Chapter 3

In order to expose its falsity, I have reproduced in this paper plates taken from leading American and English fashion monthlies during the past three decades, in each of which it is noticeable that extremes have been reached. In 1860-65, the hoop-skirt held sway, and the wasp waist was typical of beauty. Then no lady was correctly attired according to the prevailing idea who did not present a spectacle curiously suggestive of a moving circus tent. During this era four or five fashionably dressed women completely filled an ordinary drawing-room; while the sidewalk was often practically monopolized by moving monstrosities, save when in front or behind the formidable swinging cages moved escorts, who with no less servility than American womanhood bowed to the frivolous and criminal caprice of the modern Babylon.

But fashion is nothing if not changeable; fancy not art guides her mind. What to-day types beauty, is by her own voice to-morrow voted indecent and absurd. Thus we find in the period extending from 1870 to 1875 an entirely new but none the less ridiculous or injurious extreme prevails. The wonderful swinging cage, the diameter of which at the base often equaled the height of the encased figure, has disappeared, being no longer considered desirable or æsthetic, and in its place we have prodigious bustles and immense trains, by which an astonishing quantity of material is thrown behind the body, suggesting in some instances a toboggan slide, in others the unseemly hump on the back of a camel. This is the era of the enormous bustle and the train of sweeping dimensions.[1]

[1] During this period the ingenuity of man came to woman's rescue, by the invention of an interesting, and, judging by its popularity, exceedingly serviceable contrivance known as a dress elevator, which enabled ladies to instantly elevate their enormous trains when they came to a particularly muddy and filthy crossing.

When we examine the prevailing styles which marked this period, we are struck with amazement at the power exerted by fashion over the intellect and judgment of society. Imagine the shame and humiliation of a woman of fashion, endowed by nature or afflicted by disease with such an unsightly hump on the back as characterized the fashionable toilet of this period!

Toward the end of the seventies, we find another extreme reached, which if possible was more absurd and injurious than those which marked the early days of this decade. This was the period of the tie-back, or narrow skirts and enormous trains. As in 1860 fashion's slaves vied with one another in their effort to cover the largest possible circular space, now their ambitions lay in the direction of the opposite extreme:[2] the skirts must be as narrow as possible even though it greatly impeded walking, for as will be readily observed all free use of the lower limbs was out of the question during the reign of the "tie-back."

[2] It was in the midst of the period of the tie-backs that _Harper's Bazar_ published two striking cartoons illustrating the poem given below. One represented a poor man's wife, "The slave of toil," and was pathetically powerful in its fidelity to truth; the other, drawn by the powerful Nast, represented a society lady of the day attired in the reigning tie-back, measuring at the hips a little more than double the width a short distance below the knees. This slave was chained to fashion's column.

SISTER SLAVES.

You think there is little of kinship between them? Perhaps not in blood, yet there's likeness of soul; And in bondage 'tis patent to all who have seen them That both are fast held under iron control. The simpering girl, with her airs and her graces, Is sister at heart to the hard-working drudge; Two types of to-day, as they stand in their places; Whose lot is the sadder I leave you to judge.

One chained to the block is the victim of Fashion; Her object in life to be perfectly dressed; Too silly for reason, too shallow for passion, She passes her days 'neath a tyrant's behest. Thus pinioned and fettered, and warily moving, Lest looping should fail her, or band come apart: What room is there left her for thinking or loving? What noble ambition can enter her heart?

And one, the worn wife of a grizzled old farmer; She kneads the great loaves for the "men-folks" to eat. In the wheat-fields the green blades are springing like armor; Afar in the forests the flowers are sweet. She lifts not her eyes. Within kitchen walls narrow Her life is pent up. The most hopeless of slaves, Though weary and jaded in sinew and marrow, She never complains. Women _rest_ in their graves.

Twin victims, for which have we tenderest pity-- For mother and wife toiling on till she dies, Or the frivolous butterfly child of the city, All blind to the glory of earth and of skies? Is it fate, or ill fortune, hath woven about you Strong meshes which ye are too helpless to break? Shall we scornfully wonder, or angrily flout you, Or strive from their torpor your minds to awake?

Yet, Venus of old, with your queenly derision, How you would disdain the belle's tawdry array! _Free footsteps untrammelled_, cool hand of decision, Sweet laugh like bells pealing, were yours in the day When you reigned over men by the might of your beauty; No fetters were o'er you in body or brain; The world would bow down in the gladness of duty Could you but awake in your splendor again.

And, Pallas and Venus, if now you were holding A talk over womanhood, what would you say, The words of wise counsel while you were unfolding, If some one should show you these pictures to-day? I dream of your faces: divinest compassion Would yearn the poor toiler to pity and save; And your largeness of scorn would descend on the fashion Which binds, unresisting, the idler a slave.

The reaction in favor of a more sensible dress which followed was of brief duration. During this time, however, the long trains were seldom seen, and thoughtful women began to hope that the arbitrary rule of fashion was over. It was not long, however, before the panier period arrived, and what was popularly known as the pull-back was accepted as the correct style in fashion's world. Of this latter conceit little need be said, for it has so recently passed from view that all remember its peculiarity, which to the ordinary observer seemed to be a settled determination on the part of its originators to render walking as difficult and fatiguing as possible, while fully exposing the outline of the wearer's body below the waist at every step. What in '60 or '70 would have been accounted the height of indecency, is in the eighties perfectly proper in the fashionable world. During this time it was not enough to have the skirts very narrow, they must at every step give the outline of the limbs [or as our Minnesota solon would put it, _nether_ limbs], hence we find the pull-backs in which "two shy knees appeared clad in a single trouser."

Such have been the inconsistencies, incongruities, and absurdities of fashion as illustrated in the past three decades, in view of which one may well ask whether in fashion's eyes women are such paragons of ugliness that these ever-varying styles (introduced, we are seriously informed, to conserve to her beauty,) are absolutely essential, and by what rule of art can we explain the fact that the ponderous hoopskirt was the essential requirement of beauty in the sixties and the enormous bustles demanded in the seventies. The truth is, fashion is supremely indifferent alike to all laws of art and beauty, health and life, decency and propriety--a fact that must be patent to any thoughtful person who examines the prevailing styles of a generation. I submit that the wildest extremes to which well-meaning but injudicious dress reformers have gone in the past have been marked by nothing more inartistic than the costume of the reigning belle in 1860. Each successive decade has been marked by an extreme which, surveyed from the vantage ground of the present, is as ridiculously absurd as it has been wanting in beauty Nowhere have the laws of true art been so severely ignored as in the realm of fashion. Yet this view of the problem palls into insignificance when we come to examine the question from the standpoint of health and life.

One would think that after thousands of years of sickness and death, with all the advantages of increased education and a broadening intellectual horizon, we would have arrived at such an appreciation of the value of health and the solemn duty we owe to posterity, as to compel this consideration to enter into our thoughts when we adopted styles of dress; yet nowhere is the weakness of our present civilization more marked or its hollowness so visible, even to the superficial thinker, as in the realm of fashion, _where every consideration of health and even of life, and all sense of responsibility to future generations are brushed aside as trivialities not to be seriously considered_. In vain have physicians and physiologists written, lectured, and demonstrated the fatal results of yielding to fashion. The learned Doctor Trall in writing on this subject wisely observes:

The evil effects of tight-lacing, or of lacing at all, and of binding the clothing around the hips, instead of suspending it from the shoulders, can never be fully realized without a thorough education in anatomy and physiology. And if the illustrations[3] here presented should effect the needed reform in fashionable dress, the resulting health and happiness to the human race would be incalculable; for the health of the mothers of each generation determines, in a very large measure, the vital stamina of the next. It is obvious that, if the diameter of the chest, at its lower and broader part, is diminished by lacing, or any other cause, to the extent of one fourth or one half, the lungs B, B, are pressed in towards the heart, A, the lower ribs are drawn together and press on the liver, C, and spleen, E, while the abdominal organs are pressed downward on the pelvic viscera. The stomach, D, is compressed in its transverse diameter; both the stomach, upper intestines, and liver are pressed downward on the kidneys, M, M, and on the lower portions of the bowels [the intestinal tube is denoted by the letters f, j, and k,] while the bowels are crowded down on the uterus, i, and bladder, g. _Thus every vital organ is either functionally obstructed or mechanically disordered_, and diseases more or less aggravated, the condition of all. In post-mortem examinations the liver has been found deeply indented by the constant and prolonged pressure of the ribs, in consequence of tight-lacing. The brain-organ, protected by a bony inclosure, has not yet been distorted externally by the contrivances of milliners and mantuamakers; but, lacing the chest, by interrupting the circulation of the blood, prevents its free return from the vessel of the brain, and so permanent congestion of that organ, with constant liability to headache, vertigo, or worse affections, becomes a "second nature." The vital resources of every person, and all available powers of mind and body, are measurable by the respiration. Precisely as the breathing is lessened, the length of life is shortened; not only this, but life is rendered correspondingly useless and miserable while it does exist. It is impossible for any child, whose mother has diminished her breathing capacity by lacing, to have a sound and vigorous organization. If girls will persist in ruining their vital organs as they grow up to womanhood, and if women will continue this destructive habit, the race must inevitably deteriorate. It may be asserted, therefore, without exaggeration, that not only the welfare of the future generations, but the salvation of the race depends on the correction of this evil habit. The pathological consequences of continued and prolonged pressure on any vital structure are innutrition, congestion, inflammation, and ulceration, resulting in weakness, waste of substance, and destruction of tissue. The normal sensibility of the part is also destroyed. No woman can ever forget the pain she endured when she first applied the corsets; but in time the compressed organs become torpid; the muscles lose their contractile power, and she feels dependent on the mechanical support of the corset. But the mischief is not limited to local weakness and insensibility. The general strength and general sensibility correspond with the breathing capacity. If she has diminished her "breath of life," she has just to that extent destroyed all normal sensibility. She can neither feel nor think normally. But in place of pleasurable sensations and ennobling thoughts, are an indescribable array of aches, pains, weaknesses, irritations, and nameless distresses of body, with dreamy vagaries, fitful impulses, and morbid sentimentalities of mind. And yet another evil is to be mentioned to render the catalogue complete. Every particle of food must be aerated in the lungs before it can be assimilated. It follows, therefore, that no one can be well nourished who has not a full, free, and unimpeded action of the lungs. In the contracted chest, the external measurement is reduced one half; but as the upper portions of the lungs cannot be fully inflated until the lower portions are fully expanded, it follows that the breathing capacity is diminished more than one half. It is wonderful how anyone can endure existence, or long survive, in this devitalized condition; yet, thousands do, and with careful nursing, manage to bring into the world several sickly children. The spinal distortion is one of the ordinary consequences of lacing. No one who laces habitually can have a straight or strong back. The muscles being unbalanced become flabby or contracted, unable to support the trunk of the body erect, and a curvature, usually a double curvature, of the spine is the consequence. And if anything were needed to aggravate the spinal curvature, intensify the compression of the internal viscera, and add to the general deformity, it is found in the modern contrivance of stilted gaiters. These are made with heels so high and narrow that locomotion is awkward and painful, the centre of gravity is shifted "to parts unknown," and the head is thrown forwards and the hips projected backwards to maintain perpendicularity.

[3] I have reproduced the admirable cuts found in Dr. Trall's physiology, as they were essential to the understanding of the text quoted, and also because they convey more vividly than words the injury necessarily sustained by those who persist in outraging nature and violating the laws of their being by improper dress.

In speaking of the destructiveness to health caused by woman's dress, Prof. Oscar B. Moss, M. D., declares:

Although the corset is the chief source of constraint to the kidneys, liver, stomach, pancreas, and spleen, forcing them upward to encroach upon the diaphragm and compressing the lungs and heart, its evils are rivalled by those resulting from suspending the skirts from the waist and hips, by which means the pelvic organs are forced downward and often permanently displaced. Now, add to these errors a belt drawn snugly around the waist, and we have before us a combination of the most malignant elements of dress which it would be possible to invent.

The waist belt enforces the evils which the corset and skirts inaugurate. Every proposition of anatomy and physiology bearing upon this subject appeals to reason. Did the abdominal organs require for their well-being less room than we find in the economy of nature, less room would have been provided. Nature bestows not grudgingly, neither does she lavish beyond the requirements of perfect health.

The same laws which govern the nutrition of muscles, apply also to the vital organs. Pressure that impedes circulation of blood through them must suppress their functions proportionally. With the lungs, heart, and digestive organs impaired by external devices, which force them into abnormal relations, health is impossible. Every other part of the body--nay, life itself--depends upon the perfection of these organs. The ancients fittingly called them the tripod of life.

Consumption, heart disease, dyspepsia, and the multiform phases of uterine and ovarian diseases are among the natural and frequent consequences of compressing the internal organs. Men could not endure such physical indignities as women inflict upon themselves. Should they attempt to do so, they would not long hold the proud position of "bread winners," which is now theirs by virtue of their more robust qualities.

It is difficult to imagine a slavery more senseless, cruel, or far-reaching in its injurious consequences than that imposed by fashion on civilized womanhood during the past generation. Her health has been sacrificed, and in countless instances her life has paid the penalty; while posterity has been dwarfed, maimed, and enervated, and in body, mind, and soul deformed at its behests. In turn every part of her body has been tortured. On her head at fashion's caprice the hair of the dead has been piled. Hats and bonnets, wraps and gowns laden with heavy beads and jet have as seriously impaired her health as they have rendered her miserable; the tight lacing required by the wasp waists has produced generations of invalids and bequeathed to posterity suffering that will not vanish for many decades. By it, as has been pointed out by the authorities cited, every vital organ in the body has been seriously affected. The heart and lungs, by nature protected by a cage of bone, have been abnormally crushed in a space so contracted as to absolutely prohibit the free action upon which health depended; while the downward pressure was necessarily equally injurious to her delicate organism. The tightly drawn corset has proved an unmitigated curse to the living and a legacy of misery and disease to posterity. And this cruel deforming of the most beautiful of God's creations was said to be beautiful simply because fashion willed it. Nor was this all; enormous bustles and skirts of prodigious dimension have borne their weight largely upon that part of her body which above all else should be absolutely free from pressure. By this means the most sensitive organs have been ruthlessly subjected to down pressing weights which for exquisite torture and for the absolute certainty of the long train of agony that must result, rival the heartless ingenuity of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages. Beyond this generation of debilitated and invalided mothers, rises a countless posterity robbed of its birthright of health while yet unborn.[4] A possible genius deformed and dwarfed by the weight of a fashionable dress; a brain which might have been brilliant rendered idiotic by the constant pressure of a corset, and the wearisome weight of a "stylish" dress pressing about the hips; a child whose natural capacity might have carried him to the seat of a Webster or into the laboratory of an Edison, condemned to drag a weakly, diseased, or deformed body through life, with mind ever chained to the flesh, through the heartless imposition which fashion imposed on his mother! What thought can be more appalling to a conscientious woman? Yet until a revolution is accomplished and a reign of reason and common sense inaugurated, this crime against the unborn will continue. But some argue the days of these extremes are past.

[4] In discussing the solemn duty mothers owe to their offspring, Mrs. Annie Jenness Miller sensibly observes:--

Are women ignorant of the mischief they do to their offspring, or are they indifferent to consequences? Has the true maternal love become extinct, in this age of advanced civilization, that women ignore all the laws of nature while anticipating the glory of motherhood? We know not; yet we often see what causes a thrill of pity in our soul for the future of the child yet unborn: a mother laced within stiff bones and steel, while the very instincts of being cry out against the sin of it. Surely every child has a right to be well born! Wealth may be a grand inheritance, but health is a better one, as any poor suffering creature will testify, whose misery the most expensive doctors have been called upon to alleviate without avail. And how can a child be well born unless its parents observe the laws of life bearing upon the birth and rearing of children? It is impossible. If a mother will so clothe herself that the vitality which properly belongs to her baby becomes exhausted and destroyed, the child is robbed, as a natural consequence, and perhaps the weakened, puny, distorted, fretful little creature, who is innocent of the cause of its own sufferings, will live to become a curse to the world instead of the blessing that it would have been had rational conditions been observed before its birth.

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