Costume o tortura? La fasciatura dei piedi in Cina

This paper offers a short introduction to the practice of foot binding in China, as based on the recent perspectives produced by historians and anthropologists on this topic. Especially focuses on the historical process that put an end to the custom, aiming at presenting how, from the the end of the 19th century, this practice was transformed from a kind of ritual connected to the construction of moral and physical female beauty to the most poignant symbol of women’s oppression and of Chinese backwardness. While this late judgement is justified by the recognition of the violence implied in bound feet practice, this shift of perspective could limit our understanding of women’s experience and agency in late imperial Chinese society. Moreover, a reflection on bound feet reminds us that our conceptualizations of body, nature and culture could be problematic when we compare it with the past or with customs rooted in non-Western cultures.