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.
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Approx. second half of 1880s poster showing Annie Oakley wearing short-skirted attire
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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)
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1895 Punch satire on wearing a bicycle suit despite lacking a bicycle
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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 girl, athletes, working and/or women:
“No girl who is going to marry need bother to win a college degree; she just naturally becomes a “Master of Arts” and a “Doctor of Philosophy” after catering to an ordinary man for a few years.”
—Helen Rowland (1875–1950)
“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)
“... probably all of the women in this book are working to make part of the same quilt to keep us from freezing to death in a world that grows harsher and bleaker—where male is the norm and the ideal human being is hard, violent and cold: a macho rock. Every woman who makes of her living something strong and good is sharing bread with us.”
—Marge Piercy (b. 1936)
“To enumerate the different trades by which the women in New York are endeavoring—not to live—that for many of them is as utterly unattainable a goal as the end of the rainbow—but simply to postpone as long as possible their appearance at the morgue or the cemetery—to attempt to do this would be useless.”
—Katharine Pearson Woods (1853–1923)