It is also said that the practice owes its origin to the wish to keep women indoors.  But women are not secluded in China, nor does foot compression usually render a woman unable to walk.  Many intelligent Chinese are of opinion that its object is to promote the development of the sexual parts and of the thighs, and so to aid both intercourse and parturition.  There is no ground for believing that it has any such influence, though Morache found that the mons veneris and labia are largely developed in Chinese women, and not in Tartar women living in Pekin (who do not compress the foot).  If there is any correlation between the feet and the pelvic regions, it is more probably congenital than due to the artificial compression of the feet.  The ancients seem to have believed that a small foot indicated a small vagina.  Restif de la Bretonne, who had ample opportunities for forming an opinion on a matter in which he took so great an interest, believed that a small foot, round and short, indicated a large vagina (Monsieur Nicolas, vol. i, reprint of 1883, p. 92).  Even, however, if we admit that there is a real correlation between the foot and the vagina, that would by no means suffice to render the foot a focus of sexual attraction.

It remains the most reasonable view that the foot bandage must be regarded as strictly analogous to the waist bandage or corset which also tends to produce deformity of the constricted region.  Stratz has ingeniously remarked (Frauenkleidung, third edition, p. 101) that the success of the Chinese in dwarfing trees may have suggested a similar attempt in regard to women’s feet, and adds that in any case both dwarfed trees and bound feet bear witness in the Mongolian to the same love for small and elegant, not to say deformed, things.  For a Chinaman the deformed foot is a “golden water-lily.”

    Many facts (together with illustrations) bearing on Chinese
    deformation of the foot will be found in Ploss, Das Weib, vol.
    i, Section IV.

The significance of the sexual emotion aroused by the female foot in China and the origin of its compression begin to become clear when we realize that this foot-fetichism is merely an extreme development of a tendency which is fairly well marked among nearly all the peoples of yellow race.  Jacoby, who has brought together a number of interesting facts bearing on the sexual significance of the foot, states that a similar tendency is to be found among the Mongol and Turk peoples of Siberia, and in the east and central parts of European Russia, among the Permiaks, the Wotiaks, etc.  Here the woman, at all events when young, has always her feet, as well as head, covered, however little clothing she may otherwise wear.