...continuation Not to disapprove of trousers for women is to shrug aside the seriousness of the situation. * In non-Christian countries such as India and parts of the Far East, where women wore trousers, they took care to cover them amply with a flowing robe or a long tunic that concealed the outline of their body below the waist. * Among Eskimo women and those who inhabited the Polar region there was a tradition of wearing long dresses made of hide or an ensemble consisting of seal skin leggings worn under a poncho-style garment that descended well below the knees. Whether they were the early Celts or Vikings or the women of the tribe of Attila the Hun who swept down from the Steppes of Central Asia, there is no recorded case of a fashion for women to wear trousers as an outer garment until the 20th century. * In the eighteenth century, the Empress Elizabeth of Russia known as the Merry Tsarina organised costume balls in which she regularly required that women dress as men and vice versa. Trousers were indeed worn by women as part of a fancy dress costume but they were only partly visible under shortened skirts, and their use was restricted only to a frivolous occasion. * During the Napoleonic era and in the American War of Independence there were women volunteers called vivandieres and cantinieres who wore trousers as part of the military uniform. These were the filles du régiment, wives, mothers and daughters who followed their men to war to share the dangers of battle and the hardships of life in the camps. They braved the bullets to administer sustenance to the soldiers and tend the wounded. The important feature of their uniform was that all wore calf-length dresses over trousers or baggy Zouave (Turkish-style) pantaloons. * Moralists of all denominations raged throughout the Victorian era against the emergent fashion of trousers on women. Amelia Bloomer gave her name to a revolutionary style of dressing, but even her shocking innovation (1851) that sent ripples of indignation through polite society and drew fiery condemnations from every pulpit, came with a mid-length skirt worn over billowy pantaloons that were tied at the ankle. * There is no doubt that from Victorian times women wearing trousers were considered both immodest and unfeminine. The early feminists who wore trousers were often lampooned in the press in their attempt to ape manliness. A common criticism was that trousers gave a woman an extremely mannish look. *Here is what G.K. Chesterton thought about women wearing trousers: And since we are talking here chiefly in types and symbols, perhaps as good an embodiment as any of the idea may be found in the mere fact of a woman wearing a skirt. It is highly typical of the rabid plagiarism which now passes everywhere for emancipation, that a little while ago it was common for an advanced woman to claim the right to wear trousers; a right about as GROTESQUE as the right to wear a false nose...It is quite certain that the skirt means female dignity. This commentary was written in 1910 when the custom was in its infancy; it may be a century old, but it is even more relevant in our times than it was in Chestertons. * All dictionaries up to the early 20th century defined “trousers” as “a garment worn by males.” This identification of trousers as a male garment did not change until the 60s after women began to liberate their legs publicly in the 50s, thus altering the public perception. * In wartime, women workers in munitions factories wore dungarees under overalls. It is evident that trousers were historically associated with men, and wherever they were adopted by women they were subject to purdah, that is skirted around by cultural restrictions and limited to specific circumstances. There is thus no recorded history of women adopting the fashion of wearing trousers like their menfolk until the 20th century. We can deduce two things from this enduring and universal phenomenon: - a moral consensus, based on instinctual feelings of shamefacedness, existed up to modern times among all women, and that their desire to conceal rather than reveal was not a social construct but a natural reaction. - trousers as an outer garment are not and never have been feminine apparel, and by putting them on women (with a different designer label) does not make them any less men’s clothing. This evidence quite escapes those who deny the significance for our time of Gods edict given to Moses: A woman shall not be clothed with a man’s apparel; neither shall a man use woman’s apparel: for he that doeth these things is abominable before God (Deuteronomy 22:5). The mere mention of such an edict is enough to make some people hiss Old Testament fundamentalist in my direction, but it was the basis on which the Church formed her teaching that women must dress in a distinctively feminine manner and be modest in heart as well as apparel (I Peter 3:3-4).
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 13:53:35 +0000
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