Corsetry and Foot Binding
Isaac Taylor Headland in his 1909 book, Court Life in China, quotes his wife, Dr. Mariam Sinclair Headland, telling of the Dowager Empress's opinion on western corsetry.
It is a well-known fact that no Manchu woman ever binds her feet, and the Empress Dowager was as much opposed to foot-binding as any other living woman. Nevertheless, she would not allow a subject to presume to suggest to her ways in which she should interfere in the social customs of the Chinese, as one of her subjects did. This lady was the wife of a Chinese minister to a foreign country, and had adopted both for herself and her daughters the most ultra style of European dress. She one day said to Her Majesty, ‘The bound feet of the Chinese woman make us the laughing-stock of the world.’
‘I have heard’ said the Empress Dowager, ‘that the foreigners have a custom which is not above reproach, and now since there are no outsiders here, I should like to see what the foreign ladies use in binding their waist.‘
The lady was very stout, and had the appearance of an hour-glass, and turning to her daughter, a tall and slender maiden, she said:
‘Daughter, you show Her Majesty.’
The young lady demurred until finally the Empress Dowager said:
‘Do you not realize that a request coming from me is the same as a command?’
After having had her curiosity satisfied, she sent for the Grand Secretary and ordered that proper Manchu outfits be secured for the lady's daughters, saying:
‘It is truly pathetic what foreign women have to endure. They are bound up with steel bars until they can scarcely breathe. Pitiable! Pitiable!’
The following day this young lady did not appear at court, and the Empress Dowager asked her mother the reason of her absence.
‘She is ill to-day,’ the mother replied.
‘I am not surprised,’ replied Her Majesty, ‘for it must require some time after the bandages have been removed before she can again compress herself into the same proportions,’ indicating that the Empress Dowager supposed that foreign women slept with their waists bound, just as the Chinese women do with their feet.
-- Court Life in China, by Isaac Taylor Headland, 1909. The Empress Dowager as a Woman.