Ko, presents arguably the most nuanced view of footbinding, attempting to place it as an important practice within Chinese culture. Unlike most historians examining footbinding, Ko goes out of her way to avoid condemning the practice. Ko recognizes the leading role played by missionaries, but she prefers to look at other actors that she believes have been overlooked, seeing that the debate took place in everyday life as opposed to solely in writings and churches.

Anti-footbinding movements were ultimately successful, but Ko wants to look at the subtle processes involved rather than the relentless pressure suggested by others. She argues that anti-footbinding movements were most successful when attacking the cultural value of footbinding, which is where it was most firmly entrenched. Opponents of footbinding turned the arguments of the defenders against them. For instance, when defenders claimed that footbinding was a cherished cultural icon for more than a thousand years, anti-footbinding activists argued that this demonstrated the stagnation of Chinese society, which was the root of Chinese weakness in relation to the West and Japan. Footbinding was the most prominent symptom of that stagnation, so eliminating it was a necessary step towards modernizing the country and returning its dignity. Another, almost equally effective argument, was to take the argument that big-nosed barbarians cannot understand the culture of the Middle Kingdom and to demonstrate that those barbarians are laughing at Chinese culture, largely because of what they saw as the barbarity of footbinding.

The success in reducing the cultural value of footbinding led to the slow death of the practice. She looks at the slow decline of the practice, which drew out until the 1930’s. She also looks at the even slower decline of foot-bound women in society. She particularly sees the “stubbornness of individual bodies” as prolonging footbinding in society. Ko is quite critical of anti-footbinding activists, whom she accuses of being uncaring towards women with bound feet. She argues that some women chose to bind there feet for reasons of status, others had little-to-no choice in the binding of their feet and for all of them footbinding was largely irreversible. Even if footbinding was reduced or eliminated, unbinding women’s feet did not return them to their natural state. In addition, attacking footbinding and scorning foot-bound women was essentially an attack on the character of the women. Ko argues, echoing Levy, that the intense hatred of footbinding blinded activists to the feelings of the Chinese women involved.
Even as Ko emphasizes secondary players, she does not neglect the role of missionaries. She acknowledges their leading role in attacking the cultural value of footbinding. She provides a deep analysis of the demise of footbinding, looking at the effects as much as the motivation and rhetoric. She looks at a variety of sources, including the standard missionary publications and the responses from footbinding’s defenders. She also looks at writings of individuals and how they worked within the struggle. This powerful work is arguably the most thorough on footbinding to date. ( )