Redefining Femininity to Gain Equality
Women across America were denied basic rights in America's early years, rights that men had. Starting in 1848 women started to speak out against their lack of rights, creating the Women’s Rights movement. In the process of making this movement successful suffragettes were arrested and put in jail for advocating to change the laws so that they would have equal rights to men. Women were seen as property of men and they were expected to act and dress a in a certain manner enforced by men and people in society. A woman was expected to conform to “society’s definitions of femininity” and if she did not then she was “unnatural or valueless” (Rolley). The women fought against these standards in order to gain …show more content…
A large part of women gaining their basic rights would be to break free from society's standards and notions to create a new image for all women. The suffragettes in the Women’s Rights movement made they way that they dressed and their femininity very important (Rolley). Suffragettes’ fashion greatly influenced the direction that the women’s rights movement would take by challenging society’s norms and ideals about femininity to bring change to the legal rights that women had.
Suffragettes sought to change the way femininity was defined by dressing more practically while still looking feminine. By changing the way that they dressed a suffragette sparked attention to the Women’s Rights movement. In “Fashion, Femininity and the Right to Vote” the author stated that the WSPU wrote that a suffragette should dress “trim and smart” and “neat in her appearance” (Rolley 56). A suffragette needed to dress “smart” in order to disprove what was written about them in the papers by anti-suffragettes. A suffragette didn’t want to get rid of femininity, rather she wanted to redefine it. Similarly, in “Fashion, Femininity and the Right to Vote” the author found that femininity was viewed by the …show more content…
This was a distraction from the fact that a woman could be dressed well and still be intelligent. One problem we still have today that Rolley mentions in her work is that women are viewed as “emotional and physical creatures” meaning that they are unfit for politics. The suffragettes dressed fashionably to avoid hurting their cause by fitting into the media’s definition of a suffragette because the media's definition of a suffragette was a woman who never got married because she is unlovable and masculine. For some women it was practical for them to shorten their skirts or to wear pants. By doing so it made it easier to do work on farms and in factories. In “A New Style for Suffragists” the author says changing the way a woman dressed did not mean that she was “trying to pass for a man” (Harris 24) but instead that woman was doing good for her business and success. The importance of reforming dress was that a woman would be able to physically do the things that a man could do without being restrained by tight and restrictive clothing. This, in turn, would aide the Women’s Rights movement by demonstrating that if a woman was capable of doing the things that a man could do by changing the way that she dressed than she could do that much more if she were given equal
Women across America were denied basic rights in America's early years, rights that men had. Starting in 1848 women started to speak out against their lack of rights, creating the Women’s Rights movement. In the process of making this movement successful suffragettes were arrested and put in jail for advocating to change the laws so that they would have equal rights to men. Women were seen as property of men and they were expected to act and dress a in a certain manner enforced by men and people in society. A woman was expected to conform to “society’s definitions of femininity” and if she did not then she was “unnatural or valueless” (Rolley). The women fought against these standards in order to gain …show more content…
A large part of women gaining their basic rights would be to break free from society's standards and notions to create a new image for all women. The suffragettes in the Women’s Rights movement made they way that they dressed and their femininity very important (Rolley). Suffragettes’ fashion greatly influenced the direction that the women’s rights movement would take by challenging society’s norms and ideals about femininity to bring change to the legal rights that women had.
Suffragettes sought to change the way femininity was defined by dressing more practically while still looking feminine. By changing the way that they dressed a suffragette sparked attention to the Women’s Rights movement. In “Fashion, Femininity and the Right to Vote” the author stated that the WSPU wrote that a suffragette should dress “trim and smart” and “neat in her appearance” (Rolley 56). A suffragette needed to dress “smart” in order to disprove what was written about them in the papers by anti-suffragettes. A suffragette didn’t want to get rid of femininity, rather she wanted to redefine it. Similarly, in “Fashion, Femininity and the Right to Vote” the author found that femininity was viewed by the …show more content…
This was a distraction from the fact that a woman could be dressed well and still be intelligent. One problem we still have today that Rolley mentions in her work is that women are viewed as “emotional and physical creatures” meaning that they are unfit for politics. The suffragettes dressed fashionably to avoid hurting their cause by fitting into the media’s definition of a suffragette because the media's definition of a suffragette was a woman who never got married because she is unlovable and masculine. For some women it was practical for them to shorten their skirts or to wear pants. By doing so it made it easier to do work on farms and in factories. In “A New Style for Suffragists” the author says changing the way a woman dressed did not mean that she was “trying to pass for a man” (Harris 24) but instead that woman was doing good for her business and success. The importance of reforming dress was that a woman would be able to physically do the things that a man could do without being restrained by tight and restrictive clothing. This, in turn, would aide the Women’s Rights movement by demonstrating that if a woman was capable of doing the things that a man could do by changing the way that she dressed than she could do that much more if she were given equal