The tyranny of fashion in prescribing disfigurements and mutilations is not confined to savages.  The most amazing illustration of it is to be found in China, where the girls of the upper classes are obliged to this day to submit to the most agonizing process of crippling their feet, which finally, as Professor Flower remarks in his book on Fashion and Deformity, assume “the appearance of the hoof of some animal rather than a human foot.”  There is a popular delusion that the Chinese approve of such deformed small feet because they consider them beautiful—­a delusion which Westermarck shares (200).  Since the Chinese consider small feet “the chief charm of women,” it might be supposed, he says, that the women would at least have the pleasure of fascinating men by a “beauty” to acquire which they have to undergo such horrible torture;

“but Dr. Strieker assures us that in China a woman is considered immodest if she shows her artificially distorted feet to a man.  It is even improper to speak of a woman’s foot, and in decent pictures this part is always concealed under the dress.”

To explain this apparent anomaly Westermarck assumes that the object of the concealment “is to excite through the unknown!” To such fantastic nonsense does the doctrine of sexual selection lead.  In reality there is no reason for supposing that the Chinese consider crippled feet—­looking like “the hoof of an animal”—­beautiful any more than mutilations of other parts of the body.  In all probability the origin of the custom of crippling women’s feet must be traced to the jealousy of the men, who devised this procedure as an effective way of preventing their wives from leaving their homes and indulging in amorous intrigues; other practices with the same purpose being common in Oriental countries.  In course of time the foot-binding became an inexorable fashion which the foolishly conservative women were more eager to continue than the men.  All accounts agree that the anti-foot-binding movement finds its most violent and stubborn opponents in the women themselves.  The Missionary Review for July, 1899, contains an article summing up a report of the Tien Tsu Hui, or “Natural Foot Society,” which throws a bright light on the whole question and from which I quote as follows: 

“The male members of a family may be opposed to the maiming of their female relatives by the senseless custom, but the women will support it.  One Chinese even promised his daughter a dollar a day to keep her natural feet, and another, having failed with his older girls, arranged that his youngest should be under his personal supervision night and day.  The one natural-footed girl was sought in marriage for the dollars that had been faithfully laid by for her.  But at her new home she was so ridiculed by the hundreds who came to see her—­and her feet—­that she lost her reason.  The other girl also became insane as a result