Victorian Dress Reform - Girl Athletes and Working Women

Girl Athletes and Working Women

In the 19th century, poor women were known to wear corsets "boned" with rope, rather than steel or bone, to facilitate work in the field.

  • Approx. second half of 1880s poster showing Annie Oakley wearing short-skirted attire

  • An 1897 ad, showing a relatively early example of an ordinary non-sea-bathing woman in public view in unskirted garments (to ride a bicycle)

  • 1895 Punch satire on wearing a bicycle suit despite lacking a bicycle

  • Wigan "pit brow lasses" scandalized by wearing trousers for dangerous work in coal mines. They wore skirts over their trousers, rolled up to the waist to keep them out of the way.

Read more about this topic:  Victorian Dress Reform

Famous quotes containing the words working women, girl, athletes, working and/or women:

    When I hear that there are 5,000,000 working women in this country, I always take occasion to say that there are 18,000,000 but only 5,000,000 receive their wages.
    Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)

    I do not know if you remember the tale of the girl who saves the ship under mutiny by sitting on the powder barrel with her lighted torch ... and all the time knowing that it is empty? This has seemed to me a charming image of the women of my time. There they were, keeping the world in order ... by sitting on the mystery of life, and knowing themselves that there was no mystery.
    Isak Dinesen [Karen Blixen] (1885–1962)

    To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    No construction stiff working overtime takes more stress and straining than we did just to stay high.
    Gus Van Sant, U.S. screenwriter and director, and Dan Yost. Bob Hughes (Matt Dillon)

    We cannot expect in the immediate future that all women who seek it will achieve full equality of opportunity. But if women are to start moving towards that goal, we must believe in ourselves or no one else will believe in us; we must match our aspirations with the competence, courage and determination to succeed.
    Rosalyn Yalow (b. 1921)