Breaking The Dress Code
“Tennie C. once called a reporter into her office to show him the man’s banking suit she was wearing. The reporter gaped at the trousers that ended three inches above her ankle and said, ‘If you wear that out on the street, there’ll be a riot worse than the draft riot.’ Tennie C. nevertheless wore the man’s jacket and waist-coat but added a long black broadcloth skirt, and Victoria soon joined her in wearing this attire. Clothes were a political statement. Women who dressed like men threatened the entire structure of male domination. An eminent physician, reinforcing this belief, stated that women who wore men’s clothes manifested an aggressiveness unbecoming to their sex… Tennie C… chose men’s attire not only for publicity but also to protest the fact that women were kept in their place by clothes.”
Read more about this topic: Tennessee Celeste Claflin
Famous quotes containing the words breaking, dress and/or code:
“As easy mayst thou fall
A drop of water in the breaking gulf,
And take unmingled thence that drop again,
Without addition or diminishing,
As take from me thyself and not me too.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“There is not enough exercise in this way of life. I try to make up by active gymnastics before I dress when I get up, by walking rapidly in the lower hall and the greenhouse after each meal for perhaps five to ten minutes, and a good hand rubbing before going to bed. I eat moderately; drink one cup of coffee at breakfast and one cup of tea at lunch and no other stimulant. My health is now, and usually, excellent.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Faultless honesty is a sine qua non of business life. Not alone the honesty according to the moral code and the Bible. When I speak of honesty I refer to the small, hidden, evasive meannesses of our natures. I speak of the honesty of ourselves to ourselves.”
—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)