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Quote of the Day: Late Bloomers
The costume of women should be suited to her wants and necessities. It should conduce at once to her health, comfort, and usefulness; and, while it should not fail also to conduce to her personal adornment, it should make that end of secondary importance.
The author of these words, Amelia Jenks Bloomer was born two hundred years ago, on May 27, 1818. After a modest upbringing and a few years spent as a governess, she married attorney Dexter Bloomer, and moved from her native New York to Iowa, where she wrote for several newspapers before starting her own periodical, exclusively for women. The Lily was intended for distribution among the members of another of Amelia’s pet projects, the Seneca Falls Ladies Temperance Society, and was
a needed instrument to spread abroad the truth of a new gospel to woman, and I could not withhold my hand to stay the work I had begun. I saw not the end from the beginning and dreamed where to my propositions to society would lead me.
Fortunately (I suppose, and many of you might agree) her temperance work seems to have been less than effective, but she had more success with the other subject matter covered in the periodical: womens’ fashion. She leapt onto the bandwagon established by temperance and womens’ rights crusader Libby Miller and actress Fanny Kemble, and adopted a variation of “Turkish dress,” loose trousers billowing around the legs and gathered in at the ankles. Amelia waxed lyrical about these marvelously comfy pants in The Lily, enduring much ridicule and taunting from the men in newspaper field (so, from everybody else in the newspaper field), and she eventually modified her support for the costume that had, by then, become eponymous with herself, stating her preference for the crinoline skirt instead.
It’s not that she didn’t put up a good fight. Amelia and her sisters pushed bloomers as a healthy, and more moral, alternative to the skirt, one which would “facilitate women’s efforts to engage in good works.” (?) However, bloomers continued to take one step forward, two steps back when it came to general acceptance: Dorothea Dix outlawed them from army hospitals during the Civil War.** But field hospitals further west found them practical, easier, and more sanitary than skirts that flounced and dragged on the floor. Members of women’s rights organizations wore them, but then took flak from other groups who claimed that they were not “real women” because of their garb (plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose), while they were quite popular among intrepid explorers and travellers in the American West.
By about 1870, though, it appeared as though the newfangled, relaxed and comfortable women’s fashion had outlived its usefulness, and only the most outrageous and rebellious of ladies dared to defy the dictates of polite society by wearing trousers of any sort.
It took another invention, and a new craze, a couple of decades later for bloomers to make a comeback. When Annie Cohen Kopchovsky, a Latvian immigrant to the United States, made her bicycle trip around the world in 1894, wearing bloomers all the way, she energized a new generation of women, and this one didn’t blink (yes, some of us might wish things hadn’t gone as far as they have, but there it is).
And, now it’s time for me to introduce you to my Granny Louise, in a photo that was taken in about 1895, when she was a recent graduate of Professor Hubbard’s Academy for Young Lady Bicyclists, Bingley Hall, Birmingham England.
Although Granny is wearing a skirt in this picture, forward looking lady that she was, she subsequently purchased what was reputed to be the first pair of bicycle bloomers sold in Birmingham, and she never looked back.
Thank you, Amelia Bloomer, for all your efforts in promoting safe, healthy, moral and practical clothing for the ladies. Every day that I don’t have to do the Scarlett O’Hara thing with the bedpost while someone strangles my torso and straps me into my corsets and petticoats, I raise a toast to you and drink to your memory. Even if it causes you to spin in your grave. Can’t win them all, you know.
**QOTD honorable mention: “Glory, Glory Hallelujah!” It’s also Julia Ward Howe’s 199th birthday today.
Published in Entertainment
I had no idea where the word “bloomers” came from. As usual, you give us a fascinating and informative post.
Oh, my. So, so much I could say here about the history of fashion, but most all of it would probably get me in trouble in one way or another.
A great piece of history and story. (And there’s even a musical about Amelia called Bloomer Girl — a part I played back in high school. I remember one of the big songs [by ace songwriters Harold Arlen & Yip Harburg] went “It was good enough for grandma – but it ain’t good enough for us!” This was in reference to hoop skirts, of course.)
Learn something new most every day, it’s always cool on Ricochet.
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HaHa. Yes, thank goodness hoop skirts have gone the way of the dodo.
One of Mr. She’s favorite expressions, when the Pirates or the Steelers are having an off day, is that they might has well have sent “Sadie Gumpski’s bloomer girls” onto the field. I’ve look in vain for the origin of this phrase, but I think I get the general intent of the comparison.
I love these stories, @she, especially when they involve your family. I don’t know if I can discreetly say this, but the bloomers did look like the Turkish pants. My husband who was in Morocco in the service called those seven-day [redacted]. If you have to remove that, I’ll understand! ;-)
The ancient Romans didn’t need pants. It’s a slippery slope, you let men wear pants the next thing you know women will wear them, too. I think I can safely speak for all good conservatives when I say that any time there is a change in fashion it is a sign that society is headed for hell in a handbasket. ; )
your OP reminds me of the first time I went to the beach in Rio and saw the Brazilian babes in their ‘tangas’
nothing more to say about that other worldly experience at this time
Animal skins are the only truly conservative clothing.
I did take your naughty word out, @susanquinn, but only in an effort to enhance your reputation. Folks will be mystified as to what “the most polite woman on Ricochet” could possibly have said to blot the family escutcheon, and it will be subject of much discussion, I’m sure. You can thank me later.
. . .
“Imagine my surprise.”
Think our girl Amelia might have been OK with this activity, on the condition that there was no drinking going on at any point . . . .
Thank you for looking out for me, @she. I don’t know what came over me! I do have a reputation to maintain! ;-)
I saw it before it was redacted. Now I have a picture in my head that I can’t get rid of.
Well, I’ve been living with that picture for over 40 years, @justmeinaz!
I learned the same term for Turkish pants from a young woman who wore them occasionally when we were attending college in the early 1980s. Such language was still considered mildly spicy at the time.
You let that stop you?
We’re outside the PIT. 😈