the bad custom of
footbinding, but they make breast-binding increasingly a fashion. It is confusing that such an
unsanitary and harmful practice can draw so many blind practitioners. What is more lamenting is
that female students who are educated and rich in common sense also follow suit” (Wang 35,
translated in Zhang 15). Young students were expected to be among the most liberal of the
country’s demographics, but breastbinding continued to be prevalent among them. Female
students seemed to be inclined to downplay their sexuality by hiding their breasts. They also
associated natural breasts with poor women, who often exposed their breasts while breastfeeding
in public, so they bound their own to distance themselves from such connotations (Finnane 166).
The fact that breastbinding was embraced by educated New Women allowed it to linger in
modern society much longer than footbinding did.
There was no major success in eradicating breastbinding until the Republican
government took a top-down approach, must like the one Yan Xishan implemented against
footbinding. In 1927, the government in Guangdong made breastbinding illegal. All women in
the province were given three months to stop binding, after which they would be fined 50 yuan if
they did not comply (Yen 177). The New Life Movement launched on February 19 of 1934
further shaped the government’s involvement. The New Life Movement aimed to fix the laziness
and degeneration of the previous era by promoting healthy bodies, traditional gender roles, and
self-discipline (Yen 170). A series of regulations were passed regarding women’s bodily
appearance and behavior. Men and women were forbidden from swimming together, dancing, or
walking down the street side-by-side as a couple, to prevent improper behavior (Finnane 173).
Women were to cover all provocative body parts including throats, arms, and legs, and were
prohibited from such bourgeois extravagances as permed hair, high heels, outlandish clothes, and
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breast-binding (Yen 171). Such rules were in line with popular feeling represented by a letter
sent to a Shanghai magazine urging the government to control what women wear, following the
example of fascist Italy. The author of the letter was a man who found himself scandalized by
near-nakedness of women who wore non-conservative clothing (Finnane 169). Ironically, the
Republican government’s policies, though they strove to eliminate breastbinding, fostered the
same mindset as the Song Dynasty society in which breastbinding was initiated. The onus was
placed on women to restrict their own actions in order not to provoke desire in men. The
Republican government went one step further by attempting to nationalize the female body,
making women’s outward appearance an issue of national concern (Yen 179). For example,
unbound breasts were considered healthful and important to the robust body that the nationalists
hoped to promote, so legislation was passed to ensure that all women conformed to this ideal.
Unlike the initial unsuccessful calls to end breastbinding, the Republican anti-breastbinding
movement was not undertaken by female activists for women’s health or liberation, but rather
was spearheaded by male intellectuals and policy makers for the interests of the nationalist
agenda.
In the late Republican era, women’s bodies were objectified as battle grounds on which
the struggle for modernity and national strength took place. National debate and government
focus centered around “the size of feet, the look of breasts, the length of hair, and the style of
dress” of the country’s female citizens (Yen 173). Some people blamed women’s clothing for
China’s recent failures such as the invasion by Japan (Finnane 174). Most agreed that women’s
bodies “symbolize the weakness and backwardness of China” (Yen 182). Breastbinding fed the
image of Chinese women’s backwardness, just like footbinding did before it, so its continued
practice was considered a threat to the nation. The magazine New Life featured an article that
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implied that breastbinding must be eradicated because binding makes weak bodies and weak
bodies make China a weak country (Wang 470). Furthermore, any concerns about women’s
health were based on “women’s role as qualified, nurturing mothers” who could produce strong
children to grow up and lead the nation, not based on actual concern for women’s suffering
(Zhang 25). As Zhang Aihua states, “Chinese women’s physical liberation depended more on its
relation to national interests than on the need of female health care for its legitimacy and efficacy”
(7). One can hardly call it liberation then, if women were merely forced to transition from one
mode of dress sanctioned by one era’s patriarchy, to another mode of dress sanctioned by another.
Hu Shi, a philosopher, essayist, and diplomat from the 1930’s and 40’s remarked on the inherent
problem with government legislation dictating women’s liberation. He said, “We cannot abuse
our power and arbitrarily issue standards [of behavior] that declare: women’s liberation extends
to unbinding their feet and cutting their hair, and no further; they are not to perm their hair, wear
short sleeves or silk stockings, dance, or wear makeup” (qtd. Finnane 174). As Zhang Aihua
agrees, when a predominantly patriarchal government imposes “bodily regulation” on women, it
will “perpetuate male domination and female submission” (6).
As the comparison between footbinding and breastbinding shows, China has a history of
equating women’s bodies with barometers of national progress. Women’s liberation has become
inextricably bound up in issues of national pride, and suffers for this connection. Policy makers
often focus on the aim of national progress and forget the original aim of women’s freedom. This
occurred in Yan’s anti-footbinding campaign when old women were forced to painfully unbind
their feet and in the Guangzhou prohibitions against jewelry and outlandish clothing even as
women were ordered to stop binding their breasts. A sexist attitude towards women was
propagated by anti-binding campaigns that describe women as dangerous seductresses who
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tempt men with their decadent ways, putting great pressure on women not to be provocative,
while simultaneously continuing to deny them the agency to choose how they adorn their own
bodies. Although women’s natural feet and natural breasts may have been literally liberated
when binding ceased, women’s actual liberation from patriarchal dictation on dress and
deportment still had a long way to go.
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Works Cited
Primary Source:
Wang Dezhao.（王德照） "zhongguo nuzi de shuxiong" (中国女子的束胸）(Chinese women's
breast-binding). New Life. 3.40 (1928): 35.
Secondary Sources:
Finnane, Antonia. Changing Clothes in China: Fashion, History, Nation. New York: Columbia
University Press, 2008. Print.
Ko, Dorothy. “The Body Inside Out.” Cinderella’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding,
38-68.
Yen Hsiao-Pei. “Body Politics, Modernity and National Salvation: The Modern Girl and the
New Life Movement.” Asian Studies Review 29.2 (2005): 165-186. Academic Search
Complete. Web. 1 April 2014.
Zhang Aihua. “Women’s Breasts and Beyond – A Gendered Analysis of the Appeals for Breast
Unbinding: 1910s-1920s.” Postscript: A Journal of Graduate Criticism and Theory. 8.1
(2011): 6-33. Memorial University Libraries. Web. 15 April 2014.