Don't Get Your Bloomers In A Wad

Posted by R. Ann Siracusa

March is Woman’s History Month, a time dedicated to highlighting “the contributions of women to events in history and contemporary society.” The names and accomplishments of many women such as Rosa Parks, Susan B. Anthony, Helen Keller, are well recorded in history and studied in school. While these women deserve the legacies they have earned, it’s important to shed some light on the many women whose names you might not know but who also helped shape the future of our nation and our society. 

Not everyone – man or woman – with noteworthy accomplishments gets credit for those achievements, however remarkable they may be. Therefore, I’ve chosen to blog periodically about lesser-known women who have made a mark on history.

DON’T GET YOUR BLOOMERS IN A WAD

Amelia Jenks Bloomer was a noted Women’s Rights advocate, but that isn’t the only aspect of her life worthy of note.

She was born in 1818 in Homer, New York, and grew up in a family of modest means, attended a local school, and lived an average somewhat unremarkable childhood. In her later teens she taught school for a short time. At seventeen, she decided to move in with her recently-wed sister in Waterloo, New York. A year later she took a position as live-in-governess for the Oren Chamberlain family in Seneca Fall, NY.

Like I said, nothing remarkable.

In 1840, at the age of twenty-two, she married Dexter Bloomer, the owner of a local newspaper, The Seneca Falls County Courier. Her husband not only encouraged her to write for his newspaper, but gave up drinking as part of the Temperance Movement because she was such an avid supporter.

Photo source: www.pinterest.com/507710557976609614

At thirty, Amelia attended the first women’s right convention held in Seneca Falls in 1848. Although she didn’t actively participate in the conference, a few months later founded her own newspaper, The Lily, for women by women.

The Lily started out as a vehicle for the 300 women of the Seneca Falls Temperance Society, but in a few years had it expanded to a circulation of 4,000 readers and had a broad mix of contents ranging from cooking to social issues and advocating women’s rights. Thus, Amelia Jenks Bloomer became a well-known women’s rights advocate and the first woman in the US to found, own, operate, and edit a publication for women: her claim to fame and her mark on history. So far, so good.

THE REBIRTH OF AN IDEA
The manner in which a name becomes attached to an idea or physical product it often not clear cut and can be misleading. Amelia Bloomer is no different. She did not invent the idea of women wearing pants or split skirts. That goes way back, and I’m not going there, but Amelia did advocate the idea that women should wear more comfortable clothes for everyday activities.

In 1851, a temperance activist Elizabeth Smith Miller started sporting an outfit that she considered more rational for the day: loose trousers gathered at the ankles, like women’s trousers worn in the Middle East and Central Asia, topped by a short dress or tunic. Miller showed off her new duds to her cousin Elizabeth Cady Stanton, another women’s rights activist and a friend of Amelia Bloomer.

Stanton found the new fashion sensible and becoming, and started wearing it. She talked it up to her friend Amelia Bloomer whose publication had actively promoted the idea of a change in women’s dress standards that would be more comfortable and less restrictive for regular activities.

Amelia Bloomer in the Bloomer Costume - Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesPhoto source: www.britannica.com/bio/Amelia-Bloomer          

Amelia believed women’s clothing should accommodate the individual wants and needs and promote health, comfort, and usefulness, making personal adornment a secondary factor. She not only adopted the new fashion, but made design modifications and promoted it enthusiastically in her magazine which, by now, had wide readership among women.

Articles on the clothing trend were picked up in The New York Tribune. The fashion was immediately dubbed "The Bloomer Costume" or “Bloomers” and proved to be quite popular with women.

But not so popular with men. Much of the male population found much to disparage about the entire women’s rights movement and condemned anything connected. Over the next ten years the design concept took so much criticism in the press and harassment on the streets, that the suffragettes and Women’s Rights advocates, including Bloomer, stopped wearing it.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton wearing the Bloomer costumePhoto source: https://www.pinterest.com/victorianperiod/pins/

The following is a link to a cartoon typical of those published (by men, no doubt) making fun of the style:

 www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/women-smoking-and-wearing-bloomers

Amelia Bloomer didn’t come up with the idea, but her designs and promotion of the outfit in her magazine brought it to the attention of American women and the press, and I, for one, believe we owe her a debt of gratitude and recognition for popularizing the concept that women deserved to be more comfortable in their clothing.

THANKS FOR THE PANTS

By 1850 women’s fashions were relatively conservative compared to the overdone fashions seen in the Victorian era. Simple day dresses and bosom-flattening corsets were the order of the day. Amelia Bloomer and her friends wore such fashions.

This is what a woman went through to just get dressed in the morning. Don’t forget, not everyone had maids and servants, and many women had the same kinds of responsibilities as women do today such as washing clothes, caring for children, cooking dinner, and cleaning house. Doing all that in full skirts and corset couldn’t have been comfortable even in an everyday working dress. Source of photos: https://sovereignhilledblog.com/2013/09/06/gold-rush-undies-womens-fashionable-underwear-in-the-1850s/ 

◄1. Dressing consisted of donning various layers of apparel. First she put on leg coverings called pantalettes. After all, the legs needed to be covered should the skirt rise enough to expose the legs. On top of that went a light but long shirt called a chemise.

► 2.  Over that went the tight corset stiffened with wood, ivory, bone or whale baleen to create an hourglass figure (even when one wasn’t there to start with). Often corsets were pulled so tight the woman had trouble breathing. The corsets were also responsible for back problems, curvature of the spine, and headaches.

3.  That still wasn’t enough! Over that women wore petticoats to fill out their skirts until the “crinoline” or “caged petticoat became the French fashion in the 1850s.

◄4.  With a caged petticoat Instead of several cloth petticoats, the ampleness of the skirt resulted from a stiff frame with hoops made of cane, rope, spring steel and whale baleen sewn into a petticoat or over one or two petticoats. Try bending over in that if you want to show some leg and your behind.

►5. Over the hoop the woman would put on

another couple of
petticoats, and finally the dress with wide enough skirts to present a fire danger. Not joking. That was a real problem.

No wonder Amelia Bloomer advocated for changes in women’s fashion. It is not hard to intuit, however, where the idea came from (besides other cultures). Take another look at the first layers: pantalettes and chemise. Women in the 1850s, at some time or other, must have walked around the room in the first layer of undies and felt the difference.

Here's all you have to do. Using fabric for outer garments for the chemise and pantalettes, belt the waist of the chemise (but not so tightly), fluff out the skirt and add a petticoat or two, and take in the ankles of the pantalettes (so they can’t push up on the leg) and -- Ta Da! You have the Bloomer outfit.Photo source: www.pinterest.com/383250405170995611

The Basic concept is not that different from styles still popular in the 21st century, although some of the designer fashions would probably send Amelia Bloomer leaping out of her grave screaming … along with some of the rest of us.

        
Amelia Jenks Bloomer is recognized as an eminent figure in the US suffrage movement, a forward thinker and advocate of change – both political and sartorial – some decades before Women’s Rights movement gained its drive. She encouraged women to think for themselves, but her name will always be remembered in relation to introducing the American public to the idea of women’s trousers. □  

AUTHOR R. ANN SIRACUSA
Travel to Foreign Lands for Romance and Intrigue

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 www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/women-smoking-and-wearing-bloomers