Trouser Trouble
The Effect of Nineteenth-Century Dress Reform on the Women’s Suffrage Movement
We all have embarrassing fashions lurking in our pasts — the neon velvet of my teenage years springs to mind — but none of our modern fashion mistakes can compare to the fashion Victorian women suffered through. Conventional Western fashion for women from the 1830s to the turn of the century was extremely restrictive and uncomfortable.
In the 1850s, women were required to wear floor-length skirts. Layers of heavy underskirts were worn to support the shape of the overskirt, and women had to wear corsets to support the tremendous weight of the skirts. Corsets were lightly laced to achieve the popular silhouette of the time. Combined with restrictive sleeves, these fashions prevented women from bending at the waist, raising their arms above their heads, or ascending or descending stairs or carriages unaided. They were also a danger to women’s health; corsets prevented women from breathing freely, and long skirts would drag in mud and rainwater, creating a risk of chills if women left the home in inclement weather.
In 1851, Elizabeth Smith Miller created an alternative fashion, and she wore this new costume to visit her cousin, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a staunch advocate of women’s suffrage. The reform costume, or bloomers, consisted of a short skirt (falling below the knees and above the ankles) worn over loose full trousers gathered at the ankle or tucked into boots. Both women were keen proponents of the new fashion and wore the outfit when they met with Amelia Bloomer, editor of The Lily, a temperance newspaper that featured articles from campaigners of women’s rights. Amelia Bloomer’s adoption of the new costume, and subsequent articles describing the fashion in detail, popularized the costume. The reform costume became known as ‘bloomers’, and, within months, the craze of ‘bloomerism’ spread across the United States, Britain, Europe, and even as far as Australia and New Zealand.
As the craze swept the Western world, bloomerism became synonymous with the women’s suffrage movement. Bloomerism had supporters and detractors of both sexes, with the supporters among the women’s rights advocates and the detractors defending traditional values. As Don Chapman wrote in his book, “Wearing the Trousers: Fashion, Freedom, and the Rise of the Modern Woman”, those who disapproved of the reform costume thought it “a threat to male authority — literally and figuratively an attempt to wear the trousers”.
Though bloomerism was initially taken up as a means of promoting women’s rights, the dress reform movement of the 1850s harmed the women’s suffrage movement. By challenging the ideology of femininity, dress reform received extreme public and private backlash and restricted feminist groups with differing ideals from participating in the suffrage movement. The lessons learned from the relationship between women’s suffrage and the dress reform movement can be applied to modern feminist causes that utilize women’s dress as a part of protests.
Bloomerism challenged the feminine ideology of the Victorian era. The ideology of femininity is the set of values and traits that a society deems appropriate for females. This set of values differs between societies, and it changes over time. As Kathleen Torrens states, in her article “Fashion as Argument: Nineteenth-Century Dress Reform”, “the ideal woman [of the Victorian era] was submissive, pious, domestic and pure”. Victorian women’s clothing performed that ideal femininity by constraining their physical activity and symbolizing their modesty and purity. Trousers, on the other hand, symbolized masculinity, and it “was seen as a threat to the whole structure of society” when women began wearing them.
Bloomerism received intense resistance, from the general public and the press as well as friends and family members of the women wearing bloomers. Even Elizabeth Cady Stanton, suffragist and one of the founders of bloomerism, eventually returned to long skirts after years of pressure from her father and friends. As bloomerism was strongly associated with the suffrage movement, the ridicule and scorn that dress reformists received was also associated with suffrage. As a result of challenging feminine ideology, the backlash was more intense than would be expected for a simple change in fashion. Bloomerism was seen as more than just a fashion; it was a visual representation of the fears and anxiety of a changing society. Trousers were considered to be exclusively male attire. By donning masculine wear, the public considered dress reformers to be forsaking their femininity and usurping the male role in society, and dress reformers received more intense criticism as a result. In response to the extreme backlash, suffragists stopped wearing the reform costume. The choice to don the reform costume was a mistake and hurt the cause of women’s suffrage, but the suffragists’ abandonment of bloomers prevented the damage from becoming irreparable.
The negative public opinion of bloomerism and its association with women’s suffrage also prevented feminist groups with differing ideals from participating in the suffrage movement. The suffrage debate was polarizing, and the negative effects of that polarization are apparent when the suffrage campaign is compared to the more successful women’s education reform campaign. Sara Delamont, author of “The Nineteenth Century Woman: Her Cultural and Physical World”, states that “[it] was only by continuing to glorify the Victorian domestic ideal […] that any educational progress could be made”. Women’s higher education reform had many different supporters, with women espousing various evangelical, equal rights, socialist, and conservative reasons for supporting women’s access to higher education. Education reform encompassed a wide spectrum of viewpoints, and this allowed the movement to precede with less public disapproval. Suffragists were unable to leverage the support of conservative feminist groups because of their association with the “ridiculous and indecent dress” worn by “vulgar women” (The International Magazine of Literature, Art, and Science, 1851). Being unable to appeal to a broad range of potential supporters harmed the suffrage movement.
When comparing dress reform in 1850s America to later attempts at dress reform in 1880s Britain, it is clear that reformers learned valuable lessons from their predecessors as regards appealing to traditional viewpoints. The 1880s dress reform, known as rational dress, took a more sophisticated approach than the bloomerism of the 1850s. Florence Wallace Pomeroy, Viscountess Harberton, led the dress reform movement in 1880s Britain, founding the Rational Dress Society, an organization devoted to improving women’s fashion.
While Lady Harberton was as committed to the ideals of dress reform as her American counterparts, the tone and language she employed was markedly different. In 1879, the Middlesbrough Daily Gazette described Lady Harberton as a “handsome lady of unusually graceful presence and her whole manner is sweetly feminine, refined and elegant”. In a letter to the Queen in 1880, Lady Harberton herself wrote that she “[did] not, however wish to use the word ‘trouser’… [she meant] literally what [she said], a skirt divided”. Lady Harberton, being a well-spoken member of the aristocracy, was the perfect spokesperson for rational dress, and she deliberately chose language that highlighted the compatibility of rational dress and traditional femininity. The rational dress costume and the bloomer costume were virtually identical, yet Lady Harberton emphatically insisted that the trousers of the rational dress were, in fact, divided skirts. Women had worn skirts for centuries, and by describing her new costume as a form of skirt — as opposed to a “masculine” trouser — Lady Harberton made a connection between her proposed fashion and conventional feminine clothing. Rational dress was more successful than the bloomer attempt at dress reform due to Lady Harberton’s presentation of rational dress as compatible with traditional femininity.
These same lessons are still applicable as the ideology of femininity continues to exist in modern society, despite advances made to women’s legal rights. In advertising, in family life, in the division of labour, women are still expected to conform to traditional feminine roles.
Current feminist movements that use female dress as a form of protest will face the same type of negative public response and internal divisions that harmed dress reform and the suffrage campaign. For example, SlutWalk is grassroots organization that uses revealing clothing to protest slut-shaming and victim-blaming. SlutWalk challenges feminine ideology by presenting women as sexually autonomous, sexually aggressive, and sexually visible, as opposed to the traditional view of women as modest and passive. SlutWalk, by its use of revealing attire, will face the same intensity of backlash as early dress reformers. Furthermore, SlutWalk has been criticized for being exclusionary, especially as regards “the possibility of reclaiming “slut” for different women across lines of race, class, and ability”. By presenting the white, young, affluent, cisgendered, and able-bodied woman as the forefront of the SlutWalk protest, many groups are excluded from participating in the movement. If MeToo, an organization with similar goals of raising awareness of sexual violence and supporting anti-victim-blaming, aligned itself with SlutWalk, it could find its message harmed by the controversial and divisive nature of the SlutWalk protests.
Modern feminist groups must be aware of the potentially negative effects of using women’s dress in political causes. In challenging the prevailing feminine ideology, dress reform was intensely criticized and prevented the participation of various feminist groups. The women’s suffrage movement suffered as a result of its association with dress reform. By being inclusive of multiple feminist narratives and by deliberately framing goals as compatible with conservative viewpoints and ideals, liberal feminists can garner the largest support base for their issues. Some feminist groups will disapprove of diluting liberal messages with traditional values. However, to achieve concrete change, sometimes compromises are necessary. The question remains; what is one willing to sacrifice to achieve one’s goals? This is the question that every feminist group and every feminist need to ask themselves. For some, the answer is that they will sacrifice nothing, that perseverance itself is a goal. For others, singular issues are of such importance that other issues are willingly pushed to the backburner to enable immediate change in society. For Amelia Bloomer and other suffragists, they “all felt that the dress was drawing attention from what [they] thought of far greater importance” and that they “were not willing to sacrifice greater questions to it”. Neither way is morally superior to the other, but I would argue that the second is more effective in achieving specific feminist goals.
