France / China: Chinese fetish, French fantasy. Two Chinese girls with bound feet in a lesbian embrace, lithograph, Jean-Baptiste Mauzaisse (1784-1844), c. 1840s

Foot binding (pinyin: chanzu, literally 'bound feet') was a custom practiced on young girls and women for approximately one thousand years in China, beginning in the 10th century and ending in the first half of 20th century. There is little evidence for the custom prior to the court of the Southern Tang dynasty in Nanjing, which celebrated the fame of its dancing girls, renowned for their tiny feet and beautiful bow shoes.

What is clear is that foot binding was first practised among the elite and only in the wealthiest parts of China, which suggests that binding the feet of well-born girls represented their freedom from manual labor and, at the same time, the ability of their husbands to afford wives who did not need to work, who existed solely to serve their men and direct household servants while performing no labor themselves. Bound feet were considered intensely erotic in traditional Chinese culture. Qing Dynasty sex manuals listed 48 different ways of playing with women's bound feet.

Jean-Baptiste Mauzaisse (November 1784–1844) was a French painter and lithographer. Born in Corbeil, he began studying at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1803. His first painting, L'Arabe pleurant son coursier (The Arab Mourning his Steed), won him a first class medal at the exhibition at the Salon in 1812. Mauzaisse's specialty was painting historical subjects, especially battle scenes, but he also painted portraits. In 1822, he was commissioned to decorate several ceilings in the Louvre. He died in Paris.

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