In some cultures, pants have been common garments worn by women for centuries or millennia. This was not the case in much of Western society. In the United States, women typically wore long skirts, with the exception of some women who wore pantslike garments to perform work or engage in sports. While there were some women who championed pants in the 19th century, pants as an acceptable everyday clothing option for women didn’t truly catch on until the mid-20th century.
The adoption of pants as a popular item of dress for women in Western society traces its roots to the mid-19th-century dress-reform movement. Although there were women of this time who were already wearing pantslike clothing if they were engaged in physical exercise or household work, the garments were typically worn out of the public eye. Most women usually wore long skirts that felt heavy, looked bulky, and limited their range of motion. Some women, embracing the concept of “rational dress,” wanted the option to wear pants in public. Some wanted it for purely practical reasons, such as for comfort and ease of movement. For others, the freedom to wear pants was tied to the women’s rights movement, a radical and controversial crusade at the time.
In the United States, Elizabeth Smith Miller designed an early version of pantslike clothing for women around 1851. It consisted of a skirt extending below the knees and loose “Turkish” trousers that gathered at the ankles, and it was worn with a short jacket on top. Known as “bloomers,” this garment took its name from an early advocate of Miller’s design, Amelia Jenks Bloomer. Other early supporters of pants for women were physician and reformer Mary Edwards Walker and suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Despite enjoying popularity in some circles, bloomers generated much controversy. Their everyday use faded away after a few years, and pants for women were again relegated to a limited range of activities, such as exercise or chores, or were worn in private.
Why women feel pressured to shave?
Type "When did women start..." into Google and one of the top autocomplete suggestions to pop up is, "When did women start shaving?" The answer goes back centuries. Hair removal -- or otherwise -- has long shaped gender dynamics, served as a signifier of class and defined notions of femininity and the "ideal body."
However, in its most recent evolution, body hair is being embraced by a growing number of young women who are turning a source of societal shame and turning it into a sign of personal strength. The rise of gender fluidity, the body-positivity movement and the beauty sector's growing inclusiveness have all contributed to the new wave of hirsuteness.
"It's been deeply stigmatized -- it still is -- and cast with shame," said Heather Widdows, professor of global ethics at the UK's University of Birmingham and author of "Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal," in a phone interview. "Its removal is one of the few aesthetic traditions that have gone from being a beauty routine to a hygienic one. "Today, most women feel like they have to shave. Like they have no other option. There's something deeply fraught about that -- though perceptions are slowly changing."
