Erin
Kaya
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Tara
Friday 9-10am
14
October 2016
Women’s Fashion
Movements, policies, and trends are a
coevolution of innovative ideas and a reflection of the time’s culture. The
fashion trends of the early 20th century embodied gender role
transitions for women. It is easy to see the transition of the limited roles of
women in the late 1800’s, represented by the corset, to the radical change in
every part of women’s lives, represented by the loosely fitting and carefree
clothing of the early 1900’s.
The “heath” corset, also called the
Swan bill or S-bend, was used as a part of almost every outfit in the late
1800’s to around 1910. The corset tucked in the waist to an alarming diameter
and pushed out in the back to create a faux bottom, causing the female body to
stand at a 33 degree angle. During the time, the ideal woman was know as the
“Gibson Girl,” a young white woman who had an 18” waist and wore the health
corset. (Sharpley-Whiting)
The corset physically impeded a woman’s
movements, but it also limited the woman’s activities. Women of lower to middle
class could not wear the corset to do manual labor or home chores. It was
reserved for the high-class woman. However, even the women of the highest
social status were limited from engaging in leisurely activity like sports or
dancing. As we read in Their Eyes Were Watching God, men freely talked about
how a woman should stay silent when beaten and we see many other examples of
“how a woman should act” during this novel and others from the course. The
corset represented women’s limitation in movement, activity, and voice.
With
removal of the corset in the 20th century, the new, independent, sporty,
businesswoman, and many other identities of the woman were allowed some
freedom. With many of the men at war, women were needed to fill jobs that were
previously only reserved for men. Women traded their corsets for loose blouses
and feminized tailored suits. (Sharpley-Whiting) While still frowned upon if
they wore pantsuits, women were getting closer to equal occupational opportunities
and gained a legal voice.
Following the 19th Amendment
to the US Constitution granting the right for women to vote on August 18, 1920
(Independence Hall Association), some gender roles were starting to change. The
flapper became new icon for American women. These women were usually
middle-class or the common women in urban settings who wore shorter hems and loose
clothing. (The Open University) Even the most sought after silk with glass
beaded even gowns were loose fitting and barely showed women’s curves. This
way, many types of women’s bodies fit into the clothing and they could dance
and move as freely as the men. “Free the sexes from the penalties and
proscriptions that allegedly are laid on us because we are male and female,”
wrote Jean Toomer in the poem Blue Meridian. (Toomer) People were slowly
starting to recognize and talk about the differences in expectation and
treatment.
This slight increase in range for some
women in society did not apply to all women. Aside from advertising that the
right type of women should have specific geometric attributes that, of course,
not all women were born with, the glorified women used in advertisements were
all light skinned. Similar to how we have seen in book we have read, the shade
of a person’s skin is a huge factor in determining a person’s status in society.
In Their Eyes Were Watching God everyone
finds Jeanie beautiful because she has white characteristics like her hair. In Passing, Clare is able to improve her social
class by passing as white. Even after the eradication of the corset in daily
fashion, advertisements and society still continued to hold this racist idea of
beauty that new ideas in fashions could not yet dissolve. Still more social
change was needed.
Works Cited
Independence
Hall Association. "Flappers." Ushistory.org. US History,
2008-2016. Web. 7 Oct.
2016.
Sharpley-Whiting,
Tracy. Modernism Embodied by Fashion Designs. Nashville, Tennesee:
Vanderbilt University, 15 Nov. 2015. PPT.
The
Open University. "Roaring Twenties? Europe in the Interwar Period." Open
Learn History
& The Arts, History, Culture (January
2016): n. pag. Web. <http://www.open.edu/
openlearn/history-the-arts/roaring-twenties-europe-the-interwar-period/content-section-
5.1>.
Toomer,
Jean. Blue Meridian. N.p.: U of North Carolina, 1988. Print. Cane.
Discussion
Questions:
1.
How
does fashion and clothing represent the modernist movement differently than
other forms of art? (Permanence, exposure, impact, etc.) And what else does it
say about the early 20th century?
2.
In
what way did women’s fashion and fashion icons change after the wars were over?
This is such an interesting topic, and I would never have thought about women's clothing through the lens of social change if you hadn't made this your focus. Although I don't know enough about women's fashion to answer your second question, I certainly agree that changes in women's clothing (becoming less restrictive and more practical) reflected changes in women's standing in society.
ReplyDeleteI think this topic is very interesting and too often forgotten when talking about women's rights and emancipation. Corsets, among others where designed to make women look a certain way to the men who looked at them, thus, in addition to depriving them of movement, they were reduced to mere objects of desire. Revolutionary fashion icons like Coco Chanel where the first ones to liberate women of corsets, and making clothes lighter by changing the materials in which they were made (for example jersey, in the case of Chanel). The bob became the fashionable hairdo rather than the heavy locks that used to be in style, and pants started to be worn on a more regular basis. All in all, women really were able to emancipate themselves in society, but also through the way they dressed, letting them act in the way they chose to, rather than the way men chose for them to act.
ReplyDeleteWomen's fashion definitely went through a major change during the wars, specifically, World War II. The textile industry adopted a more utilitarian approach to fashion and so women frequently wore jumpsuits. After the wars, women wearing pants was a frequent sight.
ReplyDeleteI found this topic really inspiring because from your post I could see how women's clothing can capture the evolution of women's advancement in social status and civil rights. I think the evolution of women's clothing is more obvious than the evolution of arts and literature, because the clothes change can be easily observed from the outside. Also, because of its closeness to the women body, I think the evolution of women's clothing is more connected to women's identities and self-expressions than other forms of arts during the Modernist Movement. Compared to the trends in the early 20th century, I'd say after WWI the restrictions on women's clothing were quickly disappearing, and more freedom and radical designs were introduced.
ReplyDeleteThis topic was quite eye-opening to me, as I had never thought about clothing as a means of expressing social change. The connection between women's social advancement with their clothing was intriguing. I agree with the others, as well. Women's fashion certainly indicated their growing freedom.
ReplyDeleteIt's so interesting how you contrasted the Gibson Girl and the flapper, which existed as sort of bookends on either side of WWI. This really highlights the evolution that the role of women was undergoing at the time, and the agency that they had in this transition. They may have had to get male approval for the 19th Amendment, but they didn't bob their hair and wear loose-fitting clothes because men told them they could and I think this is an awesome thing to point out.
ReplyDeleteI am very glad you brought up the issue of fashion and beauty standards for women and how they can act as symbols of their class and occupation. It is without a doubt that the physical constraint that corsets posed was a sign of women's smaller involvement in the labour force. It is also clear that the new, looser women's clothing was connected to a new era of women's placement in the labour force and their increased economic and political freedom. I think this sort of fashion and beauty standard is still highly prevalent amongst women even today. For example, a working mother of three will most likely be wearing a sweatsuit and have no nail polish on, while a working businesswoman must uphold her status by wearing makeup each, taking time to style her hair and preserving her well-polished nails. Although such fashion and beauty standards are constantly developing and also being questioned, fashion and beauty still remain a large part of a woman's identity today and can act as indicators of her social class, occupation, past-time and success.
ReplyDeleteI liked how you connected clothing in the inter-war years to the social and gender problems in Their Eyes Were Watching God where the corset paralleled the people's oppression of women's speech and social mobility. The idea of clothing being a source of social change and even advancement is certainly an interesting one and I'm glad you brought it to my attention.
ReplyDeleteLike many of the other commenters, I thought that presenting social change and modernism through the lens of women's fashion was a really interesting idea. In reference to your first question, I think there is definitely a kind of contrast between the pessimism and disillusionment reflected in a lot of early 20th century art and the sense of liberation that accompanied new fashions for women in the same time period. I think it reinforces the idea that the early 20th century was a time of great fluctuation with many contrasting themes that depended on concepts like race, class, gender, etc.
ReplyDeleteOne way in which it seems different to me is that fashion as an industry is far more commercial than many forms of art(poetry, for example) and much more visible in its cultural division from which people can draw an immediate judgment unlike one's artistic taste which is not outwardly revealed in the same way.
ReplyDeleteI found this to be an important reminder that even one's clothing can, and in fact is, an instrument of oppression. I'm looking forward to our conversation about how this plays into the modernist movement.
ReplyDelete