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 the, breaking, dress and/or code:
“There’s kind of a Sleeping Beauty magic about the kid. I thought I’d done something toward breaking the spell. Seems not. Prince Charmless, that’s me.”
—Dodie Smith, and Lewis Allen. Roderick Fitzgerald (Ray Milland)
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—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“Maud Muller looked and sighed: “Ah me!
That I the Judge’s bride might be!
“He would dress me up in silks so fine,
And praise and toast me at his wine.
“My father should wear a broadcloth coat,
My brother should sail a painted boat.”
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)
“Motion or change, and identity or rest, are the first and second secrets of nature: Motion and Rest. The whole code of her laws may be written on the thumbnail, or the signet of a ring.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)