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2001

Fashion's Foes: Dress Reform from 1850-1900

Elizabeth A. Komski
College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences

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Komski, Elizabeth A., "Fashion's Foes: Dress Reform from 1850-1900" (2001). Dissertations, Theses, and
Masters Projects. William & Mary. Paper 1539626325.
https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-cmdg-dr92

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 FASHION’S FOES:

DRESS REFORM FROM 1850-1900

A Thesis

Presented to

The Faculty of the Department of History

The College of William and Mary

In Partial Fulfillment

O f the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

by

Elizabeth A. Komski

2001
 APPROVAL SHEET

This thesis is presented in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

/ Elizabeth A. Komski

Approved May 2001

taureen Fitzgeral

n
Barbara Carson
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
Acknowledgements iv

List of Figures V

Abstract vi

Introduction 2

Chapter 1:1850-1870: Radical Dress Reform 19

Chapter 2: 1870-1900: Conservative Dress Reform 61

Conclusion 97

Bibliography 99

Vita 112

111
 ACKNOW LEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my advisor, Maureen Fitzgerald, for her infinite patience

throughout this process. She has provided both wise counsel and kindness, and

without her, my transition into graduate school would have been an unhappy

experience. Thanks also to Professors Leisa Meyer and Barbara Carson for

repeatedly reading drafts of this study. All of their comments helped shape my

understanding of the dress reformers and their world. I would also like to thank the

interlibrary loan team at Swem Library, particularly John Lawrence and Cynthia

Mack, who did not even bat an eye at my frequent requests for outlandish books from

across the country.

My family and friends served as the most wonderful support network. My

parents, Bonnie and Walter Komski, never tired of listening to my stories about

women’s fashions, and their encouragement and suggestions kept me enthusiastic

about this project. Melissa Ooten, Sarah Trembanis, Scott Ebhardt, and Christine

Baldauf listened to my tales of woe and managed to show me the bright side— or at

least help me laugh away any troubles. I would like to thank Cally Shrader for

offering to find a picture of women holding guns for the cover (not that there is one).

While she’s right that violent women might catch the eye quicker than the mere dress

reformer, sadly, I cannot think of an excuse to use it. Finally, thanks and love to

Matthew Kreydatus for Elmira, Williamsburg, and the path ahead.

 LIST OF FIGURES

A. “The Bloomer Costume” from Lee Hall, Common Threads: A Parade o f

American Clothing.
B. “Amelia Bloomer” from The Lily. September 1851.
C. “Harriet N. Austin, wearing the American Costume” from Jane Donegan,
Hydropathic Highway to Health.
D. “Example of the American Costume Worn at Our Home on the Hillside,
Dansville, New York” from Jane Donegan, Hydropathic Highway to Health.
E. “Strong Minded ‘Bloomer’” from H arper’s New Monthly Magazine 4
(December 1851-May 1852): 286.
F. “The Mode and the Martyrs” from Puck 9 (April 27, 1881): 142.
G. “Dr. Dio Lewis’s gymnastic clothing for men and women” From Dr. Dio
Lewis, The New Gymnastics fo r Men, Women, and Children. Boston: Ticknor
and Fields, 1864. (Taken from Gayle Fischer, Who Wears the Pants?)
H. “As they rowed in perfect rhythm” from George Hall, A Study in Bloomers.
I. “Aesthetic Dress” from Helen Ecob, The Well-Dressed Woman.
J. “Aesthetic Dress” from Helen Ecob, The Well-Dressed Woman.
K. “Arrival of a Recruit at the Oneida Community” from John B. Ellis, Free
Love a u d its Votaries. San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft & Co., 1870. (Taken
from Gayle Fischer, Who Wears the Pants?)
L. “Ellen G. White: The Dress Reform” from Gayle Fischer, Who Wears the
Pants?

v
 ABSTRACT

This study examines the first fifty years of organized dress reform, from 1850
until 1900. Led by a diverse group of reformers, including doctors, health reformers,
Spiritualists, members of utopian communities, woman’s rights activists, and
clubwomen, these women and men tried to persuade middle- and upper-class women
to abandon corsets and adopt lighter, more comfortable dresses in the interests of their
own health. The most famous, and notorious, of these reformers were the woman’s
rights advocates, who advanced “bloomers” in the early 1850s, an outfit composed of
a short skirt and pantaloons.
From 1850 until 1870, dress reformers found some support for clothing that
radically altered traditional women’s fashions by shortening their skirts and
incorporating pants. The styles proposed after 1870 tended to conform outwardly to
traditional fashions, and the rhetoric and motivations of the reformers shifted as well.
By the turn of the century, dress reform was increasingly commercialized, and many
branches of the movement were increasingly conservative. A careful look at dress
reform provides an insight into the changing political environment of late nineteenth-
century America. Furthermore, a study of dress reform opens windows into how
reformers— both women and men—perceived beauty and fashion.

ELIZABETH A. KOMSKI

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

THE COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY

MAUREEN FITZGERALD

FASHION’S FOES: DRESS REFORM FROM 1850-1900

vi
 FASHION’S FOES:

DRESS REFORM FROM 1850-1900

 INTRODUCTION

From 1851 until the tum-of-the-century, American men and women expressed

a variety of opinions regarding the corset and fashionable dress white middle-class

and upper-class women typically wore. Advocates of “dress reform” suggested that

women abandon traditional fashions and adopt more comfortable, healthful clothing,

although the dress reform advocates certainly did not agree on one alternative to

fashion. Activists o f the dress reform movement were a manifold lot, pooling their

energies into small task forces with unique types of rhetoric and varying agendas.

Regular doctors, health reformers, Spiritualists, members of utopian communities,

woman’s rights activists, and clubwomen made up the ranks o f dress reformers.

Obviously, this is a diverse crowd, and predictably, regular doctors licensed by the

American Medical Association (AMA) addressed dress reform in radically different

ways than did Spiritualists or clubwomen. For fifty years, these individuals shared an

interest in improving the health of American middle- and upper-class women;

however, their motivations and rhetoric were so varied, it is easy to forget they were

advocating one cause: the transformation of American women’s fashions to improve

health and comfort.

I chose to divide this thesis on dress reform into two periods, from 1850-1870

and 1870-1900. The motivations, rhetoric, and alternative costumes proposed by

dress reformers differed greatly in these two periods, although each period included

disparate reformers with conflicting motivations. Dress reformers in the first period,

2
 3

1850-1870, usually promoted shortened skirts worn over pantaloons, commonly

referred to as “bloomers” by their contemporaries. These reformers included

woman’s rights advocates, health reformers, religious zealots, and farmers and

factory women. Their chief priorities differed, yet all o f these reformers shared an

interest in women’s health. Most of the earliest dress reformers saw dress reform as

an opportunity to advance women into a position of economic, social, and political

equality with men; they believed dress reform could advertise woman’s usefulness.

And for many reformers, dress reform was about protecting the morality of women

from men’s lusts. They believed that women’s fashions inspired uncontrollable

sexual desires in men and argued that a costume that incorporated trousers would be

less sexually suggestive and, therefore, more modest. The first generation of dress

reformers often used dress to attack gender norms, suggesting that women should not

rely solely on societal notions of beauty (or sexual attractiveness) for their self-worth.

They taught women that self-worth could come from their work, their maternity, their

health, and their religion.

Clubwomen, physical culturists, doctors, health reformers, a small number of

woman’s rights advocates, and aesthetes led dress reform between 1870 and 1900.

These reformers rarely proposed that women adopt shortened skirts, although a few

did. During the second stage of dress reform, reformers concentrated their efforts on

lightening women’s undergarments, removing or loosening the corset, and cutting off

skirts that trailed on the ground. These reformers shared their predecessors’ interest

in women’s health and women’s modesty. However, they did not attempt to use dress

reform to campaign for woman’s equality or challenge the gender norms of the late-
 4

nineteenth century. Instead, they reinforced these gender norms, campaigning for

dress reform on maternalistic and aesthetic grounds. While earlier reformers

challenged gender norms that expected women to remain in the home as mothers and

archetypes of fashion, the second generation of reformers supported these roles for

women. They were careful to design alternatives to fashion that did not differ too

starkly from traditional styles, informing middle- and upper-class women that it was

woman’s duty to be beautiful. And, unlike their predecessors of the 1850s, female

dress reformers rarely wore their reformed clothing in public, preferring to educate

women on the need for change before adopting an unusual dress themselves.

Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, dress reform was

diverse: at no time was the movement organized around a single goal or item of

clothing, yet there were some consistencies throughout. Dress reformers varied their

attacks on fashion, yet they always agreed that the corset and trailing skirts were the

most pernicious features of women’s clothing. With the obvious exception of the

original woman’s rights advocates supporting the bloomers, all subsequent dress

reformers attempted to distance themselves from the woman’s rights advocates and

the bloomer costume. While many dress reformers shared the woman’s rights

advocates’ ideology, few wished to associate with a stage of dress reform that was

scorned so publicly. Also, most dress reformers were interested in using an attack on

fashion to reclaim women’s bodies for female self-expression. While the first

generation of dress reformers directly attacked fashion as a repressive gender norm,

second-stage reformers attacked the fashion industry for imposing an impersonal

model on the female body. For half a century, dress reform provided a way for
 5

women to express an individual sense of femininity and a personal conception of

beauty.

Finally, all of the dress reformers, from all periods of time, employed anti­

fashion propaganda when proposing alternatives to fashion. Many dress reformers

viciously attacked traditional fashions and scorned women for consenting to wear

those fashions. This propaganda could be highly misogynistic, and it did not always

help the reformers’ cause. Anti-fashion alienated many women who wished to make

their clothing more comfortable, but did not want to dress in a manner so antithetical

to fashion. The dress reformers of the second stage of the movement employed much

less anti-fashion propaganda than the reformers of the 1850s and 1860s, although

they did not abandon this rhetoric. While reformers still attacked fashion after 1870,

they did not conceive of their reform as posing a complete rejection o f fashion. After

1870, dress reform proposals were better received than they had been twenty years

earlier, perhaps because of the reformers’ ability to present dress reform as a

movement aimed at improving fashion rather than as a movement opposed to fashion.

This is just one of many distinctions between the first and second stages of the

dress reform movement. The second period of dress reform was distinctly more

conservative than the first period. By 1870, dress reform was no longer a movement

that challenged gender norms; instead, it worked with gender norms to promote a

healthy change in woman’s dress. Before 1870, dress reformers argued that clothing

was meant to be practical, an asset in the busy life o f a hard-working woman. After

1870, dress reformers argued that one of clothing’s chief roles was to adorn. This fit

with the dress reformers’ changing attitudes about women’s role in society.
Increasingly, the reformers accepted woman’s role as an object o f beauty. In fact,

reformers of the 1870-1900 period realized that, for many women, beauty was a

useful tool for self-expression, social advancement, and even economic survival.

While the first stage of dress reform challenged women’s role as an object of beauty

directly, the second stage of reformers— more successful with their reforms—taught

women how to manipulate gender norms while advancing their health, happiness, and

prosperity.

Historians of dress reform participate in a larger debate among feminist

historians and historians of sexuality over the role of sexuality in the lives of women.

When addressing women’s sexuality, nineteenth-century reformers tended to focus

only on the danger sexuality posed for women.1 Nineteenth-century women—

particularly middle- and upper-class women—were expected to have less innate

sexual desire than men, a concept referred to as “passionlessness.”2 Dress reformers

would argue that their reformed clothing provided women with more “modest” attire

that would protect them from predatory male sexual advances, shunning the

possibility that “good” women may have wished to seduce men with attractive

fashions. Twentieth-century historians often followed the lead of nineteenth-century

dress reformers, focusing on only the dangers sexuality posed for women who were

1 Ellen Carol DuBois and Linda Gordon, “Seeking Ecstasy on the Battlefield: Danger and Pleasure in
Nineteenth-century Feminist Sexual Thought,” in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality.
Ed. by Carole Vance, 1984, p. 31.
2 Nancy Cott develops this notion of female “passionlessness” as a nineteenth-century gender and
sexual expectation in Nancy F. Cott, “Passionlessness: An Interpretation o f Victorian Sexual Ideology,
1790-1850,” in Nancy F. Cott and Eliazbeth H. Pleck, eds., A Heritage o f H er Own. New York, 1979.
For a brief overview on the sexual standards o f the nineteenth-century, see John D ’Emilio and Estelle
B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A H istory o f Sexuality in America. Chicago: University o f Chicago
Press, 1997, p. 45.
 7

willing to step outside the boundaries o f passionlessness.3 Or they have painted

women’s expression of sexuality as akin to the ultimate expression of female power 4

The nineteenth-century dress reformer and feminist discussed middle-class women’s

sexuality in terms of passionlessness and depravity. They could protect their

reputations by emotionally and physically disengaging from sexual expression—

particularly sex outside of heterosexual marriage. They would also forcefully refuse

to associate with women (and sometimes men) who were caught acting upon sexual

lusts. Passionlessness required that middle-class women dictate sexual rules to less

powerful social groups, particularly working-class women or women of color.

Middle-class women who did not adopt passionlessness and engaged, or appeared to

engage in sex outside of heterosexual marriage ran the risk of becoming “fallen

women.”

Historians need to understand that nineteenth-century women navigated a

course of both pleasure and danger in forming their own sexuality.5 This more

complex course informed women’s decisions about personal appearance, and

therefore their attitudes toward dress reform. While white middle-class women were

not limited to choosing between a life of dangerous (and “immoral”) pleasure or true

passionlessness, this was the dominant discourse women faced in the nineteenth

century. Women who engaged in dress reform challenged, in many ways, normative

3 Historians such as William Leach paint fashion as a dangerous “seductress,” which could corrupt and
distract young women from more serious pursuits, like feminism. See William Leach, True Love and
Perfect Union: The Fem inist Reform o f Sex and Society. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1980, 213,
244, 254-55.
4 David Kunzle and Valerie Steele both argue that expressing sexuality could be completely liberating
for women in the nineteenth century. They focus on the opportunities for pleasure that sexuality held
for women in nineteenth-century America, to the exclusion of a consideration of potential dangers
these women faced.
5 Dubois and Gordon, “Ecstasy on the Battlefield”
 8

ideas about sexuality. First of all, by wearing pants, women were directly and

indirectly challenging men’s sexual access to them. Dress reformers believed that

wearing pants gave women a measure of protection from rape.6 This was both

because pants could impede a rapist from simply throwing up a woman’s skirts in an

attack, and also because dress reformers believed that skirts were designed to seduce

men, but pants did not have this beguiling allure. Dress reformers throughout this

period agreed that their reformed clothing protected women’s “morality.” In other

words, dress reformers connected a reform of clothing with the protection of women

from a threatening male sexuality.

Despite the dress reformers’ assertion that dress reform was more sexually

respectable (or in their words, more moral) than contemporary fashions, their critics

loudly declaimed reformed dress as a sign of the reformers’ depravity. Most

Americans saw women in pants as a symbol o f “immorality” and gender instability.

While dress reformers argued (in radically different ways depending on the time

period) that they were redefining “feminine” appearance, the public believed that

dress reform destroyed femininity by encouraging women to look like men. The

underlying presumption here was that a woman who dressed like a man might

expect— and many dress reformers between 1850 and 1870 did expect—male access

to power. Furthermore, women who dressed like men might behave like men

sexually. In other words, they might exhibit aggressive sexual desire and

passionately seek heterosexual, or even more ominously, homosexual relationships.

6 For an example of this, see Mary Edwards Walker. H it New York: The American News Company,
1871, 58-65.
 9

Critics of dress reform played upon these fears to taint the entire movement as

deviant.

Women who wore the shortened dress defied convention to do so; in fact most

Americans saw women’s open adoption of pants in any form as a defiance of

femininity. Nineteenth-century Americans generally tended to categorize any woman

wearing pants for any reason as a cross-dresser, assuming that her adoption of “male”

clothing indicated deviance or lack of femininity, and perhaps a sexual desire

“unnatural” for the passionless woman. Cross-dressers threatened the normative

nineteenth-century view o f gender: they defied the traditional binary o f

“male/female.” Nineteenth-century Americans were uncertain which category a

cross-dresser belonged to, and this uncertainty challenged the nature of the binary

itself. Dress reformers adamantly denied that they were dressing as men, reassuring

readers that when Amelia Bloomer donned the reformed dress, there was “none of the

masculine appearance her enemies sometimes accuse her of.”8 Instead, they viewed

reformed dress as a reconstruction of traditional femininity. While the dress

reformers of the 1850s were radically challenging gender norms, they did not

question the gender binary (female/male) itself.

Most work dealing with the nineteenth-century dress reform movement

devotes only a few pages to the unique experiments in fashion that the reformers

advocated. Moreover, the only way to approach the history o f dress reform is through

multiple historical frameworks. A piecemeal dress reform historiography includes

7 For an extensive discussion o f cross-dressing, see Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing
and Cultural Anxiety. New York: Routledge, 1992. For a discussion on early twentieth century
understandings of cross-dressing and lesbianism, see Esther Newton, “The Mythic Mannish Lesbian:
 10

works by fashion historians, historians of sexuality, historians of science, or more

specifically, health reform, economic historians, social and cultural historians,

historians o f religion, and feminist historians of the woman’s rights movement.

Despite the diversity of frameworks through which dress reform has been viewed,

historians generally come back to a few key questions.

First, were the motivations of the dress reformers “feminist”? In other words,

were the dress reformers attempting to undercut or reinforce normative gender and

sexual expectations of their day?9 Did the dress reformers attack fashions to recruit

women for “nobler” goals, and if so, were these goals contrary to traditional gender

norms, or were they synonymous with them? Some historians argue that dress reform

was a recruiting mechanism for women’s rights advocates, others argue that dress

reform used traditional gender norms, including maternalism, to oppress women.10

Historians question what role women played in the creation of fashion. Were women

passive consumers of styles produced by an industry selling beauty, or were they

themselves creating the beauty industry through deliberate fashion choices? Many

dress reformers constructed women as victims of a tyrannical fashion industry,

downplaying the personal choices these women made in constructing their

Radclyffe Hall and the New Woman,” Signs: Journal o f Women in Culture and Society 9, no. 4
(Summer 1984): 557-575.
8 The Lily. 4 (December 1852): 99.
9 Helene Roberts, William Leach, Kathleen Torrens, Nancy Isenberg and Jeanette and Robert Lauer
argue that dress reformers were “feminists”; although, they disagree on the level o f altruism in the
dress reformers’ motives. While Helene Roberts portrays dress reformers as radical feminists
attempting a noble liberation of women from debilitating clothing, William Leach portrays dress
reformers as feminists who feared that fashion would lure women away from the women’s rights
movement, and sought to stamp it out. Valerie Steele and David Kunzle argue that dress reformers
were antifeminists bent on social control, seeking to manipulate women, particularly working-class
women, by crushing their femininity.
10 William Leach argues that women’s rights advocates used dress reform to recruit members, while
David Kunzle and Karen Blair argue that maternalism was a primary rhetorical tool to draw women
into dress reform.
 11

appearances. Some historians have agreed with these dress reformers, painting

fashion as a trickle-down system where elite men and women direct the fashion

options of the m asses.11 Historians such as Helene Roberts and Jane Donegan have

described fashion as a form of “repressive” social and physical control imposed upon

women by elites in the fashion industry.12

Other historians have argued for an understanding of fashion as a democratic

expression, insisting that working- or middle-class women create (or at least

manipulate) fashions to define their own sexuality and individuality. In 1977, David

Kunzle published an article entitled “Dress Reform as Antifeminism: A Response to

Helene E. Roberts, ‘The Exquisite Slave...’” and then followed with a book entitled

Fashion and Fetishism: A Social History o f the Corset, Tight Lacing, and other

Forms o f Body Sculpture in the West in 1982. Kunzle argues that, after 1870, most

dress reformers were male doctors who condemned tight lacing and corsetry (which

he defines as lower middle- and working-class fashions) as “unnatural expressions”

of sexuality. Kunzle believes that these doctors used their power as experts to impose

a middle-class male view of femininity and sexuality upon middle- and working-class

women. The doctors feared the “unnatural” sexuality o f these women because they

realized that “tight-lacing was an expression not of conformity with the ‘fashionable’

(i.e. culturally dominant) role of the socio-sexually passive, maternal woman,” but

instead, an expression of “female sexual self-assertion, even emancipation.” 13 These

11 Helene Roberts and Jeanette and Robert Lauer tend to portray women as victims of fashion.
12 Helene Roberts, “The Exquisite Slave: The Role o f Clothes in the Making o f the Victorian Woman,”
Signs. 2 (1977): 554-569, 555. Jane B. Donegan, Hydropathic Highway to Health: Women and the
Water Cure in Antebellum America. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989.
13 Kunzle is rare among historians for focusing his analysis on the later years (post-1870) o f the dress
reform movement. His material comes from English works, but Kunzle includes American dress
reform in his sweeping derision of this “conservative” movement. David Kunzle, Fashion and
 12

doctors interpreted female sexual emancipation as frightening deviance. Kunzle

argues that the dress reformers feared the sexuality o f the women who did tight lace

and hoped “modest” forms of dress would restrain them from drawing unnatural

attention to their bodies.

Kunzle used the experts’ condemnation of tight lacing to examine fashion’s

role in the lives of working- and lower-middle-class women, arguing that these

women used fashion to express their identity and sexuality. “Tight-lacers were, as a

matter of definition, self-conscious women, and this kind of self-consciousness,

which imprinted itself upon bodily carriage, movement, and a woman’s aura, was

considered quite improper.” Kunzle implicitly endorses a particular kind of sexual

expression— sexual freedom to choose partners and dress “provocatively”—as a

symbol of “feminism” for lower- and middle-class women in the nineteenth century.

It is possible that “sexual freedom” was not as liberating as Kunzle implies. He does

not analyze why tight lacing was beneficial, or sexually provocative, other than

identifying it as rebellion against middle-class male doctors and elitist dress

reformers. Kunzle assumes that wearing provocative clothing was liberating for

women, regardless of how this form of sexual expression affected women’s day-to-

day lives.

Valerie Steele reiterated many o f David Kunzle’s main themes when she

wrote Fashion and Eroticism: Ideals o f Feminine Beauty from the Victorian Era to

the Jazz Age (1985). Steele suggests that fashionable dress empowered women,

particularly by allowing them to reveal their erotic individuality. Like David Kunzle,

Fetishism: A Social History o f the Corset, Tight Lacing, and other Forms o f Body Sculpture in the
West. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1982, xviii, and “Dress Reform as Antifeminism: A
 13

she argues that the dress reformers were “antifeminist” and “puritan.” Steele also

recognizes agency in the women who refused to adopt reformed costumes, choosing

instead to express their sexuality through fashions.

* Most historians have tacitly accepted the dress reformers’ line—that orthodox
Victorian fashion was unnatural and unhealthy, and that women’s
emancipation went hand-in-hand with the progressive reform o f women’s
dress. Yet neither statement is accurate. The women’s movement in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was often hostile to sexual
expression. Many modern feminists have also perceived erotic dress and the
pursuit of beauty as antithetical to women’s rights. Consequently, liberal
historians have remained oblivious to the prejudices, exaggerations, and
contradictions inherent in the dress reform literature, which is not so much
‘feminist’ (indeed it is often antifeminist) as it is an expression of puritanism,
and specifically of the movement for ‘social purity.’14

Like David Kunzle, Steele associates sexual expression with “feminism.” She does

not delve deeply into the effects of sexual expression on nineteenth-century women,

examining “sexual expression” in fashion purely through twentieth-century

understandings of sexuality. She builds her research on the argument that “the

Victorians were far less ‘prudish’ or anti-sexual than we had thought,” and that this

(intrinsically good development), in turn, reveals that Victorian women who resisted

dress reform exerted agency in their daily lives. Like Kunzle, Steele assumes that it

was men who opposed women’s “egotistical” interest in fashion and beauty. This

suggests that dress reform served as a battleground for a war between the sexes.

Steele argues that men defined women’s interest in fashion as egotistical in order to

thwart their sexual expression, while women used fashion to express their sexuality

and individuality, as they simultaneously seduced men. She argues that dress reform

Response to Helene E. Roberts...” Signs. 2 (1977): 570-579.

 14

was a male-led movement of repression, and working- and middle-class women

fought that oppression by wearing ostentatious fashions, tight corsets, and long, heavy

skirts. Like Kunzle, Steele is attempting to develop a framework that acknowledges

nineteenth-century women5s agency, but she does not find that agency within the

dress reform movement itself; instead, she sees agency in resistance to dress reform.

Both Steele and Kunzle fail to offer an explanation for why so many women,

including women’s rights advocates, embraced the dress reform movement.

Furthermore, Kunzle and Steele’s analysis would be more balanced if they explored

how sexually expressive clothing posed dangers for working- and lower-middle-class

women in the nineteenth century. In 1997, Kathleen Torrens’ wrote a more tempered

analysis on early dress reform that suggests that “feminine,” attractive, sexy clothing

provided both a source of strength and a limitation for middle-class women.15

Beautiful, stylish women were admired, socially mobile, and often financially

rewarded with a good marriage for their fashion sense. But simultaneously, women

felt compelled by social pressures to maintain a feminine appearance, and in the

1850s and 1860s (Torrens’ period of study), this required women to be “frail mentally

and physically,” with “waspish” waists and pale skin. Mid-nineteenth-century ideals

of beauty demanded dependence, submissiveness, and quietude, not to mention

uncomfortable corsets and long, dragging skirts.16 Torrens allows us to see dress

14 Steele also examined dress reform, primarily in England, after 1870, and applies her English
evidence to American dress reform. Valerie Steele, Fashion and Eroticism: Ideals o f Feminine Beauty
fro m the Victorian Era to the Jazz Age. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, 5.
15 Kathleen M. Torrens, “All Dressed Up with No Place to Go: Rhetorical Dimensions of the
Nineteenth-Century Dress Reform Movement,” in W om en’s Studies in Communication. 20 (fall 1997):
189-210.
16 Torrens, 191-193.
 15

reform as opening a new avenue of protest for women seeking to challenge— or at

least manipulate—restrictive gender norms.

Despite Kunzle and Steele’s critiques of dress reform, some historians have

recently argued that the movement posed a much-needed challenge to gender norms

that required women to adopt the role o f beauty object in society. In Sex and

Citizenship in Antebellum America Nancy Isenberg places dress reform in the context

of “visual politics,” which indicates immediately that she assumed dress reform was a

political movement. She suggests that dress reformers of the 1850s wanted to use a

visual representation, or middle-class women’s clothing, to advertise their views on

normative gender roles. By dressing in clothing that incorporated pants (or

pantaloons), the reformers staged a self-conscious presentation of their ideal woman.

IT
They wished to replace feminine modesty with “virtue” and “self-mastery.”

Isenberg holds that the dress reformers were concerned about representation

of woman’s nature, and wished to recreate the “natural woman” through dress reform.

Isenberg describes dress reformers’ “natural woman” as someone who exhibited

virtue and feared fashion would induce “sins of the flesh.”18 Isenberg believes that

dress reformers were reinventing traditional modesty to provide women with a greater

moral foothold in their battles with antifeminists.19 Women could challenge their

opponents, who claimed that women were relegated to the private sphere because

their fashionable clothing and their fragile bodies prevented them from an active role

in the public. By claiming that traditional fashionable modesty was false-modesty,

17 Nancy Isenberg, Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill, NC: University o f North
Carolina Press, 1998. p. 48-49.
18 p. 49
 16

and reclaiming woman’s moral superiority through a virtuous costume, dress

reformers were demanding that woman’s body no longer be seen as a male-controlled

sexual object. Nancy Isenberg sees dress reformers’ battle with fashion as a

reclamation of the female body—for and by females. Women were suggesting that

their bodies were their own, and their health, comfort, and virtue should be prioritized

over men’s sexual desires.

In 1983, Lois W. Banner wrotz American Beauty, examining changing notions

on
of beauty during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Banner suggests that,

while the first stage of dress reform—led by the woman’s rights advocates in their

bloomer costume—was a failure, the second stage of dress reform, led by

clubwomen, was successful because the reforms quickly became mainstream

fashions. Banner’s study of dress reform is perhaps the most balanced of any analysis

of the movement. She is the only historian discussed here who examined both the first

and second stage of the movement. Yet, she does not make dress reform central to

her study of American beauty ideals. Banner considered dress reform a “feminist”

undertaking, as seen from the chapter title concerning the movement: “The Feminist

Challenge and Fashion’s Response.” She criticized the earliest dress reformers for so

quickly surrendering this important opportunity for a re-creation of woman’s identity.

According to Banner, Stanton failed feminists when she “underestimated fashion’s

power and failed to realize the extent to which it underlay the entire constellation of

discriminations against women. Standards of beauty might change and work for

19 As we shall see later in this historiography, Isenberg was taking historians Valerie Steele and David
Kunzle to task with this analysis.
20 Banner, Lois. Am erican Beauty. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983.
 17

unmarried women might become respectable, but women continued to define

• « 01
themselves by their physical appearance and their ability to attract men.”

Like Kunzle, Steele, and Torrens, Banner acknowledges that fashion was an

instrument of power for many women. But she also perceives fashion as potentially

divisive and dangerous. Banner’s analysis of the second stage of dress reform reflects

her ambiguous outlook on fashion. She portrayed postbellum dress reform as a

movement seeking to make aesthetic and practical improvements in women’s dress.

Because of their aesthetic impulses, reformers allied with the fashion industry. “Any

style, no matter how reformist in origin, can easily be taken over by the commercial

fashion world.”22 However, she acknowledges that this second stage of dress reform

was much more successful than earlier attempts. Dress reformers “were an important

part of the broad feminist coalition that existed by the 1890s and offered major

psychological support for women not only to enter the work force or to pursue higher

degrees, but also to wear suits and shirtwaists or to ride bicycles on city streets.” Yet,

despite the “feminism” of this second stage of reformers, Banner links their success to

their ability to compromise their attack on beauty norms. “Even reform dress could

be modified in accordance with the prevailing mode.”

There is one trend in dress reform historiography that remains disturbingly

consistent. Most historians have marginalized dress reform, neglecting the powerful

implications it had for the constructions of women’s femininity and sexuality, the

creation of a beauty industry, and the development of feminism in late nineteenth-

century America. By examining dress reform only in relation to fashion history,

21 Ibid., 100.
22 Ibid., 147.
 18

historians tend to ignore the influences of politics in shaping the dress reform

movement. The postbellum dress reformers were influenced by the reactions to

antebellum reforms. While many historians have touched on these issues, dress

reform is spread over fifty years— and the many generalizations made regarding this

movement consistently miss the subtle changes that occurred over time and among

reformers. It is necessary to revisit this movement with a multidisciplinary approach

and examine the motivations and rhetoric of dress reformers in connection to

women’s history, fashion history, and social history.

23 Ibid., 150.
 I

1850-1870: RADICAL DRESS REFORM

Fashion has always sparked controversy; designers, dressmakers, and

fashionable people intentionally challenge conventions to parade their skill,

creativity, wealth, and beauty. By the mid-nineteenth century, woman’s dress had

been an issue of debate for hundreds of years. Health and religious reformers had

long censured the trailing skirts and corsets commonly worn by upper- and middle-

class women. Yet it was not until 1851 that dress reform became a national issue. In

the early spring of 1851, three woman’s rights advocates— Amelia Bloomer,

Elizabeth Smith Miller, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton—drew reformers into one diffuse

movement by donning short skirts over pantaloons (baggy pants). For a period of a

few months, the “bloomers” appealed to a broad group o f reformers interested in

improving women’s dress, including health reformers, women’s rights advocates,

religious zealots, farmers, and factory women. Dress reformers across the country

agreed that the shortened dress worn by these three woman’s rights advocates was

preferred to traditional fashions and gave them their full support. Most dress

reformers realized the great potential these three women brought to their cause.

Amelia Bloomer was the editor of an increasingly popular temperance and woman’s

rights journal, The Lily. Stanton was already famous for her leadership in the 1848

women’s convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Her husband, Henry Stanton, was a

prominent politician and abolitionist. And Elizabeth Smith Miller was the wife of

politician Charles Dudley Miller, and the daughter of one of the most notorious

reformers o f the era, Gerrit Smith.

19
 20

Dress reformers supported these three woman’s rights advocates because of

their shared interest in reforming women’s clothing and their power to advertise the

cause. Many dress reformers shared Stanton, Bloomer, and Miller’s interest in

woman’s rights; however, the dress reform movement between 1851 and 1870 was

intensely diverse in its membership. Most reformers were white, upper- and middle-

class women and men from the Northeast, but all of the participants had unique

agendas and clothing alternatives. Few dress reformers were involved in the dress

reform movement solely out of concern for women’s dress. They saw dress reform as

a small part of a broader agenda. Dress provided a unique tool for woman’s rights

advocates, religious reformers, and health enthusiasts to advance women’s religious

or health concerns. Yet, a few reformers were involved in the movement solely

because of their interest in reforming women’s clothing. The dress reformers’

motivations provide categories o f analysis through which we can enter this complex

cause and examine its membership and effect. It is necessary to remember that,

particularly during the first twenty years of dress reform, the motivations of the

reformers overlapped and changed regularly. Just about the only thing that united

these varied reformers was a shared dislike of the fashions for women in 1851.

Dress reformers shared this dislike with many Americans who would never

have considered themselves part of a movement. Some Americans were content to

criticize women’s dress without personally working to change the current fashions.

The normative ideals of the middle-class dictated women’s “fashion.” Fashionable

clothing— in 1851, long skirts over layered petticoats, corsets, and tight bodices—

were worn by most middle- and upper-class women. Adopting (or asking your
 21

female family members to adopt) a dress that visibly differed from the fashions o f the

day, to forgo a corset or shorten one’s skirts, was an act of daring. Only the dress

reformers proposed alternatives to fashion. These alternatives set them apart from

individuals who were merely anti-fashion. While most upper- and middle-class

women dressed in the current fashions, there were millions of Americans who were

critical o f fashion; doctors, religious reformers, woman’s rights advocates, and some

women and men of all classes and races agreed that fashion was pernicious. Much of

the literature written by dress reformers drew on this anti-fashion sentiment. Anti­

fashion could be highly misogynistic and irrational. A poem published in H arper’s

New Monthly Magazine in 1858 made a clear connection between fashion and

prostitution, a connection that was drawn upon by dress reformers regularly in their

own rhetoric.

See that painted spectre,

The vampyre of the streets!
What foul demon wrecked her
Hoard of youthful sweets?
Made a crime of loveliness?
Oh! ‘twas Dress— ‘twas Dress!24

Fashion provided a tool for anti-fashion propagandists just as it did for dress

reformers. Misogynists, moralists, and doctors often attacked women—particularly

with suggestions that they were exhibiting a deviant sexuality—by attacking their

fashions.

Ironically, women involved in dress reform challenged anti-fashion attacks by

questioning women’s power in choosing the styles they wore. Anti-fashion literature

typically assumed that women had complete control when designing their clothing.
 22

An anti-fashion advocate and subscriber to Chamber’s Edinburgh Journal insisted,

“The one thing above all which convinces him o f the inferiority o f the female mind

generally to the male, is the submission which women show to every foolish fashion

which is dictated to them....”25 This man assumed women weakly adopted any style

proposed by designers without any regard for individuality. Dress reformers, in

contrast, acknowledged that many forces were at play in the creation of fashions.

Kate Gannett Wells, a subscriber to The Woman's Journal, insisted that “most

[women dress] for their own self-respect.”26 But Amelia Bloomer argued that men

controlled women’s fashions: “Women should not dare to make a change in their

costume till they have the consent of men— for they claim the right to prescribe for us

in the fashion of our dress as well as in all things else.”27 Elizabeth Cady Stanton

suggested that women dressed to please men: “The only object of a woman’s life is

marriage, and the shortest way to a man’s favor is through his passions; and woman

has studied well all the little arts and mysteries by which she can stimulate him to the

pursuit. Every part of a woman’s dress has been faithfully conned by some French

courtesan to produce this effect.”28

Stanton’s comments suggest the suspicion with which the dress reformers

regarded the fashion designers and dressmakers. “Fashion” itself was blamed for

“dictating” what women wore. Dress reformers often drew upon abolitionist rhetoric

to protest the mastery of fashion. Mrs. M. M. Jones, a dress reformer and author,

24 Quoted from Michael and Ariane Batterberry. Mirror, Mirror: A Social H istory o f Fashion. New
York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1977, 11.
25 “The American Costume,” The Lily. 4 (March 1852): 20.
26 Wells, Kate Gannett. “A Defense o f Fashionable Girls,” W oman’s Journal. 4 (May 24, 1873): 162.
27 Bloomer, Amelia. “Female Attire,” The Lily. 3 (February 1851): 13.
28 Russell, Frances E. “A Brief Survey o f the American Dress Reform Movements of the Past, with
Views of Representative Women,” Arena. 6 (August 1892): 327.
Fig. A “The Bloomer Costume,” Currier and Ives, (1851). From Lee Hall, Common Threads: A
Parade o f American Clothing.
Fig. B “Amelia Bloomer” from The Lily. September 1851
dramatically described fashion as a tyrant and women as its slaves: “Fashion with its

iron fetters enchains her womanhood in the dust.. .because the links are flower-

enwreathed she deems she is not bound.”29 Many dress reformers relied on this image

of fashion “enslaving” innocent women. Obviously, they could not agree on how

much agency women held in the creation of fashions. Women had varying levels of

control over their own styles, depending on their creativity and confidence. To some

women, fashion was a constant presence, a master that had to be obeyed. Other

women saw fashion as an opportunity for self-expression. Dress reformers agreed

that women had some agency in choosing their clothing, but their acknowledgement

of the social forces that led women to dress fashionably deflected much of the

misogyny of anti-fashion propaganda away from women.

Dress reformers did not just disagree on women’s agency in creating fashion,

they also disagreed on alternatives to fashion. To the twenty-first-century eye, their

alternatives appear remarkably similar. The woman’s rights advocates— or the

women and men who fought for economic, social, and especially political equality for

women during the second half of the nineteenth century— developed the most

notorious alternative, known as the “bloomers.” Amelia Bloomer did not invent this

outfit, she merely advertised it in The Lily. Elizabeth Smith Miller adopted a short,

full skirt worn over very full trousers. (For two representations o f the costume, see

figures A and B.) The skirt was held out with a few petticoats, and the waistline was

narrowly cut, similarly to fashionable dresses. It was not, however, worn with a

corset. Many others claim to be the first to wear the reformed dress, and it is certain

29 Jones, M[ary] M. W om an’s Dress: Its M oral and Physical Relations, being an Essay Delivered
before the W orld’s Health Convention, New York City, Nov. 1864. New York: Miller, Wood, and Co.,
 24

that, while Elizabeth Smith Miller was the first reformer documented as wearing the

costume publicly, she was not developing a completely new fashion with her

“Turkish” trousers and short skirt.30 She wore this costume to Seneca Falls in the

winter of 1851 while visiting her cousin, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Stanton was

fascinated by the ease the costume afforded. In her memoirs, she reminisced upon

her cousin’s ability to carry a lamp and a baby up the stairs with no fear of tripping.

Soon, she too had adopted the new outfit, rejoicing in the comfort of her new dress

“like a captive set free.”31

Amelia Bloomer had recently sparred with the conservative editor of the

Seneca County Courier, Isaac Fuller, over the issue o f woman’s dress. Unwittingly,

Fuller had praised women spotted at the W orld’s Fair in London for wearing an early

version of the bloomer costume. Bloomer remarked, “we are so thankful that men are

beginning to undo some of the mischief they have done us,” again implying that men

controlled the fashion w orld.32 Soon afterwards, Bloomer met Elizabeth Smith

Miller, and joined Stanton and Miller as a dress reformer, adopting the shortened

dress herself. She also campaigned vigorously in her journal for women to cut off

their trailing skirts and adopt pantaloons. Editors eagerly reported on the bloomers,

and the publicity soon spread across the nation. While many editors reported on the

costume with scorn, they inadvertently brought it to the attention o f more women,

who in turn adopted the outfit.

1865, 8.
30 For a lengthy discussion on the inspiration and origin of the first “bloomer” dress, see Gayle V.
Fischer, Who Wears the Pants? Women, Dress Reform, and Power in the M id-Nineteenth-Century
United States. Ph. D. Indiana University, 1995, especially the chapter entitled “Pants in Private.”
31 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eighty Years and M ore (1815-1897) Rem iniscences o f Elizabeth Cady
Stanton. London: T. Fisher UnWin, Paternoster Square, 1898. pp. 201.
32 “Female Attire,” The Lily. (February 1851): 13
 25

Many advocates of woman’s rights followed Miller, Stanton, and Bloomer’s

example and adopted the shortened dress. In the History o f Woman Suffrage, Stanton,

Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage recorded a few of the early dress

reformers.

The names of those who wore the Bloomer costume at that early day are
Elizabeth Smith Miller, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Amelia Bloomer, Sarah and
Angelina Grimke, Mrs. William Burleigh, Charlotte Beebe Wilbour, Lucy
Stone, Susan B. Anthony...,33

This list includes some of the most famous dress reformers of the day. Most of these

women were woman’s rights advocates; their interest in dress reform was secondary

to their interest in advocating political rights for women. T. S. Arthur, a critic of both

dress reform and woman’s rights, made the connection between these two

movements. “The ladies who have freed themselves o f long heavy skirts, and long

tight waists, and substituted the comfortable short dress and trowsers (sic) are those

who claim an equality of the sexes—who believe that woman was created equal in

intellect to man.” Amelia Bloomer confirmed this connection in The Lily, agreeing

“This is true....”34

Bloomer and Arthur were certainly not alone in making this connection;

nationally, dress reform and woman’s rights were seen as synonymous throughout the

early 1850s. Woman’s rights advocates were the most vocal of the dress reformers

from 1851 until 1855. They advertised dress reform in The Lily— a more prominent

publication than the Water Cure Journal or The Sibyl, the other two journals that

supported dress reform during the 1850s. Woman’s rights advocates had the most

33 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds. History o f Woman
Suffrage. 2ded. Rochester, NY: Charles Mann, 1889. 1:844.
 26

daring and well-known platform with their call for social, political, and economic

equality, and they were more threatening than the health reformers or even the

religious groups who advocated dress reform. Woman’s rights advocates were

challenging gender norms, whereas health reformers were merely attempting to

improve national hygiene, and the religious reformers interested in dress reform were

rarely even interested in conversion.35 Finally, woman’s rights advocates typically

wore the reformed dress to their conventions, permanently tying dress reform and

woman’s rights together in the eyes of the public.

For the woman’s rights advocates the shortened dress was foremost an

opportunity for healthier living for women. They also made dress a symbol of

woman’s usefulness and personal emancipation from male-imposed conventions.

And finally, they made dress reform into a demand that women no longer be regarded

as objects for men’s lusts. Some motivations were more powerful for some woman’s

rights activists than others, but all dress reformers agreed that the shortened dress was

healthier than long skirts.

Amelia Bloomer claimed, “We only wore [the shortened dress] because we

found it comfortable, convenient, safe, and tidy—with no thought of introducing a

fashion, but with the wish that every woman would throw off the burden of clothes

that was dragging her life out.”36 Bloomer greatly oversimplified the woman’s rights

advocates’ motivations; however, she did sum up their most common and basic

argument in favor of the reformed clothing. Almost all dress reformers agreed that

34 “Who Are the Leaders?” The Lily. 8 (June 1851): 45.

35 Dress-reforming religious communities included the Oneida Community, which did not actively
recruit converts, and the Mormons and Protestants, who rarely made dress a rhetorical argument for
conversion.
 27

the shortened dress provided women with “health, comfort, and convenience.”37

Bloomer linked the effort to reform women’s dress with the other “health” concern

woman’s rights advocates promoted regularly, the struggle to make men temperate.

She suggested in at least one article that men drank because their wives spent their

husbands’ money on unhealthy clothing.38 The woman’s rights advocates had close

links to temperance and health reform; it was consistent with these connections that

they try to improve the health of American women.

Woman’s rights advocates were as concerned with improving women’s image

as invaluable citizens as they were with improving their health. They used dress as a

rhetorical tool to glorify women’s daily tasks. Stanton wrote to The Lily in 1851

connecting reformed dress to the active, productive lives of mid-nineteenth-century

women.

Some say the Turkish costume [another term for reformed dress] is not
graceful. Grant it. For parlor dolls, who loll on crimson velvet
couches, and study attitudes before tall mirrors— for those who have
no part to perform in the great drama in life, for whose heads, hearts
and hands, there is no work to do, the drapery is all well; let them hang
it on, thick and heavy as they please.... But for us, common place,
every day, working characters, who wash and iron, bake and brew,
carry water and fat babies up stairs and down, bring potatoes, apples,
and pans of milk from the cellar, run our own errands, through mud or
snow; shovel paths, and work in the garden; why ‘the drapery’ is quite
too much— one might as well work with a ball and chain. 9

Stanton is reminding her middle-class readers of both their usefulness and the lack of

acknowledgement they received for their labor. Stanton suggests to readers that

women were equally important in the maintenance of their families as were men. She

36 Russell, Frances E., “A Brief Survey o f the American Dress Reform Movements of the Past, with
Views o f Representative Women,” Arena. 6 (August 1892): 326-327.
37 “A Husband’s Testimony,” The Lily. 4 (December 1852): 99.
38 “Female Attire,” The Lily. 3 (March 1851).
 28

demands comfortable apparel for working women—and she certainly did not just

mean working-class women, she was referring more explicitly to middle-class women

here. Stanton was demanding a higher level o f respect for women and their daily

tasks.

W oman’s rights advocates believed that women were physically held back by

their dress. Elizabeth Oakes Smith wrote to The Lily to connect women’s lost

potential to their unhealthy clothing: “Napoleon could never have conquered empires

cased in whalebone, nor Milton have written his Paradise Lost in a tight bodice.”40

Other women, such as Julia Archibald Holmes, connected shortened skirts to their

capability to perform tasks equally with men. In 1858, Holmes proudly wrote to the

dress reform journal, The Sibyl, informing readers that she was the first white woman

to climb Pike’s Peak, and she did it in “the reform dress.”41

Women’s rights advocates often tied dress reform to their quest for

“emancipation” from male rule, which they asserted, was analogous to both slaves’

yearning for freedom, and the desires of American patriots to be liberated from

colonial rule. The language they used reflected both abolitionist and revolutionary

rhetoric. Amelia Bloomer declared her independence from fashion, insisting, “Never

fo r a moment—notwithstanding the furor we have raised—have we regretted our

emancipation from long petticoats or fe lt a desire to return to their bondage. ”42

Stanton also used Revolutionary War rhetoric when she glorified dress reform as a

declaration of independence: “Had I counted the cost of the short dress, I would never

39 Stanton, “But What Will People Say,” The Lily. 3 (April 1851): 31.
40 Elizabeth Oakes Smith, “Hints on Dress and Beauty” The Lily. 4 (June 1852): 56.
41 Spring, Agnes Wright, ed. A Bloomer Girl on P ik e ’s Peak— 1858. Denver: A. B. Hirschfeld Press,
1949.
 29

have put it on; on, however, I’ll never take it off, for now it involves a principle of

freedom.”43 Women were wearing shorter skirts to exclaim to the world that they

could assume any clothing they chose—they were free from men’s control when

making personal decisions about dress. They connected freedom of dress to the

sacred freedoms fought for by American patriots.

Dress reformers were redrawing the boundaries for acceptable feminine garb.

While they were more sympathetic to women wearing pants than many of their

contemporaries, they were still unwilling to sanction cross-dressing. Dress reformers

insisted that cross-dressers wore pants for two reasons. They acknowledged the

economic motivations of some working-class women who adopted pants in order to

find higher paying employment as men. Mary Warrington sympathetically related the

misadventures of “Charlie Linden,” a female-to-male cross-dresser who had

“assumed this [masculine] garb from necessity, not from choice” to enter the higher

paying male workforce. “As Charlie Linden she could do much, as Annie Linden she

could do but little. Why not be Charlie Linden then?”44 This article suggests that

Charlie’s dress did not reflect upon Annie’s sexuality. Nor did Annie really place her

gender in any danger, since Mary Warrington unquestioningly refers to Annie as

“her” throughout the article. Warrington did not portray Charlie’s garb as threatening

because, she argued, the motivations for that garb were purely economic.

The dress reformers were sympathetic to cross-dressers who were driven to

wear men’s clothing by poverty. But this compassion dissipated when the cross-

42 Bloomer, “The Dress Reform,” The Lily. 3 (November 1851): 87.

43 Letter, Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Elizabeth Smith Miller, June 4, 1851. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
papers, reel 7, page 86.
44 Mary Warrington, “As a Man She Made a Living,” The Lily. 8 (November 1856): 138.
 30

dresser showed any danger of wearing men’s clothing for pleasure. Dress reformers

scorned this type of cross-dressing as sexual and gender upheaval. Dress reformers

argued that these cross-dressers were women “becoming gentlemen.” Sexually,

cross-dressers were in danger of stepping outside the norms of passionlessness by

wearing masculine dress, since masculinity and sexual passion were synonymous in

nineteenth-century America. Dress reformers (along with most of their

contemporaries) argued that women wearing “men’s” clothing were in serious danger

of becoming “mannish;” in other words, cross-dressers threatened to become

aggressive, sexually passionate, and power-hungry. In the Herald o f Health, a health

faddist paper supporting dress reform, the editor raged at a report that Miss Sallie M.

Monroe of Chenango County, New York, was wearing “the veritable dress of

gentleman.” “We have before heard expressions of alarm lest the dress reformers of

the ‘female persuasion’ should carry their measures to the extreme of adopting the

entire male attire, and so becoming gentlemen in everything except the item of sex.”

Here, the paper chafes at the notion that cross-dressers would be associated with dress

reform. Furthermore, the editor explicitly makes the connection between masculine

apparel and behavior. For women, wearing masculine attire was the first step along

the slippery slope toward “manliness.” The paper finds this report troubling and

threatening to dress reformers particularly. “The dress reformers must be defended

from injurious imputations, and therefore the truth must be told. The said “SALLIE”

is no woman at all, but a veritable man! ”45 The editor could not accept a cross-

dressing woman, and instead insisted that only a man would wear men’s clothing.

The article frustratingly ends abruptly after exposing “Sallie” as a man, and we

45 “Another Female Gentleman,” H erald o f Health. (1864). Italics original.

 31

cannot pursue the fascinating story any further. But clearly the dress reformers were

uncomfortable with the thought that women would wear “male” clothing for personal

pleasure. While economic necessity was an acceptable motive for cross-dressing,

masculine self-fashioning and sexual pleasure was not. Dress reformers could wear

pants simply because, on a dress reformer, pants were still a sign of femininity. Like

women’s rights advocates, dress reformers were attempting to redefine the limits of

femininity to include bloomers.

Woman’s rights advocates saw the potential of adopting pantaloons and

shortened skirts as a public defiance of convention. S. L. Brown, a dress reformer

and woman’s rights advocate from Long Island, wrote to The Lily, challenging

readers, “Answer those who can.”

1st. What right has any individual to dictate to me what dress it is

proper or right for me to wear?
2nd. Who is the better judge of what is suitable and decent for me to
wear, my self or another?
3rd. If society has the right to prescribe what style of dress I shall wear,
why not also my beliefs and opinions?
4th. What principle of etiquette or good manners authorizes
impertinent, ill-natured remarks on the dress of others?46

Brown suggested that wearing the reformed dress was a statement of independence.

Brown praised this independence and the women who dared seek it, implicitly

connecting personal sovereignty in dress with a rejection of societal norms and

prejudices.

The advocates for woman’s rights connected dress reform to women’s self-

respect and “self-sovereignty,” appealing to the nationalist and abolitionist rhetoric.

For woman’s rights advocates, dress reform allowed them to entirely redefine their

46 Brown, S. L. “Dress,” The Lily. 7 (July 1854): 111.

 32

femininity, even their humanity. Elizabeth Cady Stanton stressed “the seriousness

and importance” of dress reform. She believed it presented “a great question—a

mighty change.” “The question is now to be, not Rags how do you look? but woman

how do you feel?”A1 In 1966, when Barbara Welter discussed the “four cardinal

virtues” of the true Victorian woman, “piety, purity, submissiveness, and

domesticity,” she possibly should have included “beauty” as the fifth virtue.48

Historically, women have struggled to meet society’s expectations, trying to be

beautiful, slender, fashionable, and young. In the mid-nineteenth century, women

struggled to achieve this high ideal just as earnestly as they do today, although the

specific meaning of “beauty” has changed over the past 150 years.49 Dress reformers

lamented the beauty ideal unfairly assigned to women alone, and they fought against

the norm by asking women to judge themselves by new standards. Amelia Bloomer

mocked the fashion standards of the day: “Let us have fashion plates in our popular

magazines o f active, healthy, sensibly dressed women, in place of the waxen-faced,

wasp-like beflounced and befurbelowed caricatures of women which now appear

there to mislead the weak and disgust the sensible.”50 While Bloomer demanded that

the ideals of beauty shift to glorify healthy women, Stanton suggested that women

abandon their quest for beauty altogether. “A long, full, flowing skirt certainly hangs

more gracefully than a short one; but does woman crave no higher destiny than to be

a mere frame work on which to hang rich fabrics... ?”51

47 Stanton “Our Costume,” The Lily. 3 (July 1851): 51.

48 Barbara Welter. “The Cult o f True Womanhood,” Am erican Quarterly. 18 (1966): 152.
49 For a discussion o f the changing beauty ideals over the past two centuries, see Lois Banner,
A m erican Beauty. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1983.
50 “Paris Fashions,” The Lily. 7 (August 1, 1854): 109.
51 Stanton, “The New Dress,” The Lily. 4 (April 1852): 26.
 33

Today, many historians mock the dress reform movement as an “ugly” blotch

on history. They fail to recognize that the woman’s rights advocates were radically

redefining women’s role. Rather than introducing another fashion that would

commodify women, they introduced a garment that would allow women to pursue

their potential as a person, not as an object. By placing women’s comfort and

achievements over her efforts to fit a very narrow definition of beauty, the woman’s

movement was attempting a radical redefinition of women’s traditional role.

W oman’s rights advocates used varying rhetorical arguments when trying to

persuade Americans to support dress reform. Lydia Jenkins, a dress reformer and

woman’s rights advocate, appealed to mothers using a maternalistic argument,

making women feel guilty for their selfish devotion to fashions: “The descendents o f

tight corseting mothers will never become the luminaries and leaders o f the world. ”53 >

But this type of rhetoric was unusual in the woman’s rights movement at this time.

Most reformers appealed to women’s sense of religion, morality, nationalism, or

individuality or some combination of these beliefs. Essentially, Bloomer wished to

put a positive outlook on dress reform, reporting far more frequently on dress reform

success stories than on the martyrdom endured by reformers. She encouraged readers

to write her about the comfort, convenience, and healthfulness of the shortened dress,

and she mocked the readers who wrote her stories of defeat.

52 Kathleen M. Torrens. “All Dressed Up with No Place to Go: Rhetorical Dimensions of the
Nineteenth-Century Dress Reform Movement.” W om en’s Studies in Communications. 20 (1997): 189-
210. See also Jeanette C. and Robert H. Lauer. Fashion Power: The M eaning o f Fashion in American
Society. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1981): 251-252. See also William Leach. True Love and
Perfect Union: The Fem inist Reform o f Sex and Society. New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers,
1980. p. 244.
53 Jenkins, Lydia A. “Tight Dressing,” The Lily. 3 (February 1851): 11, italics are hers.
 34

Bloomer regularly featured articles on the immorality of fashionable dress in

her newspaper. One “old doctor” wrote in to decry the “false delicacy” of

fashionable clothing. He argued, “woman has two legs... and it is essential to have

them as closely and as separately clothed to insure from cold and undue exposure.”54

Dress reformers were often criticized for supporting a dress that revealed the outline

of women’s legs and ankles. In their defense, all o f the dress reformers pointed out

that fashionable women regularly revealed their ankles when lifting their skirts to

cross muddy roads. They were also highly critical of the immodesty of plunging

necklines, and dress reformers rarely wore clothing that revealed their shoulders or

necks (although it was not unheard of.) Essentially, dress reformers argued that their

dress was more “modest” than fashionable dresses because it closely covered the

limbs. Yet supporters of traditional fashions contested this idea of modesty by

insisting that women wearing pants were the epitome of immodesty because they

were “cross-dressing.”

Shared Protestant rhetoric often surfaced in dress reform literature. “A

Bloomerite” from Ohio wrote to the Water Cure Journal to inform readers that she

had been “baptized into the faith and practice of Bloomerism.” She went on to speak

of her “conversion” as if it was a religious decision.55 Bloomer regularly portrayed

dress reform as a religious issue in The Lily. She told her readers that fashionable
56
dress abused “Nature’s laws” and “the work which came perfect from HIS hand.”

Bloomer and her fellow woman’s rights advocates also turned to nationalistic

and imperialistic arguments to persuade women to adopt the reformed dress. They

54 “W oman’s Dress: An Old Doctor’s Opinion,” The Lily. 4 (March 1852): 24.
55 Quoted in The Lily. 4 (October 1852): 85.
 35

made regular connections between Chinese foot-binding and American corsetry,

suggesting that America— as a more “civilized” nation— should prove their civility by

abandoning the “barbaric,” body-deforming practices for more healthful pursuits.57

Woman’s rights advocates appealed to Americans’ dislike of aristocracy, dwelling on

the superiority of American, homespun common sense— short dresses—to ridiculous,

costly French fashions.58 Woman’s rights advocates also drew on women’s desire for

personal expression and autonomy in their dress reform rhetoric. Bloomer regularly

reassured her readers that dress reformers were not attempting to create a national

uniform for women. “We know very little about fashions, and do not wish to set

ourselves up as a pattern for others.”59 Stanton reinforced this idea and suggested that

it was fashion that required woman to adopt a uniform and forsake their identity.

“There is a great tyranny in this idea of an universal dress.”60 By appealing to

women’s sense of individuality, the woman’s rights advocates reinforced the idea of

dress as a means of expression of self-sovereignty.

Because woman’s rights advocates had the strongest voice in early dress

reform, the dress reform platform appeared synonymous to the woman’s rights

platform to many outside observers in the 1850s. It came as a serious blow to the

dress reform movement, when, in 1854, Elizabeth Cady Stanton abandoned the

shortened dress and began persuading her fellow woman’s rights advocates to do

56 “Our Fashion Plate,” The Lily. 4 (January 1852): 1-2.

57 “Fashion a Tyrant Everywhere,” The Lily. 4 (February 1852): 11.
58 “A Husband’s Testimony,” The Lily. 4 (December 1852): 99.
59 “The Reform Dress,” The Lily. 4 (November 1852): 94.
60 Stanton, “The New Dress,” The Lily. 4 (April 1852): 26.
 36

likewise.61 Most were happy to capitulate, although some, including Amelia Bloomer

and Susan B. Anthony, took longer to abandon the costume than others.

Their reasons for abandoning the shortened dress were numerous. Anthony

described the trauma of visiting a strange town while wearing the reformed dress:

“Here I am known only as one of the women who ape men—coarse, brutal men!”62

Few of the dress reformers could endure for long the stigma associated with wearing

pants; regardless of the distinctions they were making between their reforms and the

behavior of cross-dressers, they were persistently labeled as such by the public.

Despite Bloomer’s intentions to display only positive reactions in The Lily, even she

had to acknowledge the discomfort it caused. “At present, we must admit, the reform

dress is quite obnoxious to the public and all who bear testimony in its favor, either

by precept or example, must expect to meet with some trials and discouragements; yet

it m ay.. .be ultimately adopted.”63 Woman’s rights advocates did not just abandon

the costume because of the public’s criticism; many were also dissatisfied with the

appearance of the reformed dress. In The History o f Woman Suffrage, Stanton,

Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Anthony agreed, “We knew the Bloomer costume never

could be generally becoming, as it required a perfection of form, limbs, and feet, such

as few possessed.” Not only was the reformed dress difficult for average-looking

61 Harper, Ida Husted. The Life and Work o f Susan B. Anthony. 3 vols. Indianapolis: The Hollenbeck
Press, 1898. see 1:115. Also, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage,
eds. H istory o f Woman Suffrage. 2ded. Rochester, NY: Charles Mann, 1889. 1:839-842.
62 Quoted in Katharine Anthony, Susan B. Anthony: H er Personal History and H er Era. Garden City,
NY: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1954 p. 110.
63 Quoted from a letter by Amelia Bloomer to Charlotte A. Joy, of the National Dress Association,
June 3 1857. Bloomer, D. C. Life and Writings o f A m elia Bloomer. 2d ed. New York: Schocken
Books, 1975.
 37

women to wear, but the dress reformers were convinced that the dress itself was

simply ugly. “We who wore it also knew that it was not artistic.”64

The chief reason woman’s rights advocates gave for their abandonment of

dress reform was the attention it diverted from their woman’s rights platform. Amelia

Bloomer summed up this argument.

We all felt that the dress was drawing attention from what we thought
of far greater importance—the question of woman’s right to better
education, to a wider field o f employment, to better remuneration for
her labor, and to the ballot for the protection of her rights. In the
minds of some people, the short dress and woman’s rights were
inseparably connected. With us, the dress was but an incident, and we
were not willing to sacrifice greater questions to it.65

Few of the dress reformers left behind in the movement respected the woman’s rights

advocates’ decision to doff the shortened dress. The health reformers, particularly

Lydia Sayer Hasbrouck, branded the woman’s rights advocates “traitors to the cause.”

Hasbrouck bitterly attacked Lucy Stone, a former dress reformer, for adopting long

skirts and long hair when she married Henry Blackwell. “This was a poser; the great

champion o f woman’s independence and freedom of action, yielding this grand

principle, the foundation of her wrongs, for the sake of getting and pleasing when got

a husband,”66 Stone responded quickly, arguing that her dress was not dictated by her

husband, but by her higher concern for women’s political position. “Her miserable

style of dress is a consequence of her present vassalage not its cause. Woman must

become ennobled, in the quality, o f her being. When she is so, and takes her place,

64 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds. History o f Woman
Suffrage. 2d ed. Rochester, NY: Charles Mann, 1889. I: 471.
65 Bloomer, D. C. Life and Writings o f Am elia Bloomer. 2d ed. New York: Schocken Books, 1975 p.
70.
66 Hasbrouck, “Traitors to the Cause,” The Sibyl 1 (January 1, 1857): 100. Quoted in Russo, Ann and
Cheris Kramarae. The Radical W om en’s Press o f the 1850s. New York: Routledge, 1991, p. 269-271
 38

clothed with the dignity which the possession and exercise of her natural human

rights give, she will be able, unquestioned, to dictate the style o f her dress.”

Gerrit Smith—Elizabeth Smith M iller’s father, woman’s rights advocate, and

radical abolitionist—was the most disgruntled dress reformer left behind by the

woman’s rights decampment. Stanton discussed his disappointment in The History o f

Woman Suffrage. “I suppose no act of my life ever gave my cousin, Gerrit Smith,

such deep sorrow, as my abandonment of the ‘Bloomer costume.’ He felt that women

had so little courage and persistence, that for a time he almost despaired of the

success of the suffrage movement; of such vital consequence in woman’s mental and

physical development did he feel the dress to be.”68 Smith wrote an open letter to

Stanton in 1855 to protest her abandonment of dress reform: “I am amazed that the

intelligent women engaged in the ‘Woman’s Rights Movement,’ see not the relation

between their dress and the oppressive evils which they are striving to throw off....

In the case of woman, the great needed change is in herself.”69 Stanton,

unsurprisingly, disagreed with Smith, arguing,

A true marriage relation has far more to do with the elevation of

woman than the style and cut of her dress. Dress is a matter of taste, of
fashion; it is changeable, transient, and may be doffed or donned at the
will of the individual; but institutions, supported by laws, can be
overturned but by revolution. We have no reason to hope that
pantaloons would do more for us than they have done for man
himself 70

The woman’s rights advocates faced a great deal of difficulty during their withdrawal

from dress reform, particularly because they had been among its strongest and loudest

67 Stone, “Women Not Ready for Dress Reform,” The Sibyl. 2 (Jnly 1, 1857): 198. Also quoted in
Russo and Rramarae, p. 272.
^ Q to n tn n
ULU11LU1JL JU
frn m
.U
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NY: Charles Mann, 1889, 1: 471.

 39

supporters for the first three or four years of the movement. Not all of the woman’s

rights advocates withdrew from dress reform immediately. Amelia Bloomer wore the

reformed dress for about eight years, waiting “until the papers had ceased writing
7
< 1

squibs at my expense” to abandon the costume. Overall, while the woman’s rights

advocates brought dress reform its greatest fame, they were among the least

committed reformers of the movement.

Between 1851 and 1870, health reformers consistently advocated and wore

reformed dresses, particularly “the American Costume,” developed within the water

cures.72 Dress reformers chiefly interested in health were less ideologically united

than the woman’s rights advocates; there was a divide between radical health

reformers involved in vegetarianism, phrenology, or water cures and the “regular”

doctors sanctioned by the American Medical Association.73 An even more prominent

divide surfaced between the male doctors and the female doctors and reformers

involved in dress reform. Whereas men gave religious, economic, nationalistic, and

social reasons for the need for reform of women’s dress, women more often argued

that it was women’s individual health and personal liberty at stake. The alternative

clothing advocated by male doctors often just involved cutting off trailing skirts or

abandoning the corset, whereas the women health reformers and water cure advocates

supported a dress similar to the bloomer costume of the woman’s rights advocates.

69 Ibid, 1: 837.
70 Ibid, 1: 841.
71 Amelia Bloomer, quoted by D. C. Bloomer, Life and Writings o f A m elia Bloomer. 2d ed. New
York: Schocken Books, 1975 p. 69.
72 Water cures were the nineteenth-century equivalent to health spas. For more information, see Jane
B. Donegan, Hydropathic Highway to Health: Women and Water Cure in Antebellum America.
Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1986, xv.
 40

Regular doctors, such as Henry Whitfeld of Kent, England, had been

condemning women for their use of corsets and long skirts throughout the century,

often relying on anti-fashion propaganda to do so. Whitfeld argued that women

committed “the greatest folly in civilized life” when they adopted corsets, or “stays ”

Whitfeld gave religious reasons for the need for reformation o f dress:

The strength o f the chain is that of the weakest link; and, unless we
suppose that God will compromise his laws to the whims and caprices
of his creatures, or, in other words, grant a special providence to
screen man from the punishment consequent on his offences, it is
certain that perfect health, and activity of mind and body, can be the
result only o f a humble submission and strict obedience to his
decrees.7

Whitfeld’s analysis o f women’s dress was similar to that presented by the other

popular male doctors of the period, including Orson S. Fowler, a leading

phrenologist, and George H. Napheys, the author of a health book for women.

Fowler compared tight-lacing to intemperance, suggesting that women were

hypocrites for condemning men for their drinking when they themselves were

destroying the health of the nation. Fowler relied heavily on religious argum ents

when persuading women to reform their dresses. He questioned women, “Think you

that girting the waist can improve the beauty of the works of God?”75 He went on to

insist, “Tight-lacing kindles impure feelings, at the same time that it renders their

possessor weak minded, so as to be the more easily led away by temptation.”76

Fowler was playing on the nineteenth-century norms of passionlessness, which would

73 For a discussion o f the differences between “regular” doctors and radical health practitioners, see
Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English. For H er Own Good: 150 Years o f the E xp e rts’Advice to
Women. New York: Anchor Books, 1978.
74 Whitfeld, Henry. The Absurdities o f Stays, and the Evil Effects o f Tight Lacing. London: Hugh
Cunningham, 1845, 4, 17.
75 Fowler, Orson. Intem perance and Tight-Lacing, Considered in Relation to the Laws o f Life. New
York: Fowler and Wells, 1848, 7.
 41

characterize any sexual feelings on the part of women as “impure.” After closely

linking corsetry to unsanctioned sexuality, immorality, and irreligion, Fowler added a

maternalistic argument to the list of reasons to oppose corsets. “Marry a small waist,

and you will be sure to have few mature offspring, and those few thinned out by

death.”77 Fowler harshly denounced women who wore corsets— and in 1848, the year

of publication of this denunciation—most upper- and middle-class women did wear

corsets as part of their fashionable attire. Notably, Fowler offered women few

personal reasons to abandon fashion; his argument was crafted entirely to buttress

traditional gender and sexual norms. This leaves the impression that women were not

being offered a better road to health and happiness, but were being scolded for their

willful persistence in poorly dressing themselves.

George Napheys, the author of a popular health book for women, offered an

unusual analysis of woman’s dress, illustrative of the ignorance and apathy with

which many doctors regarded woman’s attire. While he argued that tight-lacing was

unhealthy, he informed his female readers that “stays or corsets may be used, in a

proper manner, during the first five or six months of pregnancy, but after that they

should either be laid aside, or worn very loosely.”78 He devoted a great many pages

to the discussion of healthy clothing for children, but he did not discuss women’s

dress unless it related to their maternity dress. Napheys, Whitfeld, and Fowler all

revealed the lack of concern for women shown by popular male doctors of the period.

Their discussion of woman’s dress usually revolved around societal concerns, such as

76 Ibid, p. 12.
77 Ibid p. 12.
78 Napheys, George H. The Physical Life o f Woman: Advice to the Maiden, Wife, and Mother. 3d ed.,
Philadelphia: David McKay, 1888, 209.
Fig. C “Harriet N. Austin, wearing the American Costume.” Water-curist Austin designed this
particular reform outfit, she edited the Letter-Box and the Laws o f Life, and she was the secretary of the
National Dress Reform Association. From Jane Donegan, Hydropathic Highway to Health.
Fig. D “Example of the American Costume Worn at Our Home on the Hillside, Dansville, New
York.” Note the dress reformer’s short hair. From Jane Donegan, Hydropathic Highway to Health.
 42

fears that women’s skill or health as mothers was being damaged through fashion.

These doctors did not address women’s health or happiness directly; instead, they

examined it through the lenses of men’s or children’s welfare.

Female health reformers approached dress reform from an entirely different

point of view. They argued that woman’s dress should improve for the sake of
%

women’s health, happiness, or comfort. Most female health reformers included the

arguments made by their male counterparts; it was not uncommon for women health

reformers to argue that dress reform was a religious or maternal necessity. However,

women posed dress reform as an opportunity for all women, and their literature was

rarely vituperative. They saw dress reform as a benefit to women’s health, an

opportunity for medical education, and a chance for women to exert their

independence from men.

The health reformers hoped to separate their movement from that of the

woman’s rights advocates, despite the fact that the health reformers, particularly

female health reformers, shared many of the motivations of the woman’s rights

movement. The female health reformers argued that they were the first to develop a

shortened dress. James Caleb Jackson and Harriet Austin—cofounders of the Glen

Haven Water Cure, or “Our Home”—worked together to develop the “American

Costume,” possibly as early as 1849. Austin wore variations of the costume for

almost forty years and argued that it helped cure hundreds of “helpless invalids” who

came to her water cure for medical attention.79 The American Costume (see figures C

and D) took on different forms at different times; however, it closely resembled the

79 Austin, Harriet N. The Am erican Costume: Or, W om an’s R ight to Good Health. Dansville, NY: F.
W. Hurd and Company, 1867, 13.
 43

“bloomers” worn by the woman’s rights advocates. Austin and Jackson argued that

the American Costume was as similar to the “bloomers” as “an elephant is like a

rhinoceros,” yet the actual cut and style of the two dresses were very similar.80

A short story in the Water Cure Journal analyzed the connections between

health and dress reform. Clara, the heroine o f the story, is a young mother and dress

reformer who cures her children o f measles through hydropathy. Her father is not

pleased with her connection to radical health movements. “Her religion is all humbug,

her Phrenology— how ridiculous! Then, woman a physician! And now, she is trying

to humbug her neighbors with cold water, for medicine and dietics, which she must
O 1

carry to such extremes, as to abandon m eat....” The author of the story connects

dress reform, radical health reform (vegetarianism, hydropathy, phrenology), and

women’s increasing power in the medical world. While the father is appalled that his

daughter believes women should become physicians, it is something that his

daughter, as part of a radical health reform movement, obviously supports. The father

hints at the woman’s “humbug” religious beliefs, but does not reveal which particular

sect the woman belongs to. This suggests that she may have been a Perfectionist,

Spiritualist, 'or a member of a utopian group, like many other dress reformers. Not

all health reformers were as radical as Clara, but many dress reformers were members

of fringe Protestant groups and almost all female health/dress reformers agreed that

women had a unique advantage as primary caregivers, and therefore should be

recognized as physicians to the family.

80 Quoted in Donegan, Jane B. Hydropathic Highway to Health: Women and Water Cure in
Antebellum America. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1986, 143.
81 “Dress Reform and Water Cure,” Water Cure Journal 16 (November 1853): 107.
82 Religions that advocated dress reform are discussed at greater length in chapter two.
 44

Women used dress reform as an inroad on the medical community. They used

popular journals, such as The Water Cure Journal, or began their own journals, such

as The Sibyl, to spread their dress reform propaganda. Many female doctors made

dress reform a key issue in their lectures and debates. The American Costume also
i

served as a form of free advertisement, although it often distracted the public from the

medical skills of women doctors. Dr. Mary Walker and Dr. Lydia Sayer Hasbrouck

won national fame because of their attire, while much less attention was devoted to

their medical skills. Finally, female health reformers argued that American women

desperately needed education in biology, physiology, and medicine so that they could

improve their own dress and that of their children. Essentially, dress reform opened

doors for women in the field of medicine.

The women who contributed to health journals such as The Sibyl and the

Water Cure Journal revealed their concern for “the HEALTH, COMFORT, and

INDEPENDENCE of woman.”83 In 1852, the Water Cure Journal published a song

written by “Lora” glorifying the advantages of wearing a “bloomer” costume.

I love to be a Bloomerite,
For much I hate a waist that’s tight,
I think it no disgrace to me
To wear a dress from whalebones free.
I hate to wear a trailing skirt,
It wipes up so much mud and dirt:
And loosely swings about my feet
And sweeps the side-walk and the street.
Though some may laugh— and others sneer,
When I in a Bloomer dress appear,
And others still, may chance to say,
‘Tis only done to make display;
I will not mind their idle sneer,
Their ridicule I do not fear
For I am happy— I am free—

83 Author unknown, “Dress Reform is Foundation o f Other Victories,” Sibyl 1 (June 15, 1857): 187.
 45

And what they say disturbs not me.

The Miss whom wealth has freely blessed,
May flirt in Paris fashion dressed,
Her satins through the street may trail,
And carry on each hip— a bale
O f cotton batting, if she please,
And sacrifice both heaven and ease;
And make her life a life of pain,
The perils of fashion’s throng to gain,
And she some brainless fop to please,
Her waist in fashion’s vice may squeeze;
If she her approbation prize
Enough to make the sacrifice.
But I’ll not do it, no, not I.
For health is prized by me too high,
To be thus idly thrown away.
Least some, misjudging me, should say.
I wear it but to make a show;
For they the reason do not know
Why I in Bloomer dress appear,
And bear the frowns and scornful sneer,
O f those who far too proud may be
To deign to even speak to me;
The reason is, I like it well,
How well— my pen can never tell.84

Lora revealed many o f the fears and motivations o f the dress reformers through this

song. It is important that she referred to her costume as “bloomers,” since the public

perceived all reformed dresses as being bloomers. Lora defies the public’s scorn by

using this semi-derogatory name to refer to her clothing. Lora expects that her

decision to wear the bloomers will be interpreted as something done “but to make a

show.” However, she denies this, arguing that she chose to adopt the bloomers for

several significant reasons. She dislikes the dirtiness associated with trailing skirts

and she appreciates the ease of movement the bloomers afford her. Lora bases her

argument for bloomers on health issues, telling us her health is prized “too high” to

throw it away for mere public opinion. She is particularly critical of the fashionable
 46

world, commenting on their excessive display of wealth and dismissing the “brainless

fops” she’d prefer not to marry. Finally, she makes a point of connecting bloomers to

personal emancipation, consistently reminding her audience that she regularly defies

convention with her costume. She tells us, “I am happy— I am free— ,” highlighting

“free” as both a physical and a social condition.

Freedom was a central issue for many female health reformers interested in

dress reform, and they too adopted abolitionist rhetoric. “Luna” wrote to The Sibyl

criticizing “men’s inconsistency about fashion” in the winter of 1860. She argued

that “nine-tenths o f those who denounce woman and her follies would prefer that she

should remain where she is, a doll, a drudge, a slave, than that she should take an

equal position in society with men. Yes, brothers, you are to blame for woman’s

‘fashionable weakness’ as you choose to term it.”86 Luna blamed men for women’s

unhealthy fashions and suggested that men used dress to suppress women in their

society, to make them “slaves” and “drudges.” The American costume offered

salvation from “slavery.” One dress reformer suggested that women forgo skirts

altogether, and just wear trousers. “There is nothing like freedom, and we can have it

in almost any community if we but take a steady, straightforward course, earn our

own living, and mind our own business. It don’t [sic] hurt people to be a little

shocked once in a while.”87

Health reformer Dr. Mary Walker was perhaps the most famous, and

shocking, dress reformer in the nineteenth century. Walker easily served as a target

84 Lora, “I Love to be a Bloomer,” Water Cure Journal 13 (May 1852): 116.

85 Luna, “M en’s Inconsistency About Fashion,” The Sibyl 4 (February 15, 1860): 699. Quoted in
Russo, p. 260.
86 Ibid, p. 261.
 47

for accusations that dress reformers were cross-dressers, although, like other dress

reformers, she would have denied this characterization of her behavior. She stunned

the nation with her increasingly “masculine” attire—by the last decades of the

nineteenth century she had adopted a suit, bow tie, and top hat. Walker served as a

military doctor during the Civil War, and wore a short skirt with trousers even after

being captured by the Confederacy, which promptly informed her she needed to adopt

feminine attire in exchange for her freedom. She refused. In June 1866 Walker was

arrested by a policeman in New York City after a small mob gathered to mock her

clothing. She took the policeman to court for “improper conduct.” Walker insisted,

“I wear this style o f dress from the highest, the purest and the noblest principle.. . .”

The police commissioner who heard her case agreed, “I consider, Madam, that you

have as good a right to wear that clothing as I have to wear m ine....” But he did not

charge the policeman, arguing that he was “protecting” Walker from the mob. While

Walker earned the right to wear her clothing in public, she had to accept protection

from men in order to do so.88

For Walker, dress reform was synonymous with freedom and independence

from men, making characterizations of her as a “cross-dresser” even easier for her

nineteenth-century critics. “Everything that makes woman in any degree independent

of man, and, as a consequence, independent o f marriage for support, is frowned down

by a certain class of individuals.” And she firmly believed that dress reform was

opposed solely because it gave women independence from male control, or

“protection.” Ironically, she particularly mocked the protection of men, suggesting

87 C. u. B. Ys loonier Not a Work Dress,” Sibyl. 5 (July 15, 1860): 781. Quoted in Russo, p. 265-266.
 48

that she viewed men with fear and bitterness, and perhaps felt nervous of being raped.

“If men were really... ‘the protectors of women, \ . they would not attempt to compel

women to dress so that the facilities for vice would always be easy, but would

sanction a dress that is quite the reverse, and no man would attempt to invade the

family circle of his neighbor.”89 Walker scorned dresses because they left women

sexually vulnerable to men’s advances and put women at the mercy of men’s systems

of protection and control.

“Freedom” and “health” were the key words found in most literature by

female health/dress reformers. However, many female health reformers combined

health and freedom with maternalistic, religious, and social arguments commonly

relied upon by male doctors. Mary Jones, the author of Woman’s Dress: Its Moral

and Physical Relations, being an Essay Delivered before the World’s Health

Convention, belittled women for neglecting their health and their children’s health.

She admonished women for sewing fine dresses while “the little souls.. under [their]

careful guidance.. .are sent forth from [their] presence to take their first lessons in that

great school of evil, the street.”90 Jones attacked women for deforming their bodies in

opposition to natural law, asking, “Did He design that these bodies of ours, so

‘fearfully and wonderfully made,’ should be thus racked and tortured?”91 Finally,

Jones suggested that upper- and middle-class women had a social responsibility to

their working-class sisters. While the rich women could buy new bonnets, “her less

88 Snyder, Charles McCool. Dr. M ary Walker: The Little Lady in Pants. New York: Vantage Press,
1962, 56-59.
89 Walker, Mary Edwards. Hit. New York: The American News Company, 1871, 58, 65.
90 Jones, M[ary] M. W om an’s Dress: Its M oral and Physical Relations, being an Essay D elivered
before the W orld’s Health Convention, New York City, Nov. 1864. New York: Miller, Wood and Co.,
1865, 7.
91 Ibid, p. 9.
 49

favored sister, following in her footsteps, must needs plan, and study, and contrive,

how by every possible invention she may eke out her slender means so that she may

appear as well dressed as her neighbor.”92

Clearly, not all female health reformers were interested in dress reform as an

expression of woman’s rights or “freedom.” For health reformers, the shortened dress

served as a symbol for everything from maternal duty to woman’s independence and

comfort. The health reform movement was made up of such a disparate crowd of

reformers it was quite easy to introduce several motivations for dress reform.

However, the religious reformers interested in dress reform were more consistent in

their motivations, at least among each individual sect. Mormon women traveling to

Utah in the mid-nineteenth century briefly adopted a reformed costume. Many

Protestants encouraged women to adopt healthful and modest dresses, as can be seen

from the religious rhetoric employed by health reformers and woman’s rights

advocates. Finally, dress reform was highly popular among utopian communities,

including the New Harmony community and the Oneida community.93

All o f these religious reformers supported dress reform as a symbol of

morality and as a uniform worn for God. The Oneida community serves as the best

example of religious dress reform during the 1850-1870 period. Their community was

located east of Syracuse in upstate New York, and it existed between 1848 and 1879.

The members were intensely religious Christian Perfectionists and followers of John

Humphrey Noyes. The Oneidans’ religious beliefs required them to withdraw from

92 Ibid, p. 6.
93 For a thorough discussion of religious reformers involved in dress reform, both before and after
1851, see Gayle V. Fischer, Who Wears the Pants? Women, Dress Reform, and Power in the M id-
Nineteenth-Century United States. Ph.D. Indiana University, 1995.
 50

society. They believed that, through communism and religiously motivated social

actions, they could achieve a state of perfection, or freedom from sin, during their

lives. One of the most notorious of their religiously motivated social actions was the

practice of “Complex Marriage,” which was basically an experiment in free love.

They also experimented with eugenics, contraceptive techniques, and women’s

rights.94

The women in Oneida were noted for wearing “bloomers” before the costume

became famous. In fact, the Oneidans claimed to have designed the first “bloomer”

costume. Their costume reportedly originated in 1848—three years before Amelia

Bloomer and Elizabeth Smith Miller first wore “bloomers”— after Noyes commented

that “women’s dress is a standing lie. It proclaims that she is not a two-legged

animal, but something like a churn standing on castors!”95 After this inspirational

comment three Oneida women took it upon themselves to design what they perceived

as a more comfortable, suitable, and realistic costume for their utopian sisters, a

costume that would outline woman’s natural form rather than disguise it. In the

“First Annual Report of the Oneida Association,” published on January 1, 1849, they

announced, “Some of the leading women in the Association took the liberty to dress

themselves in short gowns or frocks, with pantaloons.... The women say they are far

more free and comfortable.. the men think that it improves their looks; and some

insist [that it is] entirely more modest.”96 Obviously, for the Oneidans, dress reform

meant an improvement of traditional fashion’s morality and healthfulness by

94 Foster, Lawrence. Religion and Sexuality: the Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community.
Chicago: University o f Illinois Press, 1984.
95 Noyes quoted in Harriet M. Worden, Old. Mansion House Memories. Utica, New York: Widtman
Press, 1950, 10.
accentuating the “real woman” with a limb-defining outfit instead of presenting

society with a “standing lie” in a sexually appealing (and therefore immodest)

fashionable dress.

The Oneida women continued to wear these shortened skirts and pantaloons

until the community dissolved in 1879. Some of the elderly women refrained from

adopting the costume; however, it was universally worn (although not necessarily

accepted) within the community otherwise. In fact, on March 6, 1865 the Oneida

Circular, the community’s daily newspaper, announced that many o f the women in

the surrounding towns had adopted the costume as well. It is uncertain whether the

bloomer originated with Oneidans; however, its members claimed that the idea was
Q--7

“entirely original with them, [as] Bloomerism had not been heard of then.”

The women o f Oneida experimented with their hairstyles as well. They found

devoting “considerable time to hair-dressing is a degradation and a nuisance” and

after extensive discussion on the morality and propriety of wearing short hair, they

decided to cut their hair.98 Typically, society was shocked by their nonconformity.

As with dress reformers outside of the utopian movement, short hair was associated

with masculinity— for women it was a sign of cross-dressing. On July 7, 1859, the

Oneida Circular quoted a visitor as asking if the women were forced to cut their hair

or wear calico, an unfashionable material that the community women used for their

bloomers.99 Outsiders, particularly men, called them ugly and sickly looking, while

their male peers within the community scolded them for their personal pride and

96 Constance Noyes Robertson, ed., Oneida Community: An Autobiography 1851-76. Syracuse:

Syracuse University Press, 1970, 297.
97 Worden, Harriet M. Old M ansion House M emories. 10.
98 “First Annual Report of the Oneida Association: Jan. 1, 1849” Robertson, 298.
vanity.100 The women themselves were not entirely pleased with their dress reform,

and many women only wore the costume to please the community leaders. Still,

others were pleased with the freedom of movement granted by the costume, and all

conformed for “practicality’s sake,” or perhaps because Noyes insisted on reformed

dress.101

At times, Oneidans managed to convince themselves that the women’s

costumes had a favorable effect on outsiders. In the Circular on July 13, 1874, the

women commented that, because of their communal work effort, it was “no wonder

we women of thirty are mistaken for Misses when we are saved from so much care

and vexation.” 102 Despite the optimism o f the Oneidan women, cynical historians

including Maren Carden, discuss the Oneidans’ loss of perspective. Carden argued

that while the Oneidans believed that “they looked less careworn than other adults”

because of their cooperative work habits, actually society believed “that they looked

like children because of their short dresses and short hair.” 103 In the nineteenth

century, small girls customarily wore their skirts and hair in a similar style to the

bloomers and the Oneidans. While these fashions were acceptable in small girls,

femininity was constructed in relation to age: women were expected to throw off the

vestiges of girlhood in order to be feminine.

Society undeniably provided the harshest critics of these costumes; however,

the community itself faced internal challenges, which kept the women at odds with

their costumes. Not all of the members were happy with the new styles, and many

99 Robertson, 67.
100 See my discussion of the Oneida Community in chapter two.
101 Foster, Lawrence, 104.
LVZ Robertson, 96.
 53

female members were criticized for having “the dress-spirit,” or personal vanity.104

“Miss E.” was one o f many women criticized publicly because “she has a touch of

vanity.” 105 In the weeks preceding the breakup of the community, Frank Wayland-

Smith, a prominent Oneidan, wrote to John Humphrey Noyes to report that young

women were returning to traditional long skirts. He claimed “that the desire for long

dresses and long hair had always existed.”106

Oneidan women were exhorted to “get rid of effeminacy” and to cultivate

“manliness and robustness o f character.”107 The women o f Oneida were encouraged

to conform to “a single male standard” and wore bloomers to become more of “a

female man.”108 There was an emphasis on women becoming more “masculine”— or

stronger, healthier, more productive, less frivolous, and more practical—however,

this was reciprocated by a demand that the men become more “feminine.” Much of

the criticism of individual males includes exhortations for them to limit their

masculinity and to increase their “delicacy, affection, amiability— qualities which

peculiarly belong to the feminine nature ” 109 While Oneidans were attacking

stereotypical gender qualities in men and women, they continued to object to

characterizations (by the outside public) of dress reform as cross-dressing. Yet

Oneidans were closer in motivation to the nineteenth-century construction of the

cross-dresser than any other dress reformers simply because, unlike all other dress

103 Carden, Maren Lockwood. Oneida: Utopian Community to M odern Corporation. Baltimore: John
Hopkins Press, 1969, 70.
104 Klaw, Spencer. W ithout Sin: The Life and Death o f the Oneida Community. New York City:
Penguin Press, 1993, 140.
105 Oneida Community. M utual Criticism. Ed. by Murray Levine and Barbara B. Bunker. Syracuse:
Syracuse University Press, 1975, 53.
106 Robertson, 130.
107 Klaw, 135.
108 Foster, 232.
 54

reformers aforementioned, they were not challenging the normative definition of

femininity, but instead were challenging female members to exchange that “natural”

femininity and become more masculine. Furthermore, dress reforming Oneidan

women were expected to show passion in their sexual relationships. Without a doubt,

nineteenth-century observers would have characterized sexually passionate,

masculine women wearing pants and short hair as cross-dressers.

Noyes and the religious leaders did not necessarily have the women’s interests

at heart. Many women objected to the efforts of the community to eliminate their

femininity. The community also supported the shortened skirt because it encouraged

women to contribute to the labor of the community, particularly in early years when

the community was barely surviving economically. Oneidan women were expected

to work alongside the men in the fields in addition to performing many household

chores; a shortened dress was a way of enhancing women’s productivity.

Almost every dress reformer argued that shortened skirts enhanced woman’s

activity and “usefulness.” Many women wore reformed dresses as work clothes only,

and others wore shortened skirts simply because they were more convenient for their

busy, productive lives. According to Stanton, Anthony, and Gage, “many patients at

sanitariums, many farmers’ wives, and many young ladies [wore shortened skirts] for

skating and gymnastic exercise”.110 Mrs. N. Whittlesy o f Rome, New York, wrote

with pride to the Sibyl in 1858: “By wearing the short dress I can do the work for 16

cows, and 18 persons in the family; can walk 7 miles and be none the worse for it. I

109 Oneida Community, M utual Criticism, 49.

110 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds. History o f Woman
Suffrage. 2d ed. Rochester, NY: Charles Mann, 1889. 1:844.
 55
t

have not any lady friends that can do it with the long dress.” 111 In 1851, The Lily

reported that an “Agent of one of the [Lowell] Corporations.. .has offered to furnish a

handsome dinner for all the girls employed in the same, who, on or before the

approaching fourth of July, shall adopt the Bloomer costume. It is regarded as not

only a very becoming, but an extremely convenient and useful dress for them.”

Amelia Bloomer approved o f this move, saying, “We hail with pleasure the adoption

of our costume by the working classes, for it is we who have an active part to perform

in the drama of life, that need the free full use of our limbs, and all our vital
11 0
organs.” Dress reform here was tied directly to economics. The Lowell factory

owners believed their female workers would be more productive in a comfortable

outfit. While Amelia Bloomer sees this as a distinct advantage for the worker (whom,

ironically, she identifies herself with despite her middle-class status), the working-

class women who were bribed to don an unpopular costume perhaps did not see this

as quite so beneficial.

In 1851 and 1852 Americans everywhere joined in the discussion of

“bloomers” and dress reform. The historian Paul Fatout compared the discussion of

dress reform to the aftermath of “a major earthquake.” “For months newspapers

talked about Bloomerism. Approving, condemning, laughing, raging, sputtering, they

worried the subject as feverishly as they discussed abolition, the Fugitive Slave Law,

Louis Kossuth, and Jenny Lind.” 113 By the middle of 1851, several months after the

dress was first introduced, most Americans generally disapproved of dress reform. In

111 Mrs. N. Whittlesy, Sibyl. 3 (September 1, 1858): 423. Quoted in Russo, p. 267.
112 “Bloomerism in the M ills,” The Lily. 3 (July 1851): 53.
113 Fatout, Paul. “Amelia Bloomer and Bloomerism,” The N ew -York Historical Society Quarterly. 36
(1952): 365.
 56

large cities, crowds would harass dress reformers until police came to break them up.

The New-York Daily Tribune reported one woman was driven to hiding in a shop

until “a curious crowd of men and boys, who indulged in audible criticism of the new

costume” were dispersed. “The police were obliged to interfere and remove two of

the critics to prison.”114 Few women met with mobs such as these, particularly if they

lived in more rural settings. Instead, they faced daily prejudice and inconvenience

inflicted by their disapproving neighbors. In 1854, Godey’s Ladies Book ran a short

story about a young girl persuaded to wear a bloomer costume by her father. The

young woman meets with little disapproval in her native state o f New York, but when

she spends a summer in New England, she encounters outright scorn. The author

informs us, “We frown on short sleeves; but when those short skirts were seen

waving in our streets, when they even floated up the broad aisle on the Sabbath, it

would be hard to say whether indignation or horror were the predominant feeling.”

The entire town shuns the young bloomerite, her cousins mistake her for a boy, and

she grows ill from her inability to take exercise in public. She herself achieves status

of “heroine” because she is not atypical “strong-minded bloomerite” with a woman’s

rights agenda, but instead she has “a yielding docility about her.” The plot is resolved

when a wise and respectable young professor persuades the girl’s headstrong father

into dissolving the promise she had made to wear the bloomers. The young woman

happily returns to long skirts and marries the wise professor.115 According to this

popular woman’s magazine, redemption for bloomerites was only possible if they

114 “The New Costume” New-York D aily Tribune. (Friday, July 18, 1851): 7
115 Forsyth, Pauline. “A Bloomer Among Us,” G odey’s Ladies Book. 4 (May 1854): 396-402.
Stioso - mikdsb “ Blooms*.”—“ Now, do, Alfred, put down that foolish Novel, and do something rational. (J
and play something You never practice, now you're married."

Fig. E Strong Minded Bloomer from Harper‘s Mew Monthly Magazine 4 (December 1851-May
1852): 286.
 57

renounced trousers, shortened skirts, and woman’s rights, and accepted the authority

of a husband.

Cartoons from H arper’s New Monthly Magazine played on the fear that, if

bloomers were allowed to prevail, gender roles would be inverted, and women would

take men’s place. Figure E depicts a “strong-minded bloomer” scolding her husband,

Alfred, for reading “that foolish Novel.” 116 Her demand that he “do something

rational” reflects and mocks the gender-defined leisure activities of the nineteenth

century. While the wife stands erect, looking competent and bossy in her comical

(and misrepresented) bloomer outfit, the man lounges on a chaise with a very insipid

expression on his face. The cartoonist assumed that his public would agree that

women were lazy, useless creatures who allowed others to wait on them, while men

were active and productive, and did not waste time reading “foolish Novels.”

Ironically, the “something rational” the bloomer exhorts her husband to do is “play

something.” If playing music was the most useful service a woman could provide,

men could assert that women were not very useful at all. The cartoonist illustrated the

popular perception that “clothing makes the man.” Dress reformers, all of whom are

assumed to be woman’s rights advocates, were attempting to reverse the gender order

by clothing women in “men’s” trousers. The woman in this cartoon, therefore,

assumes the role o f the stereotypical husband, while the man assumes the

stereotypical wife.

The public also manifested its fear of dress reform as a radical challenge to the

gender system through poems and songs. The “Bloomerite Marching Song” was used

to harass women who went out alone wearing the bloomers.

 58

Now then, my dear,

W e’ll smoke and cheer and drink our lager beer.
W e’ll have our latch-keys, stay out late at nights
And boldly w e’ll assert our Female Rights,
While conquered men, our erstwhile tyrant foes
Shall stay at home and wear our cast-off clothes,
Nurse babies, scold the servants, get our dinners;
‘Tis all that they are fit for, the wretched sinners!117

This song provides a taste of the public hysteria the dress reformers provoked.

Obviously the public was making a direct connection between dress reform and

woman’s rights. The song suggests that dress reformers saw men as “tyrants” meant

to be “conquered.” Not only were dress reformers challenging women’s traditional

fashions, these songwriters suspected that dress reformers hoped to force “conquered”

men to wear their “cast-off clothes” and adopt their duties at home. The reputation of

the dress reformers was attacked in this short song, as well. They were women who

would defy public opinion, staying out late, drinking, smoking, and behaving like

“fallen women.” Women were endangering their very womanhood, which was based

on their morality, submissiveness, and domestic duties, by endorsing the bloomer

costume.

The public did not universally disapprove of dress reform. In 1851, the New

York Tribune straddled the fence on dress reform. In an article entitled

“Bloomerism,” an unnamed misogynist insisted, “Unbeaten woman is a Tyrant. The

weaker they are the more tyrannical.... While the Masculine mind is confused with

sweet odors and sweeter smiles, the grand blow is to be struck and Flora, Bloomer

and breeches are to come in triumphant.”118 Yet two months earlier, the Tribune had

116 “A Strong Minded Bloomer” from H a rp er’s New M onthly Magazine 4 (December 1851): 286.
117 quoted in Charles Neilson Gattey. The Bloom er Girls. London: Femina Books, Ltd., 1967. p. 76.
118 “Bloomerism,” New York D aily Tribune. (July 1, 1851): 6.
 59

run several columns full o f glowing praise for the dress reformers and their shortened

skirts. “The gentlemen editors are, with one or two exceptions, exceedingly taken

with the Turkish costume which seems to have appeared nearly simultaneously in the

principal inland cities and villages of the Eastern and Western states.”119 One editor

quoted in the Tribune had high hopes for the dress’s success: “It may be sometime

first, but we think the innovation will finally succeed.” 120 The dress reformers met

with their greatest support in the first two or three months of the introduction of the

bloomers.121 For a short time, newspapers praised the movement. The Detroit

Tribune reported, “The ladies who have adopted this style of dress claim that it is far

preferable to the old cumbersome style: and Editors who have seen it worn, speak in

glowing terms o f the beauty and effect. Speed the reform, if it will benefit the ladies.

What bachelor so ungallant as to object?” 122

This enthusiasm waned quickly, and by the summer of 1851, public attitudes

toward dress reform were generally disapproving. However, the dress reformers

persisted in their reforms for another fifty years. It would take less than twenty years

for the majority o f reformers to abandon shortened skirts and trousers, and almost all

dress reformers agreed that their best chance for support was a clear distinction

between their own reforms and those of the first “bloomerites,” the woman’s rights

advocates. And by 1870, most dress reformers were not just voicing a distinction

between their own costume and that of the woman’s rights advocates, they were

119 “The New Costume. Favorable Notices o f the Press,” New York Tribune. (May 27, 1851): 1.
120 Quoted from the Newary Mercury, May 20, 1851, in New York Tribune, May 27, 1851.
121 For a discussion o f this very brief acceptance of dress reform, see Jeanette C. and Robert H. Lauer,
Fashion Power: The M eaning o f Fashion in Am erican Society. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall,
1981, 246-264.
122 Quoted from the D etroit Tribune, in “The New Costume. Favorable Notices o f the Press,” New
York Tribune. (May 27, 1851): 1.
 60

endorsing a philosophy that in many ways reversed the original goals of the woman’s

rights advocates and their dress reforming contemporaries.

 II

1870-1900: CONSERVATIVE DRESS REFORM

Dress reform after 1870 is easily distinguished from the pre-1870 movement.

Generally after 1870, reformers were more conservative in their proposals of

alternatives to fashion, in their tactics, and in their rhetoric. As in the first two

decades of organized dress reform, the reformers themselves were a diverse group of

individuals with little in common. The leading dress reformers were still particularly

interested in health, women’s rights, and religion; however, they were generally

members of mainstream social organizations, as opposed to their predecessors, who

were members o f radical fringe group reform movements. While the first generation

o f dress reform was led by woman’s rights advocates, utopian communitarians, and

water-curists, the second generation of dress reform was directed by clubwomen,

doctors, and intellectuals. Still it is crucial to remember that, while this conservative

trend was the norm in post-1870 dress reform, it was not impossible to find radical

women’s rights advocates, health faddists, or Spiritualists walking around in

bloomers up to the end of the century.

After 1870, dress reformers generally fit into one of five categories based

upon their motivation for promoting a change in dress. Commonly, dress reformers

were clubwomen, physical culturists, women’s rights advocates, aesthetes, or

religious reformers. As with the first two decades of dress reform, however, there

was both overlap and tension between these categories, and many reformers did not

61
 62

ally themselves to any o f these rhetorical standpoints. In the interest o f clarifying this

complex movement, it is important to place the reformers into context and provide as

much background information on them as possible. Therefore, these five categories

provide a logical starting point for explaining the dress reformers and their cause.

Most reformers were hesitant to “reform” women’s outer dress after the

bloomer debacle. These reformers operated under the motto: change nothing that can

be seen. The focus of dress reform shifted from the length and style of the skirt, the

central issue in the pre-1870 movement, to the undergarments, such as the corset and

petticoats. Dress reformers attempted to compromise with normative fashions after

1870, perhaps in an effort to draw more women to their reform, as well as to distance

themselves from the radicalism of the previous two decades. Post-1870 reformers

were eager to draw attention to their reforms’ aesthetic appeal. They made grandiose

comparisons between their own styles and those of the ancient Greeks, claiming to be

resurrecting “true art” and “natural beauty” in their designs. Despite these claims, the

dress reformers after 1870 suffered in creativity compared to their antebellum

counterparts. They did not radically challenge normative fashion, refusing to chop

off their skirts or incorporate pants, and they modified underclothing only with the

assistance of fashionable clothiers. Furthermore, after 1870, dress reformers rarely

attacked the gender hierarchy or its effects on women’s self-concept and self­

presentation. Dress reformers were at their best when redesigning late-nineteenth-

century clothing to make it healthier, more comfortable, and— arguably—more

stylish in the eyes of their middle- and upper-class audience. Because of their less
 63

ambitious goals, the dress reformers after 1870 found a more popular reception

among the public, the media, and the world of fashion.

As with pre-1870 dress reform, attacks on fashion were not perpetrated by

dress reformers alone. Both dress reformers and individuals who were merely

opposed to fashion wrote articles and books in an attempt to persuade women to

abandon their love of dress. However, dress reformers differed from anti-fashion

advocates in two main ways.123 Dress reformers usually offered women an

alternative costume, such as reformed undergarments or dresses supported by

suspenders. Anti-fashion propagandists rarely proposed improvements; they merely

condemned popular clothing and the women who wore it. Dress reformers often

blamed “tyrant” fashion for causing women’s subjugation. They interpreted fashion

as having great power over society, brainwashing women and men alike. While

many dress reformers acknowledged women’s individual choice in adopting fashion,

after 1870, they widely shared the belief that fashion was a power too strong for the

individual woman to defy. Frances Russell, a noted dress reformer, stated, “I cannot

agree with those who say that this is wholly a matter of individual choice, unless we

take into consideration the social pressure that is so large an element in deciding

one’s ‘choice.’” 124 Anti-fashionists gave little sympathy to women burdened by

societal pressures. They interpreted women’s choices in fashion as willful self-

destruction, and gave no consideration to the external influences women faced when

choosing their personal styles.

123 See also Gayle Veronica Fischer, Who Wears the Pants? Women, Dress Reform, and Power in the
M id-Nineteenth-Century United States, Ph. D. Indiana University, 1995, especially page 57, for a
discussion on the differences between anti-fashion and dress reform in the 1850s and 1860s.
124 Russell, Frances E. “Rational Dress Movement: A Symposium,” Arena. 9 (February 1894): 315.
Fig. F “The Mode and the Martyrs” from Puck 9 (April 27, 1881): 142.
 64

A good example of anti-fashion literature appeared in the American edition of

Puck in 1881 (see Figure F). The cartoon, “The Mode and the Martyrs” revealed the

misogyny and intolerance o f anti-fashion. Unlike dress reform propaganda, this

cartoon only suggests the evils of fashion; it provides no alternatives for women

seeking to abandon the mode. The central image of the skeleton—fashion personified

as death—pulling tightly the strings o f a “glove-fitting” corset around the waist of a

goose/woman suggests that women willingly bind themselves to death when adopting

the mode. Depicting women as geese suggests that fashion did little to hide flaws in

women’s appearances. Also, the common corsetry practices of the day, depicted in

the upper left hand corner, left women’s bodies distorted into a shape that slightly

resembled those of geese: their bosoms being thrust forward, while their posterior

was thrown far back. The cartoon shows these corseted geese running to their graves,

indicating disdain for women who follow the flock instead of thinking for themselves.

Make-up and high heels apparently are equal to the corset in creating martyrs of

women, and all of this martyrdom is endured in an attempt “to catch a husband in one
5? 125
season.

Anti-fashion propaganda often surfaced in dress reform literature despite the

key differences between the two groups. Some dress reformers adopted the rhetoric

of anti-fashion propaganda, blaming women for their choices in fashion.

Furthermore, both dress reformers and anti-fashion propagandists attacked fashion as

immoral (because it promiscuously attracted sexual admiration from men and envy

from women), unhealthy, impractical, and unaesthetic. While anti-fashion’s

misogyny was stronger in most cases, (as evident in the Puck cartoon,) there was

125 “The Mode and the Martyrs,” Puck, 9 (April 27, 1881): 142.
 65

overlap with the dress reform movement, as we shall see throughout this chapter.

Many dress reformers revealed their contempt for women, particularly fashionable

women, through their propaganda.

Clubwomen tended to shy away from misogynist or anti-fashion statements in

their endorsement of dress reform. The clubwomen who participated in the dress

reform movement usually resided in larger cities of northeastern and midwestern

states, including Chicago, New York, Albany, and Boston. Those involved in dress

reform were typically white, Protestant, middle- and upper-class women. Clubs such

as the New England Woman’s Club and Sorosis made dress reform part of their

agenda. These women rarely placed dress reform at the top of their program.

Instead, they made clothing a small part of their multifaceted drive for “municipal

housekeeping,” or the general improvement of society.126 By entering the public

realm through reform, clubwomen subtly expanded women’s role in society.

However, the clubwomen were careful not to challenge the boundaries of women’s

place in society overmuch. Many o f the reforms they pursued were specifically

connected to domesticity. Dress reform, for instance, was a relatively safe pursuit as

long as it was distanced from the controversial woman’s rights issues (political,

economic, and social equality for women) it had been connected to in the past. While

many clubwomen supported suffrage, they were not willing to storm the political

world as women (or as strong-minded bloomers), instead, they usually argued for

maternalistic privileges within the traditional gender framework. Clubwomen were

126 Blair, Karen J. The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868-1914. New York:
Holmes and Meier Publishers, 1980. p. 93. Blair used this term to describe the agenda o f clubwomen
who expanded their traditional domestic roles and entered politics, society, and the economy through
club-directed reform.
 66

not exactly entering men’s spheres of politics or the economy when challenging

female fashions. Nor were they proposing radical changes.

In fact, clubwomen summed up their style of dress reform when they

counseled women interested in the movement to “attempt no marked alteration in

[their] present appearance.” 127 They made very conservative changes to outer

clothing, if any at all. Women’s undergarments were almost always the focus of

clubwomen’s reform efforts. The clubwomen were particularly interested in corsets,

and either attempted to banish them altogether, or at least alter them so they would

not deform or damage the internal organs. Their goals, which were to make dress

“more healthful, artistic, simple, and serviceable,” reveal the connection clubwomen

made between beauty and comfort.128 Clubwomen agreed, “The thrifty woman of

every age has the same right to be clothed with dignity and beauty,” it was a right of

every woman to be beautiful.129 While the clubwomen continued their predecessors’

concerns with women’s health, they make a sharp turn from the dress reformers of the

antebellum period, who argued that women should not be defined by their

appearance. As with most dress reformers after 1870, clubwomen interpreted their

reforms as aesthetic improvements.

Clubwomen were among the most active of post-1870 dress reformers. They

were particularly successful at introducing their reformed undergarments to the public

through various exhibitions, including a widely popular 1874 exhibition of Olivia P.

127 “The Dress Question,” W om an’s Journal. 4 (July 26, 1873): 234. This quote is from an article by
Harriet Austin, a noted water-curist and dress reformer. She wrote to protest the timidity o f the dress
reform committee of the New England Woman’s Club.
128 “Report of the Committee on Dress o f the New England Woman’s Club” W om an’s Journal. 4 (June
21, 1873): 200.
129 Steele, Frances M. “Extravagance in the Dress o f Women,” Arena. 9 (April 1894): 657.
 67

Flynt’s undergarments sponsored by the New England Woman’s Club.130 The

clubwomen also organized dress reform stores, such as that opened by the New

England Women’s Club in 1874. The store failed rather miserably, apparently “a

hostile elevator boy,” misdirected clients. Furthermore, the nonprofit nature of the

store and inferior products doomed the business early on.131 The exhibition set up by

clubwomen for the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 was much more successful.

Members of the Dress Committee of the National Council o f Women agreed to

appear individually at the World’s Fair in reform dresses, wishing to familiarize the

public with their movement. They hoped to encounter little ridicule, since the Fair

would draw crowds from across the world in all sorts of clothing and minimize the

unusualness of their own apparel. The clubwomen were a great success, although

they had no patterns to supply the crowds of women who desired them.132 Other

dress reformers found success through publications or lecture series, such as the

series presented by the New England Woman’s Club, directed by dress reformer

Abba Goold Woolson. Woolson gathered prominent female doctors to lecture to

packed crowds in New England. These lectures were so successful that Woolson

gathered them into a book, which was subsequently published. Many other dress

reformers published books or articles in the Woman’s Journal, The Arena, and The

Review o f Reviews. Clubwomen were successful at introducing their interest in dress

reform to the public; however, unlike their predecessors, they did not actually adopt

their reforms in an effort at publication. Instead, they discussed them.

130 Flynt, O. P. M anual o f Hygienic M odes o f Under-Dressing fo r Women and Children. Boston, 1882.
131 Blair, Karen J. The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868-1914. New York:
Holmes and Meier Publishers, 1980. p. 35 See also Taylor, Nancy Jean. “The American Dress Reform
 68

W omen’s health was the primary concern for clubwomen who took up dress

reform. They saw tight lacing and heavy, impractical petticoats as the source of much

illness among women and their children. Clubwomen turned to maternalistic

arguments when attacking fashion, suggesting that stylish clothing, corsets, and

petticoats led to unhealthy mothers and increased miscarriages. They proclaimed it

“women’s duty” to future generations that they abandon unhealthy clothing and think

instead of their children’s health. In 1874, the New England Woman’s Club reported,

“The undoubted ill health of our countrywomen is a national injury and a national

disgrace.” Interestingly, the dress committee challenged individuals such as Dr.

Edward H. Clarke, who argued that women were incapable of education because of

physical weakness caused by their reproductive systems.133 Clubwomen placed the

blame for women’s frailty instead upon debilitating fashions, and promised to fight to

allow women to grow “into strong-bodied, strong-limbed, clear-headed, warm­

hearted, rosy, happy women, proud o f their womanhood, surrounded by husband and

children if they prefer a domestic life.” 134 While the New England Woman’s Club

did not place maternity as the chief goal for all women, they did suggest that current

fashions were preventing women from living up to their potential as mothers. This

was a powerful argument in a society that placed maternity as the highest aspiration

for women.

Movement, 1851-1897: Nexus of Fashion, Victorian Womanhood, and Social Change.” Unpublished
Master’s Thesis, University o f Texas at Austin, 1988. p. 54-56.
132 “Rational Dress Movement: A Symposium,” Arena. 9 (February 1894): 305.
333 See Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English F or H er Own Good: 150 Years o f the Experts ’A dvice
to Women. New York: Anchor Books, 1978, for a discussion o f Clarke’s book, which they describe as
the “great uterine manifesto o f the nineteenth century” (127).
134 “Official Report of the Dress Committee o f the N. E. Woman’s Club” The W om an’s Journal.
Saturday, July 25, 1874. p. 236
 69

In an 1893 article, Frances Russell, the chairman o f the Committee on Dress

Reform (set up by the National Council o f Women in 1891) explicitly used

maternalism to draw women to dress reform. Russell stated pointedly, “not a citizen

of this republic is born whose physical constitution and cast of mind do not bear the
IOC

impression o f his mother’s previous health and character.” She went on to argue

that young girls are punished with unhealthy clothing, while boys are pampered,

allowed to run, and grow strong. Essentially, Russell, like her fellow clubwomen,

had an ambiguous outlook regarding women’s primary role in society. While her

maternalistic argument suggests that she wished to glorify women’s role in the home

and nursery, her description of women’s lost potential challenges this notion,

suggesting instead that women were physically held back from equality because of

their clothing. Russell and the New England Woman’s Club both implied that

women had the potential to assume a role equal to men’s in society, but they needed

to alter their clothing in order to achieve this.

Clubwomen were ambivalent about their class position as well. Class

privilege played a powerful role in dress reform, with many reformers exhorting their

fellow clubwomen to set a good example for their “inferiors.” In 1879, Abby W.

May, a prominent dress reformer, read a paper before the Association for the

Advancement of Women. She argued,

We are our sisters’ keepers. The poor, the weak, and those low down
in the scale o f comforts and advantages, look up to those more
fortunate than they... and strive to imitate them .... But what are the
women of our upper classes doing to-day? They are acting not as
noble leaders should, but are setting an example of servile following of
fashions that are vulgar, and tasteless, and senseless, and
extravagant.... I will not try to measure the burden that the fortunate

135 Russell, Frances E. “Freedom in Dress for Women,” The Arena. 8 (June 1893): 75.
 70

women are to-day laying upon their less able sisters by the force of
this example.136

Most clubwomen involved in dress reform were upper or middle class. Therefore,

dress reform propaganda was generally directed toward women who had enough

money to redesign or expand their wardrobe, experiment with reformed corsets and

healthier undergarments, and attend lectures or exhibitions where reformed clothing

was displayed. One advertisement for a lecture by Annie Jenness Miller, a popular

author and dress reformer, described the packed audience as indisputably wealthy.

“Nearly every one o f the ladies was the wife or daughter of a wealthy man, and the

greater part of them were society women.” It was fitting that the crowd was wealthy,

since the dresses Jenness Miller displayed (eight in all) included one that was an

“exquisitely embroidered black net, combined with pale green brocade,” obviously

not an easily affordable costume.

Nevertheless, dress reformers constantly referred to their poorer sisters, in

hopes of improving the example they set for working class women, or in dismay at

the extravagance of working-class clothing. The corsets, heavy petticoats, and

expensive dresses worn by their servants irritated dress reformers. Annie Jenness

Miller, herself a member of the Dress Committee of the National Council of Women,

published her scorn for overdressed servants in her most popular book, Physical

Beauty: How to Obtain and How to Preserve It. Jenness Miller informed her

(presumably middle- and upper-class) readers, “It is a duty which each one owes to

136 May, Abby W. Dress. A Paper R ead before the Association fo r the A dvancem ent o f Women.
Boston: Lockwood, Brooks, and Co., 1879. p. 7
137 Pamphlet, “Lecture by Mrs. Jenness Miller, at Kasson Opera House, Gloversville, N. Y.,
Wednesday, May 2, 1894, ‘Healthful and Artistic D r e s s .C o p ie d from the original, in the “Dress
Reform Graphics Collection,” part of the A lice M arshall Collection o f W omen's H istory M aterials
1880-1891. Penn State Harrisburg, Middletown, PA.
 71

society, to dress well, and by dressing well, I mean keeping with one’s station. I do

not regard my cook as well dressed when she wears a satin dress, at seventy-five

cents a yard, trimmed with cotton lace, to church and for holidays, and, since she

cannot afford to buy a better quality, I do not consider that satin belongs to her

position. She is well dressed when she wears a serviceable cotton or woolen fabric

only.” 138 It is difficult to ignore the snobbery of the dress reformers, despite their

efforts to “help” the working class by lowering the fashion standards through personal

adoption of reformed dress. Furthermore, a tone of fear surfaced in Jenness Miller’s

book. She was concerned that working-class women were using fashion to abandon

traditional deference and call for public acknowledgement of equality with their

employers.

Annie Jenness Miller brings up another facet of clubwomen’s rhetoric with

her talk of “duty.” Clubwomen had a shared concept of aesthetics when they

addressed issues of women’s appearance. They agreed that it was essential that

women appear beautiful— it was a woman’s role in society to adorn— and fashion

was meant to enhance that beauty. However, clubwomen agreed that current fashions

had failed to provide this service; therefore, it was essential that they improve upon

current styles. Clubwomen developed an aesthetic philosophy based on their

understanding of “natural” beauty. Frances Steele, a dress reformer and clubwoman

from Chicago, argued, “All the world loves beauty. Every woman naturally seeks to

be beautiful. It is part of her mental constitution.” 139 Steele connected femininity and

beauty, assuming that women everywhere could share an aesthetic sense because of

138 Miller, Annie Jenness. Physical Beauty: How to Obtain and How to Preserve It. New York:
Charles L. Webster and Co., 1892. p. 178
 72

their gender. Other dress reformers connected their aesthetic philosophy to the past,

especially great classical beauties, such as the Venus de Milo and the Venus de

Medici. A publication by the Study Committee of the Chicago Correct Dress Club

“earnestly” recommended “that each member supply herself with a photograph of the

Venus de Milo.” 140 According to Annie Jenness Miller, “the dress of Greek women

was perfect in its noble simplicity.” 141

Classical beauty appealed to late-nineteenth century clubwomen particularly

because of its glorification of the voluptuous woman. In her work on American

beauty ideals, Lois Banner discusses the shift in postbellum years from the “frail,

thin, steel-engraving ideal” to a new beauty idea, “the large-bosomed and -hipped,
147
curvaceous and heavy model of beauty, the ‘voluptuous woman.’” Banner

describes the importance of the classical Venuses to the voluptuous ideal, particularly

in that “they were broad-shouldered, large-waisted, and athletic-looking,” qualities

that were rarely praised in women by mainstream society before the 1870s.143

Because of this new voluptuous ideal, dress reformers after 1870 operated under

better conditions than their predecessors had. Women who wished to appear tiny

needed to wear corsets and gigantic hoop skirts to place their bodies in stark contrast,

making them look smaller. After 1870, women were encouraged to look “healthy.” 144

For many women, this meant eating their fill, engaging in outdoor exercise, and

flaunting any extra pounds they happened to gain. By fitting the late nineteenth-

139 Steele, Frances M. “Extravagance in the Dress of Women,” Arena. 9 (April 1894): 658.
140 Parker, Frances Stuart. Dress, and How to Improve It. Chicago: Chicago Legal News Co., 1897. p.
23.
141 Miller, Annie Jenness. Physical Beauty: How to Obtain and How to Preserve It. New York:
Charles L. Webster and Co., 1892. p. 169-170.
!42Banner, Lois W. Am erican Beauty. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983. p. 106.
143 Ibid, p. 110
 73

century beauty ideal, voluptuous women were expected to be more sexually attractive

to men. Certainly, voluptuousness was not a universal beauty ideal, nor did it ever

truly replace the steel-engraved, tiny lady. And at no time in the nineteenth century

did the woman of fashion abandon her corset. Voluptuousness often required tighter

laces, in order to displace some of those extra pounds to the chest and hips. However,

dress reformers after 1870 struck a common chord when they praised the Venus de

Milo for her “natural” body shape.

Clubwomen’s aesthetic philosophy was based on their experiences in society.

For example, the clubwomen assumed that all women were interested in appearing

beautiful and stylish, therefore, they insisted that their clothes never stray too far from

current fashions. Clubwomen also were active in daily business, whether it was the

business o f reform, or the actual running o f a company. They assumed they shared

this quality with all women, and one of their most pressing demands was for the

creation of a business suit for women. Annie Jenness Miller revealed the weight of

clubwomen’s common prejudices when she described the “perfect business dress for

the ordinary climate.” Essentially, she assumed her (upper- and middle-class)

audience would live in a northern climate, and would require “a ribbed woolen union

garment” worn next to the skin.145 Southerners were generally excluded from dress

reform propaganda.

Clubwomen gathered together in 1891 to form the Committee on Dress out of

the National Council o f Women. One of the primary responsibilities of this

committee was to create and display a dress “suitable for business hours, for

144
ioia, p. luo-nu~
t i - i
 74

shopping, for marketing, housework, walking and other forms of exercise.”146 The

perception o f middle- and upper-class women’s lives had subtly changed since the

1850s. Clubwomen, who were supported by many conservatives, were assuming that

women would engage in business outside their homes. Frances Russell sarcastically

pointed out the pressing need for a “business dress” among “every wom an.. .who has

anything more useful to do in the world than to pose as an ornament of society.” 147 It

was increasingly common, particularly among clubwomen, for dress reform to

symbolize the increasing activity in the lives of upper- and middle-class women.

Clubwomen agreed that it was a woman’s duty to be “useful,” as a mother, a

reformer, a club member, a Christian, or even a professional. They demanded that

their clothing also fulfill this function.

Clubwomen may have been the most prominent among dress reformers after

1870; however, they certainly were not the most radical. A small proportion of dress

reformers interested in physical culture and health reform advanced a daring dress

reform campaign in an effort to change notions about women’s bodies and women’s

role in society. However, the physical culturists themselves were quite divided in

their perceptions of women’s bodies. Physical culturalists were in some ways

descendents of the health reformers; they shared mid-nineteenth century health

reformers’ interests in improving the health o f the nation. Unlike the health reformers

o f the mid-nineteenth century, however, the physical culturists generally stuck to

AMA-approved tactics, avoiding water cures and fad diets. While all physical

145 Miller, Annie Jenness. “Symposium on Women’s Dress, Prepared Under the Auspices of the
National Council o f Women o f the United States,” The Arena, 6 (September 1892): 498.
146 National Council of Women of the United States. R eport o f Committee on Dress. April 1893.
147 “Rational Dress Movement: A Symposium,” Arena. 9 (February 1894): 313.
 75

culturists hoped to increase opportunities for women to exercise, gain strength, and

improve their health, there was a clear divide in the motivations o f these dress

reformers. Most physical culturists advanced maternalism, evolutionary theory, and

nativism— all of which were intellectual trends in the field o f science in the late-

nineteenth century— as the logic for dress reform.148 Doctors, such as John Harvey

Kellogg, Robert L. Dickinson, Wilberforce Smith, and Arabella Kenealy argued that

dress reform was essential to the future of the nation. They demanded that women

abandon their unhealthy corsets and long skirts, and adopt exercise for the sake of

their children, their race, and their country. These physical culturists pointed to

evolutionary theory to argue that women were destroying their own health and the

health of their babies by wearing fashionable clothing.

The message o f these rather harsh physical culturists was mitigated by another

branch of the movement, which demanded exercise and physical well-being for

women, not because of their maternal duties, but because of their inherent right to

good health. This second branch of physical culturists found their greatest support in

the mid-1890s, particularly during the bicycle craze of 1896 and 1897.149 During

these years, the bicycle became accessible to and popular among upper- and middle-

class women, and a brief confusion over proper bicycling attire ensued. Ultimately, a

large percentage of female bicyclists wore a bifurcated skirt, and dress reform and

physical culture were inevitably linked. In England, a magazine popularized the

bicycle craze and adopted a series on “The Philosophy of Knickerbockers” in which

148 For more on the intellectual trends influencing feminism and science in late-nineteenth century
America, see Louise Newman, White W om an’s Rights: The Racial Origins o f Feminism in the United
States, Oxford University Press, 1998.
Fig. G “Dr. Dio Lewis’s gymnastic clothing for men and women” From Dr. Dio Lewis, The New
Gymnasticsfor Men, Women, and Children. Eighth edition, Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1864. (Taken
from Gayle Fischer, Who Wears the Pants?)
 76

the propriety o f women wearing bifurcated skirts was discussed at length. Physical

culture seeped into colleges and high schools, many of which adopted physical

education programs (see Figure G).

The motives of these two branches of physical culturists were so opposed that

it is necessary to examine them separately. The dominant group of physical culturists

used maternalism, evolutionary theory, nativism, and imperialism in an effort to

frighten women out of fashionable clothing and into reformed dress. When they

addressed fashion, their primary concern was to eliminate the corset. They generally

had very little to say about contemporary styles and were content to endorse most

fashions as long as they did not involve corsets or skirts that trailed on the ground.

The efforts of physical culturists to reform American women were often quite

patronizing. Dr. Wilberforce Smith, a prominent physiologist, showed some patience

for middle and upper-class women who adopted the corset, acknowledging that “they

live under the tyranny of a nearly universal custom, and largely under the yoke o f the

professional dressmaker.... Few of the sex can be expected to have the individuality

and courage to resist.”150 However, his sympathy makes woman into a “victim,” or “a

creature more impressionable than strong, and in her worthy role as partner with man,

a sweet and feeble dependent.”151 Smith’s subtle disdain for women is overshadowed

by the blunt misogyny o f other physical culturists. An Italian doctor reading a paper

before a medical association in Rome declared: “that women should willingly subjest

149 For a thorough discussion of this fad, see Sally Sims, “The Bicycle, the Bloomer, and Dress Reform
in the 1890s,” in D ress and Popular Culture. Patricia A. Cunningham and Susan Voso Lab, eds.,
Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1991. pp. 125-145
150 Smith, W. Wilberforce. “Corset-wearing and Its Pathology,” Tke Sanitary1Record. (November 15,
1888): 201.
151 Ibid. p. 202, 326.
 77

(sic) themselves to the filth, to say nothing of the possible dangers of trailing skirts,

has long been a wonder to sensible people who are acquainted with bacteriology.”152

John Harvey Kellogg, one of America’s most eminent health reformers, famed

developer of the cornflake, and a member of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church,

became very active in the dress reform cause.153 He firmly believed that American

women were responsible for their own destruction, and he had very little sympathy

regarding the social pressures these women faced daily. In a lecture on the topic of

dress, delivered before the Michigan State Medical Society in 1891, Kellogg

announced: “I am to undertake to show that certain features of the mode of dress

common among civilized American women have been, and are, a prominent factor in

producing a widespread and marked physical deterioration among the women o f this

country.”154 Kellogg’s discussion o f “civilized” women reveals that his target

audience was white, middle- and upper-class American women, an audience familiar

with American imperialism and that generally would agree with him that (especially

white, middle- and upper-class) Americans were higher on the evolutionary scale than

were foreigners.155 He plays upon the American obsession with evolution by pointing

out “the marked difference in physical proportion between the savage and the

152 “Modern Medicine, Surgery and Sanitation: The Dangers o f Trailing Skirts” Current Literature. 29
(October 1900): 433.
153 K ellogg’s involvement in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church has implications for his connection to
dress reform. Ellen G. White, spiritual leader of the church, was deeply involved in dress reform for
over ten years. This will be discussed at greater length later in this chapter.
154 Kellogg, J. H. The Influence o f Dress in Producing the Physical Decadence o f Am erican Women:
A n A ddress D elivered before the M ichigan State M edical Society at Saginaw, Mich., June 11, 1891.
Battle Creek, Michigan: Michigan State Medical Society, 1891. p. 3-5.
155 Louise Newman, White W om an’s Rights: The Racial Origins o f Feminism in the United States.
Oxford University Press, 1998.
 78

civilized woman,” and goes on to compare these “savages” quite favorably to their

wealthier sisters in terms o f health and strength.156

Essentially, most physical culturists blamed women for their choice of

clothing. Either they dismissed women as too weak to rebel against fashionable

society, or they ignored social pressures altogether and took clubwoman Frances

Russell seriously when she stated “the average dress of the average woman

pronounces against her the verdict: fickle, frivolous, incompetent!”157 Physical

culturists cajoled, threatened, and frightened women into adopting healthier clothing.

They combined evolutionary theory and nativist fears of race suicide to argue that

women were slowly destroying the health o f white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants and

permitting other races to outbreed their own.158 Kellogg fearfully stated, “there has

been, in the last ten years, an enormous falling off in the birth-rate.. .threatening the

very existence of the race.” He went on to admonish women for their foolish

fashions. “A corset-choked woman knows very well that she is quite unfit, physically,

for the rearing of children.” 159

Arabella Kenealy, a prominent physical culturist and doctor, blamed fashion

for the inequality of the sexes. “Woman, then, in impairing her assimilative

[digestive] power is impairing her human power. She can never fairly keep up with

man, whose assimilative capability, uninjured at all events by stays, is more

according to his needs. It may be accepted indeed as fundamental truth that so long

156 Ibid p.6

157 Russell, Frances E. “Woman’s Dress,” The Arena. (February 1891): 352. Russell’s comments
should not be taken out of context, as she later defends women’s decision to adopt stylish attire. She
acknowledges the “social martyrdom” dress reformers face when donning unusual clothing. Ibid. p.
35 6
158 Nativists particularly feared the Irish, both for their continual immigration to northeastern America,
and their large, healthy families.
 79

as women wear stays (for women seldom wear stays without lacing them too tightly)

our sex can never properly take its place in the world o f work.”160 Kellogg agreed

with Kenealy’s logic. He was so impressed by the strength of “uncivilized” women

that he suggested that it was only corsets that kept women from developing strength

and health equal to that of men. “The profession and the laity.. .regard women as

naturally weaker than men. But that this is not necessarily so, is shown by the

constant experience and observation o f travelers among uncivilized tribes.”161 While

Kenealy and Kellogg’s analysis seems optimistic for the millions o f weak and

unhealthy women wearing corsets, they quickly disavow the possibility o f radical

improvement. “That a leopard will change his spots or women discard the use of
162
stays in the course of one generation is not to be expected,” mourned Kenealy.

The physical culturists advancing a matemalistic argument for dress reform

saw the answer to women’s “physical decadence” in reformed dress (sans corsets), an

increased understanding of the “laws of life” (biology, physical fitness, and nutrition),

and increased exercise. They hoped that women would engage in outdoor activities

like bicycling, walking, and swimming; attend physiology classes; and adopt a

healthy diet. Their radical counterparts shared these ideals, but this small category of

physical culturists had an extremely different approach and a different costume.

These dress reformers advanced a costume that closely resembled bloomers.

However, the skirts were closer fitting and the outfit was often designed to hide the

pants worn underneath. These costumes were commonly called knickerbockers or

159 Kellogg, p. 4.
160 Kenealy, Arabella. “The Curse o f Corsets,” Nineteenth Century. 55 (January 1904): 135.
161 T . .1
js.enogg p. z s
162 Ibid p. 136
and power, subverting the StIESSed ^ herome's alrength, virility,
From George Hall, A Study in Bloomers. importantly, his heroine wore bloomers.
 80

bloomers. These dress reformers were decidedly interested in physical culture,

particularly bicycling, although other sports were gaining favor by the end of the
1
century. This group was made up mostly o f female athletes; however, they found

some support among doctors and health enthusiasts. Most importantly, these dress

reformers used physical culture in an attempt to redefine femininity.

One of the most notable of these individuals was the author of A Study in

Bloomers, or, the M odel New Woman, George Hall. This novel, published in 1895,

introduced Grace Thorne, a heroine in bloomers who believed “in a thorough-going

equality of the sexes.” She was “strong enough to wrestle with a giant,” and

nevertheless remained “a woman as delicate as anybody’s sister dare be.”164

Throughout this novel, Thorne revolutionized traditional notions of femininity. She

beats her male admirers at sports; she boldly bicycles through town in a pair of

bloomers; she speaks in public for equal suffrage, free silver, prohibition, and

nativism; and she proposes to her future husband at the end of the book. The author

described her as having almost Herculean strength and a “great, warm muscular arm”

(see Figure H).165 This strikes a strange note in a romance novel, particularly since

the hero is a rather delicate pastor who is dwarfed by his love interest in both strength

and character. Thorne represents Hall’s ideal “New Woman,” and she fits the role of

a dress reformer in many ways. She advances a desire to “live naturally” and

improve upon her own health through diet, exercise, and careful attire.166 She shared

the political views o f many— although certainly not all— dress reformers (hence her

163 For an example o f a physical cultmist interested in woman’s welfare, see Ellen Battelle Dietrick,
“Male and Female Attire in Various Nations and Ages,” The Arena. 10 (August 1894): 353-365.
164 Hall, George F. A Study in Bloomers, or The M odel New Woman, Chicago: American Bible House,
1895. p. 33, 54
interest in equal suffrage, prohibition, and nativism.) Finally, she fit the ideal of a

small group of physical culturists who wished to help women redefine their

femininity. Thorne tells us “every woman ought to be strong. It is her right, and

whatever fashion keeps her down should be stamped out in righteous indignation.” 167

Thorne was outspoken, proud, brave, and strong. Yet Hall made her the heroine of

his novel, and he consistently defined her as “womanly.” While he may not have sold

his “New Woman” to many nineteenth-century Americans, he did present an

alternative vision of femininity.

Despite Hall’s radical interpretation of womanhood, he was unwilling to break

away entirely from traditional views. Grace Thorne tells us at the end of the story

that “to wed and bring up children is the highest mission of womankind.” Hall is

unwilling to remove women from the home; however, he does attempt to change their

role within the family. Thorne proposes to her husband, and it is clear from their

courtship\hat she is the dominant personality in the relationship. This may be

irrelevant when she is relegated to a lifetime in the house, as her husband is free to

choose his own profession, yet it is a clear break from the traditional romantic

conclusion.

George Hall and his renegade band of physical culturists were not alone in

using dress and exercise to challenge traditional femininity. While most women’s

rights advocates had decamped from the movement in the mid-1850s, several still

placed dress reform high among their priorities. It is important to understand the

great blurring o f boundaries between all o f the categories of dress reformers. While
 82

some reformers clearly identified themselves as woman’s rights advocates, they were

heavily involved in other issues, such as physical culture or religion. Therefore, other

interests best defined some of the woman’s rights advocates. Others, however, were

involved in dress reform solely to improve the lot of American women. These dress

reformers included radicals such as Tennie C. Claflin and moderates such as Helen G.

Ecob (author of The Well-Dressed Woman) and B. O. Flower, the editor of The

Arena.

The radicals were more visible, but they were by far outnumbered. Claflin

was only superficially involved in dress reform; her main interests were in working

with her sister, Victoria Woodhull, on their philosophy of free love. They argued that

marriage was a form of prostitution, which placed women in a position of submission.

Claflin and Woodhull agreed that only when women could choose their partners

without legal or societal bonds, could they then be equal. Claflin used the issue of

dress to attack the gender system and advance free love, claiming sexual autonomy

for women. She argued that women were forced to sell their bodies by wearing

stylish clothing, “‘young ladies’ are set up, advertised, and sold to the highest cash

bidder.” 168 She raged at fashionable women’s “hypocritical mock modesty” and

called for “all portions o f the body [to be] evenly covered. ” 169 Claflin, like many

women’s rights advocates of the 1850s, used dress reform to attack a system that

demanded women exchange sex for economic security.

167 Ibid p. 134

168 Tennie C. Claflin, “Constitutional Equality a Right of Woman” (1871) from Aileen S. Kraditor, ed.,
“The Relation o f W omen’s Fashions to Woman’s Status,” in Up From the Pedestal. Chicago:
Quadrangle Books, 1968. p. 132
169 Ibid p. 133
 83

Tennie C. Claflin received a great deal of attention for her proposals;

however, little was done to adopt them. Still, many women agreed that the time had

come for extreme measures in the matter of dress. Dress reformers frequently wrote

to the leading suffrage journals of the day, Woman’s Journal and The Revolution.

They were rarely taken seriously, but their articles are a testament to a continuing

strain of radical dress reform throughout the nineteenth century. In 1868, Frans H.

Widstrand wrote to The Revolution, declaring “It is cowardice to not wear the neuter

dress.” Widstrand went on to dismiss fashions as “not only ridiculous, but

shamefully indecent.” His description of a “neuter dress” (which implies that this

fashion labeled its wearer as sexless and genderless) and a flattering reference to Dr.

Mary Walker reveals that he favored bloomers with a close-fitting skirt, worn in dark

colors, the dress advocated by Walker.170 Other correspondents also called for

immediate action. In the Woman's Journal, one reader wrote in, “Let the writers on

Woman’s dress wipe their pens, cork their ink bottles, lock their desks and shorten

their dresses. It will do more good in one year than ten years’ writing can effect.”171

Most dress reformers were not so bold. Despite woman’s rights advocates’

historic link to radical dress reform, by the 1870s, most woman’s rights advocates

were unwilling to change the outer nature of women’s dress. B. O. Flower and Helen

G. Ecob both used dress to challenge women’s traditional role in society, yet neither

of these activists insisted on shortening women’s skirts or covering all portions of the

body equally. Instead, they called for small changes, particularly the abandonment of
\
corsets and lightening of the petticoats. They preferred to drape clothing across the

170 “W oman’s Dress” The Revolution. 2 (December 24, 1868):391.

171 “Woman’s Dress Again,” W om an’s Journal. 4 (September 20, 1873): 303.
 84

woman's body rather than tightly fitting it to her limbs. Both Ecob and Flower

supported women who adopted bloomers or pants; however, neither dress reformer

made these radical garments central.

Flower, the editor of The Arena, connected dress to women’s rights in his

journal. His tone often resembles that of Gerrit Smith: neither man could understand

women’s reluctance to adopt reformed dress, and both men insisted that equality was

impossible until women reformed their attire. Flower lectured his readers, “as long as

[woman] remained the willing slave of fashion, she would be at a disadvantage in

every vocation in life, and what was more, until she had vindicated her moral courage

in regard to a problem which vitally affected her health and that of the unborn, she

could not demand the supreme right of wife and mother which the dominant sex had

denied her through the ages.”172

Clearly, Flower’s desire to “liberate” women was mixed with hesitation. He,

like many physical culturists and clubwomen, used a maternalistic argument to

persuade women to reform their dress. He shared earlier dress reformers’

assumptions that women would respond best to demands that they improve their

maternal skills. He joined many other dress reformers in employing Social

Darwinism to argue for dress reform: “If girls will persist in ruining their vital organs

as they grow up to womanhood, and if women will continue this destructive habit, the

race must inevitably deteriorate.”173 Flower castigated women for their fashions,

“Anything which injures the physical body, whether it be licentiousness,

172 Flower, B. O. “Parisian Fashionable Folly Versus American Common S e n s Arena. 6 (October
1892): 135.
173 Flower, B. O. “Fashion’s Slaves,” Arena. 4 (September 1891): 413.
 85

intemperance, gluttony, or vicious modes of dress, is necessary evil from an ethical

point of view.”174

Despite Flower’s harsh, insensitive, and pompous tone, he viewed dress

reform as an avenue for woman’s rights. “The age of woman is dawning, but not

until she is free from the fetters of conventionalism and fashion will she rise to the
1
dignity o f her true estate.” His understanding of woman’s “true estate” may not

have meshed well with leading woman’s rights advocates; however, he was

attempting to knock down barriers that prevented women from enjoying full health,

comfortable clothing, and opportunities to exercise. Flower’s harsh tone was easily

matched by Helen Ecob’s arguments in The Well-Dressed Woman (1892). While

Ecob shared Flower’s assurance that “dress is a part of the woman question,” she
1 '76
joined him in manipulating women’s emotions and criticizing the entire sex. She

introduced her book to a primarily female audience with a cutting insult: “The intense

interest which is beginning to manifest itself on the subject of dress marks an epoch

in the social history of woman. It indicates that she is ready to put away childish
• inn
things and be governed by reason and conscience.”

Ecob shared many assumptions with both Flower and their contemporary

dress reformers. She combined maternalism with nationalism, essentially telling

young women that they owed it to their country to produce a healthy generation of

children. She set up dress reform as a panacea for women’s inequality: “Since

physical weakness handicaps woman’s activities, bars the way to higher education,

174 Ibid p. 419

175 Flower, B. O. “Parisian Fashionable Folly Versus American Common Sense,” Arena. 6 (October
1892): 143.
 86

and hinders the development of many noble traits of character, it follows that an

important step in the attainment of true womanhood lies in the direction of physical

reformation.” 178 Ecob’s negative views of women surface throughout her

commentary. She assumed women did not possess “many noble traits of character”

and appears hesitant to support women in higher education unless they abandon the

fashions of the day. Ecob’s may have used dress reform to fight for women’s rights,

yet she was so critical of her sex it is difficult to categorize her as a woman’s rights

advocate. Despite her obvious contempt for women, she did seem to interpret dress

reform as an opportunity for women to advance their position in society.

While Ecob mercilessly attacked women in her dress reform propaganda,

other woman’s rights advocates turned their frustration onto the dress reform

movement itself. Olive Logan frequently wrote to The Revolution to praise her fellow

woman’s rights advocates for their fashionable attire. “In my association with the

ladies who are active in the Woman Suffrage movement, it has been my good fortune

to come in contact with none who were not ladies in attire as well as in manners and

in heart.” Journalist Grace Greenwood joined her wholeheartedly:

I think some authority there should be to exclude or silence persons

unfit to appear before an intelligent and refined audience.... I allude
to certain anomalous creatures, in fearful hybrid costumes, who, a-
thirst for distinction, and not possessing the brain, culture, or moral
force to acquire it, content themselves with a vulgar notoriety, gained
by the defiance of social laws, proprieties, and decencies, by
measureless assumption and vanity, and by idiotic eccentricity of
dress.179

176 Ecob, Helen Gilbert. The Well-Dressed Woman: A Study in the Practical Application to Dress o f
the Laws o f Health, Art, and Morals. New York: Fowler and Wells, 1892. p. 233
177 Ibid p. 5
178 Ibid 9, 23.
179 “Grace Greenwood on the Washington Suffrage Convention,” The Revolution. 3 (1869): 66.
Fig. I “Aesthetic Dress” Note the loose-fitting, classical cut of these dresses. From Helen Ecob, The
Well-Dressed Woman.
“Aesthetic Dress’ from Helen Ecob, The Well-Dressed Woman.
 87

These two women were particularly hostile toward dress reform because of

their proximity to the movement. Both women wrote in the last months of the

1860s, a decade that witnessed the breakup of the bloomer movement and the

vagaries of lone dress reform rebels, notably Dr. Mary Walker and Lydia

Sayer Hasbrouck. There was still a great deal of animosity between dress

reformers and the woman’s rights camp, which had abandoned dress reform

abruptly fifteen years earlier. When these women attacked dress reform, they

were referring to the branches of the movement that advocated bloomers.

The aesthetics shared this disdain for bloomers, which they

characterized as stubby, ugly costumes. They instead idealized ancient

Greece and preferred to clothe women in flowing robes and soft colors. This

small group of reformers drew from the ranks of artists and novelists,

including Oscar Wilde, William Morris, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Pre-

Raphaelites and the Arts and Crafts movement were both important influences

for this British-based group, which combined an interest in dress reform with

a stronger interest in developing a new artistic medium from fashion.180 This

group did not have an American spokesperson; however, throughout the

nation it was incredibly influential stylistically. Almost all o f the dress

reformers active in the last three decades of the nineteenth century drew from

the artistic models of the aesthetics (see Figures I and J).

The aesthetics demanded that women and men both acknowledge the

intrinsic value of beauty. This dismantled the agenda o f earlier dress

180 For a thorough discussion of England’s aesthetics, see Stella Mary Newton, Health, A rt and
Reason: Dress Reform ers o f the Nineteenth Century. London: John Murray, 1974.
 88

reformers, who used the movement to argue that beauty was inessential and

even harmful to women. Americans were accustomed to hearing anti-fashion

diatribes in their churches, from their intellectuals, and particularly from the

dress reformers of the 1850s and 1860s. For centuries, beauty and fashion had

been connected to frivolousness and vanity; these qualities, in turn, were

assigned to women, who were much more deeply involved in fashion than

were men. Aesthetics insisted that beauty was ultimately a virtue. They

connected outer beauty to inner beauty and took away much of the stigma of

fashion. The implications for women and dress reform were astounding.

The aesthetic philosophy quickly permeated the dress reform

movement. In the second stage of dress reform, everyone from Helen Ecob to

George Hall agreed that dress, first and foremost, had to be beautiful.181 The

aesthetics were interested in beautifying all o f society—males and females—

but often their philosophy was only applied to women. In the first stage of

dress reform, the reformers earnestly tried to disconnect the age-old link

between women and fashion. In the second stage of the movement, reformers

were trying to elevate this link rather than abolish it. While an effort to praise

women for their interests in fashion appears to be very enlightened, many

dress reformers were not concerned about gender equality. Instead, they were

interested in promoting their own reformed clothing lines. Annie Jenness

Miller was notoriously good at describing her own fashions as beautiful,

181 See Helen Gilbert Ecob, The W ell-Dressed Woman: A Study in the Practical Application to Dress
o f the Lctws o f Health, Art, and Morals. New York: Fowler and Wells, 1892. p. 206, and George F.
Hall, A Study in Bloomers, or The M odel New Woman. Chicago: American Bible House, 1895 pp. 36-
39.
 89

healthy, and natural. She would remind women of the aesthetic philosophy

and subtly suggest, “nature and art may be made to combine,” and they

combined best of all in the dresses she was selling. Then she would convince

women that her clothing line provided necessary tools for natural, healthy

beauty—in fact, necessary tools for self-presentation: “Dress is all-important,

because it portrays elevation of character as unmistakably as does the

behavior or conversation.” 182

Religious reformers were, perhaps, more sincerely interested in the

character their dress revealed. Religious reformers had been interested in

dress for centuries, yet their involvement in reform had peaked during the first

stage of dress reform. The Oneidans continued to wear the American

Costume (essentially, very plain bloomers) until the late-1870s. Many

Spiritualists— individuals who belonged to a growing movement “aimed at

proving the immorality of the soul by establishing communication with the

spirits of the dead”— also adopted bloomers.183 The Seventh-Day Adventists

also experimented with the bloomer dress, (with a slightly longer skirt) in the

1860s and 1870s.184 Spiritualists, Seventh-Day Adventists, and Oneidans

adopted reform styles in an attempt to remove women from the male sexual

gaze. All o f these religions interpreted fashion as “immoral” because it

encouraged sexual desires in men. These desires were uncontrollable and

promiscuous in that they were outside of marriage and occurred without the

182 Miller, Annie Jenness, Physical Beauty: How to Obtain and How to Preserve It. New York: Charles
L. Webster and Co., 1892. pp. 170, 177.
183 See Ann Braude, R adical Spirits: Spiritualism and W om en’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1989, p. 2 for a full discussion of Spiritualism.
 t i i r v iL o r A BXORCTT AT TUX Q3XTDA COM JlUZnrr.

Fig. K “Arrival of a Recruit at the Oneida Community.” This cartoon suggests that the Oneida women
were lasciviously looking over the new recruit Furthermore, the women wearing reformed dress are
depicted as extremely homely. From John B. Ellis, Free Love and Its Votaries San Francisco: A. L.
Bancroft & Co., 1870. (Taken from Gayle Fischer, Who Wears the Pants?)
 The Dress Reform,
an A P P E A L TO T H E P E O P L E IN' IT S
BEHALF.
nr K its. e . a. w h ite.

Fig. L “Ellen G. White: The Dress Reform.” The Seventh-day Adventist leader tinkered with reformed
dress, favoring a particularly “modest” style, devoid of ornamentation and revealing very little of the
female wearer’s figure. From Gayle Fischer, Who Wears the Pants?
 90

knowledge or sanction of the community. The religious dress reformers

believed that some modification of the bloomer would eliminate lust from the

minds of men, protect women from vanity, and elevate women from the status

of mere sexual objects. Ironically, their experiments usually drew notoriety to

their female members instead of providing them with a means of modest

retirement, although the attire they proposed was unusually plain (see Figures

K and L).

Dress reformers relied on religion to provide motivations for women

seeking to adopt reformed attire. In an article demanding increased education

for women in physiology and anatomy, Anna Morris laments, “people are
1525
constantly treating with indignity God’s highest work of art.” Morris and

others criticized fashion for distorting the natural form of women’s bodies.

Finally, while aesthetics were highly successful in elevating fashion to an art

form, some dress reformers still relied on the argument that fashion basely

corrupted the minds of men and women.

Whether the motivations of the dress reformers were religious, aesthetic,

democratic, or medical all o f the dress reformers faced allegations o f “Bloomerism.”

Generally, the clubwomen and the doctors participating in the physical culture

movement were exempt from harsh criticism because of their elevated position in

society and the moderate reforms they proposed. However, all dress reformers

adamantly distanced themselves from the dress reformers o f the 1850s, which they

184 Ronald L. Numbers discusses the Seventh-Day Adventist’s experiment with dress reform briefly in
Prophetess o f Health: A Study o f Ellen G. White. New York: Harper and Row, 1976.
185 Morris, R. Anna, “The Hygienic Relation of Dress to Education,” N ational Education Association
o f the U. S. Journal o f Proceedings and Addresses. 33 (1894): 881.
 91

suggested was little better than cross-dressing. Lady Harberton, the head of the

British rational dress movement, began one article with a disclaimer: “Bearing in

mind the determination o f the world, as far as possible, to misunderstand every new

idea presented to it, it may be as well to preface the remarks put down here by stating

distinctly that I neither wish to wear men’s clothes myself, nor to see other women do

so. ‘Bloomerism’ still lurks in many a memory.” 186 In other words, Lady Harberton

was suggesting that women who had adopted the dress reforms of the 1850s were

cross-dressing, whereas her own reforms could not be characterized as such because

she was not wearing “men’s clothes.”

Dress reformers had good reason to distance themselves from the

bloomer costume. Not only was the first stage of the movement tainted by

failure, newspapermen rehashed and ridiculed the concept of women in

bloomers whenever they found an opportunity. The Scientific American

reported on a “Remarkable Scene at a Revival Meeting,” where women,

prompted by the revivalist J. F. Frasier, tore off their corsets and built a

bonfire o f them. In a later edition, Scientific American acknowledged that the

report “was a fabrication from beginning to end.” However, it provided

sensational reading for a public that enjoyed hysterical mocking dress

reformers.187 The New York Times joined the attack on dress reform with an

article on “that curious disorder peculiar to women, which is vulgarly called

‘dress reform,’ and which is characterized by an abnormal and unconquerable

186 Lady F. W. Harberton, “Rational Dress Reform,” M acm illan’sM agazine. 45 (April 1882): 456.
187 There is a remarkable similarity between these rumors and the myth of the “bra-bumers” o f the
1960s. “Remarkable Scene at a Revival Meeting; Discarding the Corset,” Scientific American. 65
(September 19, October 10, 1891): 185, 231.
 92

thirst for trousers.”188 The article went on to sum up the stereotypes society

held of dress reformers, starting with the assumption that all dress reformers

favored women in pants.

As a rule, women are exempt from [dress reform’s] ravages until after
they have reached at least the period of middle life, and the greater
proportion of its victims are above the age o f forty. It was formerly
claimed that no woman was in danger of contracting the disease who
was well supplied with adipose tissue. This theory, however, has
recently been exploded.. .there are cases on record in which women
conspicuous for fatness have suddenly developed the typical craving
for trousers. The disease uniformly fastens upon women of
exceptional muscular strength, and upon those of extraordinary
conversational powers. So well established is this fact, especially
among people of our Western States, that when a woman displays
unusual vigor in wielding stovelids, or in otherwise convincing her
husband of his faults, her acquaintances immediately recognize her as
one who may be expected at any moment to clamor for trousers.

The New York Times continued, remarking that the “origin” o f dress reform “must be

sought in ... melancholy” and a “duty to disfigure herself, and thus mortify the flesh.”

It concluded by calling dress reform “one of the most painful and terrible diseases to

which women are now subject.” With this article, the N Y Times revealed the power

of the opposition dress reformers faced. Women who supported dress reform were

accused of being gabby, skinny, old nags who beat their husbands and were prone to

hysteria. Even worse, they were classified as sexually deviant. By attacking dress

reformers’ “abnormal thirst for trousers,” critics suggested that they were mannish

women, or cross-dressers seeking masculine sexual pleasures.

Even the most dignified clubwoman could not entirely escape this universal

condemnation. Articles like this were written to mock the movement, not necessarily

oppose it. Publicizing stereotypes, however, was probably more effective in cutting

188 “A Curious Disease,” New York Times. May 27, 1876.

 93

down the ranks o f dress reformers than a direct attack on the movement’s agenda.

Ironically, the N Y Times ran an article a mere two years later, criticizing women for

yet another psychological “disease.” In October, 1878, the newspaper commented,

1 RQ
“Clothes are woman’s natural m aster.. .the Nemesis of her own creation.”

Obviously, the paper did not suggest women turn to dress reform to throw off this evil

master.

Dress reformers were accused of masculinity, insanity, and—perhaps the most

effective abuse—ugliness. The New York Times sent a reporter into the Oneida

Community to interview its members just before the socialist religious group

dissolved. The reporter was favorably impressed by the men of the Community;

however, he was shocked at the appearance of the women, who wore modified

bloomer costumes. The reporter first encounters a woman, kissing a rose:

Her face was pale and somewhat haggard, and there were dark
shadows beneath the eyes. Her hair was short. She wore a faded
calico skirt, cut like a camisole.... It descended but a trifle below the
knee, terminating in a plain hem. Turkish trousers of faded calico
completed the costume. It was a sorry and ridiculous figure, only that
little tenderness of kissing the rose lent a species of pathos to the
uncomeliest outfit that a woman in full possession of her senses ever
put on.... Numerous other figures with tresses similarly shorn, skirts
that suggested camisoles, and Turkish trousers, flitted awkwardly
about, but all, with the single exception of a girl of 15 in the
composing room, who had a figure like an old-fashioned plum-
pudding, carried such wan, pathetic faces as to furnish an argument in
advance against Socialism and its practices.190

The reporter may have been more inclined to abuse the Oneida women because of

their participation in the “Complex Marriage,” a free love system o f sexual

189 “The Agony o f Clothes,” New York Times. October 14, 1878.
190 “Oneida Perfectionists: Woman’s Place in the Community.” New York Times. August 9, 1878.
 94

relationships directed by the community’s leader, John Humphrey Noyes.191 By

tarring the women in the community as ugly, the reporter suggested that only a

certain type of woman would be drawn to dress reform (and socialism): women who

did not care to lose their beauty and femininity. Women who adopted reformed dress

knew they were risking the acquisition o f a label.

Not all dress reform met with scorn, however. The styles advanced by

clubwomen and aesthetes were well received. Furthermore, their propaganda did

have some effect upon fashions. “Health corsets” became very popular in the 1890s.

Women who wore “knickerbockers” while bicycling during the 1896-1897 were not

shunned, although, their fashion choice was still met with some disapproval. It is

undeniable that dress reform after 1870 had a great effect on society. Women’s role

in the health field expanded greatly during these years. There are many factors

explaining this expansion, but dress reform offered female physicians a medium by

which to reach their female patients. Furthermore, dress reformers constantly urged

young women to study medicine, physiology, and the “laws of life.” Their support

may have led many women to pursue a field they had been discouraged from for most

of the nineteenth century.

Dress reform allowed women to enter spheres of physical activity that they

had been barred from for the entire century. Bicycling became popular in the 1890s;

yet, men bicycled for several decades in comfortable clothing before women joined

them. Sports and exercise were becoming acceptable activities for women, largely

due to the efforts of physical culturists. One of the greatest achievements of the dress

191 For more on the Oneidans, see Louis J. Kern, A n Ordered Love: Sex Roles and Sexuality in
Victorian Utopias— the Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community. Chicago: University o f
 95

reformers was their formal challenge to the mid-century glorification of feminine

illness. During the era of the steel-engraved lady, it was popular to appear weak,

dependent, and unhealthy. Dress reformers led their contemporaries in criticizing this

role for women, insisting that health went hand-in-hand with beauty.
i

Dress reform produced a common cause for women to fight for; it provided

women with a platform from which they could express their aesthetic, social, and

moral philosophies under the cover of an issue in the traditional woman’s sphere.

Many dress reformers used the movement to expand that sphere. By taking a

woman’s issue into the public arena, dress reformers opened the arena for debate

about woman’s nature. Dress reformers led that debate and they did not always lead

it on woman’s behalf. Reformers found many opportunities to criticize or demean

women. However, they also found many opportunities to open doors for women that

had been shut for centuries. Clubwomen demanded that women have acceptable and

comfortable garb for their entrance into the world of business and public service.

Physical culturists used dress reform to broaden women’s opportunities for exercise,

good health, and physiological education. For the aesthetics, dress reform challenged

old prejudices against “womanly” vanity, beauty, and fashion. In contrast, religious

organizations used clothing to attack vanity and lust, and remind women of the need

for modesty and self-restraint.

Regardless of the intentions of the many dress reformers, they all manipulated

women in an effort to help them. The woman’s rights advocates provide a good

example of the constant paradox at play in dress reform propaganda. Essentially,

these dress reformers criticized and mocked women in an attempt to reform them.

Illinois Press, 1984.

 96

Their literature, which was meant to be strongly persuasive, focuses on the

immorality and depravity of women, yet— arguably— it is intended to enlighten and

assist women in their struggle to throw off male dominance. Women’s rights

advocates were not alone in attacking women. Dress reformers joined anti-fashionists

in blaming women for their choice of clothing. All dress reformers manipulated

women with arguments based on maternalism, nationalism, nativism, and

evolutionary theory in hopes of converting women to their cause. Finally, after 1870,

all dress reformers shared the assumption that women wanted to be beautiful. They

played upon the idea that beauty was a feminine “duty,” and by doing so, obliterated

the original goals of the dress reform movement. In 1851, Elizabeth Cady Stanton led

the first wave of dress reformers, pronouncing “The question is now to be, not Rags
1 O ')
how do you look? But woman how do you feel? ” Forty-one years later, Annie

Jenness Miller, the woman most responsible for popularizing dress reform, advertised

her lectures by stating, “Beauty and health are the birthright o f every woman.” 193 The

movement started out attempting to disconnect women from the beauty ideal; after

1870, dress reformers relied on this connection in their propaganda.

192 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Our Costume,” The Lily. 3 (July 1851): 51.
193 Pamphlet, “Lecture by Mrs. Jenness Miller, at Kasson Opera House, Gloversville, N. Y.,
Wednesday, May 2, 1894, ‘Healthful and Artistic Dress.’” Copied from the original, in the “Dress
 CONCLUSION

For fifty years, dress reformers doggedly attacked fashions for warping women’s

health and self-image. Clearly, dress reformers had an impact on their society, yet

they are almost forgotten today. On the threshold of the twenty-first century, the

issues the dress reformers grappled with over a century ago have increased resonance.

Dress reformers enacted a pitched battle for over half a century against the corset.

They insisted that a slender waist was not worth personal discomfort, and a beauty

norm must not be prioritized over women’s health. Today, with growing numbers of

anorexic and bulimic young women, it is essential that we reevaluate these debates

over women’s bodies. While twenty-first century struggles with a repressive beauty

norm take a different form than those o f the nineteenth century, a look at the pitfalls

and rewards of an attack on fashion could steer feminists in the right directions in our

own debates over women’s appearances.

Clearly, a wholehearted attack on beauty norms did not address the concerns

o f most nineteenth-century women. Beauty norms allow for self-fashioning and

expression, they can open the door to a type o f empowerment, they serve as a creative

outlet, and at times they can fulfill emotional needs for women. Yet beauty norms

also exercise an unmanageable power over women’s lives. Many feminists would

agree that fashion and beauty play a potent and perhaps dangerous role in women’s

everyday lives. Historian Lois Banner has argued, “o f all the elements of women’s

Reform Graphics Collection,” part o f the Alice M arshall Collection o f W om en’s H istory M aterials
1880-1891. Penn State Harrisburg, Middletown, PA.

97
separate culture, the pursuit o f beauty has been the most divisive and, ultimately, the

most oppressive. In trying to be beautiful, women have been prey to unattractive

qualities of narcissism and consumerism. Beauty has also been a powerful force in

dampening social discontent.”194 Not only does the pursuit o f beauty distract from

the pursuit of equality, but beauty ideals are ultimately unattainable for almost all

women. The dissatisfaction and self-recrimination that result from unattainable ideals

persecute women who can never be as thin, elegantly dressed, perfectly coifed, tall,

sophisticated, or beautiful as they feel they should be. Feminists cannot ignore

fashion’s role in women’s everyday lives. A careful look at nineteenth-century

efforts to dismantle or manipulate fashion’s hold on women might give us insight into

ways of dealing with fashion’s power in the twenty-first century. Perhaps we could

then look forward to a future when men and women may finally agree that how

women fe e l is more important than how they look.

194Banner, Lois W. American Beauty. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983. 14.

98
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VITA

Elizabeth Allison Komski

Bom in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, April 27, 1977. Graduated from

Crestwood High School in June 1995. Received a Bachelor of Arts degree from

Elmira College in Elmira, New York in May 1999. Entered the College o f William

and Mary as a graduate student in the Department of History in August 1999.

Entered the Ph.D. program in History at the College of William and Mary in August

2000 .