Brazen She

“Among the ‘strong-minded women’ who met to attend the convention was Amelia Bloomer – The lady who goes in for breeches and buncomb.”

Sir, thou dost wound me mightily!

Dress historian Abby Cox quotes a catty article from 1853, describing feminists as women who subscribe to pants and nonsense – You know, that crazy stuff about women being full people who deserve rights.

“I didn’t actually wanna bring it up, because of some personal biases towards it. It gets brought up a lot when people talk about feminism and clothing in the 19th century, so [it was] kinda me being like, ‘Ugh!’ 

“I also just kinda hate the 1850s as an aesthetic period, so I’ve never really been interested in studying it.

“However, for this discussion, it is important. It was a brief moment in sartorial history. It happened in the United States, it was tied into women’s rights at the time. However, it was a failure.”

Learning from feminism’s failures will keep us from repeating the past. No one remembers the 1850s for the drastic shift in women’s attire. Women’s pants came almost 100 years later, modeled by movie stars during the Great Depression.

Abby’s flustered, but she tries to explain why Bloomers didn’t change Victorian fashion, “They were too contrarian. They were too shocking, and so people didn’t take them seriously.

“By not operating within a broader social acceptability, how can [they] make any sort of progress towards equality?” Dropping out doesn’t solve anything – Just ask your nearest Baby Boomer.

Well, my bottom line is doing just fine!

But in the 2021 hustle economy, everyone’s a salesman. We’ve learned to sell ourselves to college admissions boards, to employers, to potential clients and subscribers, and to each other. Branding is the name of the game, and Bloomers were terrible branding.

We can do better.

The Medium Becomes The Message

“I’ve been reading news articles from the 1850s, and what’s interesting is that when these newspapers are talking about Amelia Bloomer, Susan B. Anthony, and this reform movement, they don’t ever actually talk about their points – The messages that they stand for.

“What they talk about is what they’re wearing, specifically the Bloomer outfits with the tunics and the trousers. So, they’ve gotten attention, but it wasn’t the attention that they wanted. It wasn’t the attention that worked.“

My heart ached for the sweet Aussie lady in my video this week, pleading for empathy from Katy Montgomery. She spoke from basic truths but stumbled defining her terms, and Katy’s fidgety obfuscation was a perfect example of the kind of willful misunderstanding we’re dealing with.

The kind of willful misunderstanding that broadcasts ulterior motives.

To actually make progress toward the liberation of female people from invisible cages, we gotta sell it: “Susan B. Anthony stopped wearing this outfit. It was distracting from the actual message and what she wanted to promote.” 

Flexibility of method is imperative in support of the message, because context is queen. We gotta know our position backwards and forwards, but we can’t assume that being right is going to be enough!

But it’s not fair!

Style Over Fashion

When we come prepared, the debate is short – Bad behavior follows the exposure of logical inconsistency, and the reasonable party becomes readily apparent. 

“This whole contrarian idea, it doesn’t work in this society – You have to fit in, and then make changes. This whole Bloomer thing is a perfect example of that. These clothes turned them into, for lack of a better term, a bit of a freak show.“

Abby means this quite literally. She quotes the Brooklyn Daily Eagle from 4 February, 1853: “During her stay in the Capitol, she called on a tailor and got measured for three pair of tight-fitting cassimere trowsers. The tape with which he took her dimensions is kept in a glass case, and exhibited to bachelors at a shilling a sight.” 

Nothing if not for your pleasure, right fellas? Gross.

Abby argues for practicality, “The original idea of creating the Bloomers could have come from this very genuine place, and I can see where, initially, getting the attention could be a viewed as maybe a good thing.

“But then, when they’re not making headway and people are not moving past their clothing, then the message of equality is lost. Susan B. Anthony made this realization, and she stopped wearing the outfit.

“She started wearing a red shawl, and she became known for that, that was how you recognized her.” Ironically, it was Contrapoints who I heard say something about creating the taste with which you are to be enjoyed, something like that.

Refusing to accept the cover story we are fed is not enough. We must create our own context for our side of the human story. We can shift the angle by keeping our balance and refusing to be moved.

You Catch More Flies With Honey, Honey

“The Bloomers thing is something a lot of people like to hold onto because it’s this interesting thing, but I think it just doesn’t fit into the context of the female experience.” The strongest forms of feminism grow from the seed of women nurturing ourselves, rather than the embers of our patriarchal trauma.

…Did you say something, Gary?

Abby tells us the story of the Pattle Sisters, “Notorious for their artistic and eccentric friends. They wore clothing they created themselves that went against standards of the time.

“It wasn’t masculine clothing that they were wearing, they were just designing their own kind of scandalous dresses. And they pursued their own artistic and creative endeavors,” such as early fantasy photography.

As a bonus, she also explains away the bogeywoman of ‘White Feminism,’ apparently without realizing it – “Their social position gave them the space to be this way. Historically, we see women in higher social positions having room to be more eccentric, and pursue progressive agendas. Once the upper classes accepted these ideals, acceptability would trickle down to the middle and lower classes.”

Today’s scandal is tomorrow’s old news.

Context Is Queen

Looking through the lens of Class is illuminating, but the lesson these stories teach us defies social hierarchies. It might be easier to shake things up using your social clout, but sometimes an idea just doesn’t fit.

Akhenaten was Pharaoh of Egypt when he launched his new monotheistic religion, but his ideas were buried after his death in 1334 BC.

Divers pulled the first computer from an Ancient Greek shipwreck, its devastated designer’s name long forgotten.

There are piles of good ideas whose time or place had not come, dooming them to history’s trash heap.

And women are not ideas!

“Forty years later, we have split skirts for sport. It’s not like women didn’t wear bifurcated garments in the 19th century, it was the context of how they wore them that matters.”

Exactly. Feminism should be built in the context of women’s needs, not as a reaction to men.

Women Are Not Men

The Bloomers Revolution was undercut by the very notion that imitating men would bring freedom. We still seem to buy into the inherent assumption that women should be more masculine to be taken seriously. Many sacrifices have been made pursuing men’s vision of freedom, precious skills and knowledge wasted on a fundamentally flawed goal.

This brutal (and, again, seemingly willful?) oversight is not some historic relic. There are destructive consequences when the gaping holes in current feminist philosophy become doorways for those curious enough to go looking for them. Waiting on the other side are some pretty savvy right-wing weirdos, ready to validate whatever instinct is bothering you.

The Prattle Sisters’ fairy pictures are more fun than Suffragettes in their underwear – And they don’t force you to into awkward situations! The humanity of women is a basic truth, and it should be an easy sell.

Feminism should be piecing together women’s vision of freedom, but we have lost the thread in the hustle and bustle of the larger cultural argument a long time ago. Many of us aren’t even sure exactly what we’re fighting for, but we’ll know it when it’s gone.