I became interested in the story of "The
Bloomer Girls" when my husband, Scott, mentioned an article
he’d run across in the Galena Daily Gazette from just
after the Civil War. I don’t remember the exact details, but
they were something like this: A lady dressed in the
"Bloomer Costume" was traveling up the Mississippi by
steamboat when it docked in East Dubuque to take on supplies.
Not wanting to waste a beautiful day, she decided to climb the
bluff and pick wildflowers. She was spotted by a local constable
who felt it was his duty to arrest her for "disturbing the
peace". Fortunately she was released and allowed to
re-board the steamboat.
Many of us are familiar with the term "Bloomer
Girls" or at least the word "bloomer". But where
did the term come from, and why? To answer that, we have to go
back over 150 years to Seneca Falls, New York, the home of
Amelia Jenks Bloomer.
On a spring day in 1851, Elizabeth Smith Miller (daughter of
abolitionist Gerrit Smith) Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Amelia
Bloomer strode through Seneca Falls in short skirts and
"Turkish trousers", and unleashed a firestorm of
controversy. The popular press delighted in the sight of three
middle class white women wearing pantaloons, and the New York
Times, the Boston Carpet Bag, and the Chicago
Tribune all reported on the incident.
Several names were suggested for the outfits. Women’s
rights advocates preferred "freedom dress," but the
press preferred "bloomers." Bloomer didn’t design
the outfit, nor was she the first to wear it, but it was her
name that became forever linked with the garment. It may be
because of her high profile as a newspaper editor.
The costume they wore was actually created by Elizabeth Smith
Miller, who gave conflicting reasons through the years as to her
reason for doing so. One explanation was that she became so
frustrated at trying to garden in the long skirts. More likely
it was from hearing about similar outfits being worn at health
spas, or at the utopian community near her father’s home—–the
Oneida Perfectionists.
Even though the outfits were being privately worn at health
spas and religious and utopian communities for several years, it
was the ladies of Seneca Falls that were the first to wear them
publicly.
Wearing her new short skirt, Miller "hastened to Seneca
Falls to visit [her] cousin, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton."
Stanton quickly copied the costume. Miller and Stanton showed
their outfits to Bloomer and persuaded her to join them in their
new style of dress. However, it took Stanton over six months to
persuade Susan B. Anthony to adopt the costume.
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This
caricature entitled "Woman’s Emancipation,"
appeared in Harper’s
New Monthly Magazine in August
of 1851. It was accompanied by text which made
fun not only of bloomers, but of some of the other
reforms in which women were involved. It appeared
a month after Harper’s featured "Turkish
costume" on its
pages. |
She eventually gave in because "I can see no business
avocation in which a woman, in her present dress, can
possibly earn equal wages with a man." Anthony
hoped to be an example to working women in the United States by
wearing a costume that was more functional than beautiful.
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine featured the
"Turkish" costume and considered the possibility that
short dresses and pantaloons could be the next fashion rage. Godey’s
Lady’s Book refused to comment on the outfit. Many
magazines published satirical cartoons. In 1852, the New York
Times reported "these ladies assert their claim to
rights, which we of bifurcated raiment are charged with
usurping. This claim conflicts with, and if secured, will tend
to diminish the rights of masculine mankind...he must be blind
who does not perceive...a storm that shall eventually rob
manhood of all it’s grand prerogatives."
Male opponents launched a counter-attack. Women were
subjected to jeering laughter, physical attacks and satirical
poems:
Now then, my dear,
We’ll smoke and
cheer and drink our lager beer;
We’ll have our
latch-keys, stay out late at night;
And boldly we’ll
assert our female rights;
While conquered
men, our erewhile tyrant foes,
Shall stay at home
and wear out cast-off clothes,
Nurse babies,
scold the servants, get our dinners;
"Tis all that they are fit for,
wretched sinners!
For the sensitive Susan B. Anthony, wearing freedom dress was
especially difficult. All of the women experienced harsh
treatment, but because Anthony had a higher profile, she was
subjected to the most ridicule.
Surprisingly, in the midst of all the mostly negative press
coverage, a group of artists rendered flattering portrayals of
Amelia Bloomer in the costume, and sheet music was produced
romanticizing the "Bloomer Girls."
|
Caption
reads: "Man in his natural position, and
woman where she ought
to be" From "Yankee Notions"
magazine, Aug. 1851. |
Elizabeth Cady Stanton took public comments with a grain of
salt. For her, the effect on her family was the hardest for her
to take. Her son refused to let her visit him at school wearing
pantaloons and short dress and her husband barely won his second
term to the New York Senate because of slogans such as
"Twenty tailors take the stitches, Mrs. Stanton wears the
breeches."
Feminists came to realize that their style of dress was
drawing attention from the issues they considered important—–employment,
education and suffrage. Once having started, however, they kept
to the style of dress for seven years. Stanton said: "Had I
counted the cost of the short dress, I would never have put it
on; now, however, I’ll never take it off, for now it involves
a principle of freedom." "Never" for her came in
1853 when Stanton was the first woman’s rights leader to
return to long dresses.
Both Stanton and Susan B. Anthony had long given up reform
dress by the time they attended the woman’s suffrage
convention in Galena in 1869.
After 1879, few dress reformers continued to wear short
skirts and pantaloons. The National Dress Reform Association had
disbanded in the mid-1860s. By the 1890s, "bloomers"
had become a permanent part of the bicycling costume. During
World War I, women who served the military as truck drivers, and
those who took civilian jobs formerly held only by men, took up
trousers. And pants for women were here to stay.
Note: I was inspired to write this article after reading the
book "Pantaloons and Power: A Nineteenth-Century Dress
Reform in the United States," by Gayle V. Fischer. Anyone
interested in more details of the dress reform movement, would
enjoy this book.
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