In the excerpt from Cinderella's Sister, Dorothy Ko discusses the history of the politics surrounding foot binding in China. Though the practice was widely criticized by western societies as being indicative of China's "uncivilization", those very western societies engaged in practices (corseting, for one) which, like footbinding, were physically harmful to females. Why, then, was the treatment of women's bodies used as a basis of judgment of one culture and not for the other?