November 22, 2019
Hello ,
What do a doctor, machinist and kindergarten teacher have in common? They all flouted the law and got arrested for wearing pants.
And they weren't the only ones. Our right to wear what we want is a hard fought victory.
Arrested for Wearing Pants
The photograph below sparked my interest in the segment of the Women's Rights Movement focused on the right to wear pants.
It was taken in 1942, at Abraham Lincoln High School, in Brooklyn, NY. Do these high school girls look like radicals?
From left: Roslyn Goldberg, Esther Cohen, Marian Hartman, Maryln Bodkin, Eleanor Groper, photo courtesy Ben Sandhaus, New York Daily News.
The photo bombing guy looks like a total dork. The girls look classy, not a bit like troublemakers. They were in fact courageous and loyal, flouter of school policy.
Their friend Beverly Bernstein, had been suspended from school the day before after she dared to show up wearing blue gabardine slacks and a "lipstick-red sweater."
These pants-wearing protesters gathered signatures from students on the following petition.
“The undersigned want to have official permission for girls to wear slacks to school for the following reasons:
a) The United Stated Government advocates slacks for school because they are better than skirts in the event of an air raid b) They conserve silk stockings c) They curb sexy clothes such as short skirts.
Note: Boys also wish the girls to wear slacks and signing the petition in hope that it will be allowed.”
Apparently Lincoln’s principal was persuaded saying “if the girls wear them, we won’t get excited about it”.
More than fashions were changing as the United States geared up the fight against Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. For women working in factories and shipyards, dresses became a hindrance and a threat to safety.
Below, Evelyn Bross arrested for concealing her identity as a woman, photo from Capturedandexposed.com.
In 1943, Chicago police arrested a machinist as she walked home from her job at a WWII defense plant.
Not for wearing pants, per se, but for breaking a city statute that “prohibited persons from wearing the clothes of the opposite sex in public.”
In court, 19-year-old Evelyn Bross told the judge she was simply wearing clothes suitable for her work, but he did not believe her.
Instead, he cited her under the law which prohibited impersonating the opposite sex in public. Worse than jail, he sentenced her to six months of psychiatric evaluation.
Evelyn didn't see the logic. "If I dress like a girl, I'll look like a boy anyway," she said. "And I'll be picked up more often -- the police will think I'm impersonating a girl."
In another case during the war, three women pilots were arrested in Georgia for wearing pants in public after dark.
Five years earlier, a kindergarten teacher had gone to jail for wearing pants to court in Los Angeles, CA, where she was a witness in a burglary trial.
The judge took offense to Helen Hulick appearing in court room in green and orange leisure slacks and top. Judge Arthur S. Guerin lectured her, "...you drew more attention from spectators, prisoners and court attaches than the legal business at hand..." he said.
Judge Guerin postponed Helen's testimony and ordered her to come back wearing a dress.
Helen told the Los Angeles Times, "You tell the judge I will stand on my rights. If he orders me to change into a dress I won't do it. I like slacks. They're comfortable."
"Listen, I've worn slacks since I was 15. I don't own a dress except a formal. If he wants me to appear in a formal gown that's okay with me. I'll come back in slacks and if he puts me in jail I hope it will help to free women forever of anti-slackism."
Photo courtesy Andrew H. Arnott / George Wallace / L.A. Times Archive/UCLA
She disobeyed the judges order, only changing into a dress when forced to don jail garb after she was arrested for once again showing up in court wearing slacks.
She was held in contempt and sentenced to five days in jail.
At left, see the 28-year-old Helen sporting her jail-issued denim dress, her attorney William Katz and notary Jeanette Dennis working on getting her released on her own recognizance.
The Appellate Court overturned Helen's contempt citation, legalizing women's right to wear pants in courts of law.
I'm told she returned to Judge Guerin's courtroom one more time to testify in the burglary case. That day she wore a dress.
In 1916, Adeline and Augusta Van Buren set off to cross America riding motorcycles from Brooklyn, NY to San Francisco, CA in two months.
With no interstates and few highways, the sisters traveled mostly on unpaved roads. They encountered many challenges along the way, falling of their bikes due to fatigue, ruts or heavy mud.
Most of the people they met were friendly and helpful, But some became scandalized by the their men's leathers. In a number of small towns in the Midwest, Adeline and Augusta were arrested for wearing pants.
They were, however, allowed to continue their trip. Maybe if they agreed to ride out by sundown.
Clipping from Cincinnati Daily Press, January 1, 1862 reports on unnamed woman arrested for "promenading in male attire".
Emma Snodgrass, a young woman from New York, may hold the record for number of times and places arrested for wearing pants.
The 17-year-old girl was first arrested in 1852 for dressing like a man in Boston. Rather than jail, police sent Emma home to her father. She wouldn't stay, returning time and again to Boston to be arrested. One newspaper called her that "foolish girl who goes around in virile toggery.
Harriet French, a 19-year-old woman arrested with Emma in one town was sent to a work house for two months. A newspaper editorialized it was because Emma had money and Harriet did not, noting that was "the difference between breeches without money, and breeches with."
Eventually, Emma left strait-laced Bostonians alone, reportedly heading to California. Newspapers document her appearance and arrests in various cities including Cleveland, OH, Louisville KY, Albany and Buffalo, NY. The Fort Wayne Times reported Emma “disturbed the equanimity of the sleepy magistracy in the eastern cities.”
There's a new book out for kids telling the story of Mary Edwards Walker, perhaps the most famous American woman arrested for wearing pants.
In 1855, Mary was one of the first American women to graduate from medical school and become a practicing doctor. During the Civil War, Mary served as an assistant surgeon in the 52nd Ohio Infantry, was captured and imprisoned by Confederates.
At right, photo of Mary Edwards Walker courtesy of the National Library of Medicine, Images from the History of Medicine.
Eventually, released due to a shortage of doctors on both sides of the war, Mary worked as a surgeon in a women's prison and an orphanage. After the way she received a Medal of Honor for her service.
Following her war service, Mary continued work she had previously start advocating for women's rights and dress reform.
She wrote for a dress reform newspaper, (Who knew such things existed?) had dressed like a man in pants and coat for her wedding, and was arrested multiple times for impersonating a man.
Mary had begun wearing pants while growing up on a farm. At the time, a
fashionable women's dress, corset, bustle, petticoats and undergarments might tip the scale at 20 pounds. Mary's father saw the obvious advantage to her shedding her skirts.
The children's book Mary Wears What She Wants, written and illustrated by Keith Negley tells the story of Mary Edwards Walker getting a hard time as a child wearing pants to school.
It features Mary's determination, and the support her father gave her in wearing what she wanted, which was pants.
According to Adrienne Mayor, a classics scholar from Stanford University, when pants were invented some 3000 years ago, they were worn by both women and men.
Unlike the Greeks simple piece of cloth belted or pinned so as not to fall off, these pants took some effort.
Members of Nomadic tribes traveling across the steppes of Central Asia
devised pants for the whole family because everyone spent a lot of time on horseback.
These tribes we call the Scythians, wore trousers tailor made to fit. They designed the pants from three pieces of cloth woven separately, color coordinated and sewn together.
Fragments of these garments, excavated from tombs near the Turfan oasis in western China, are the oldest known evidence of pants. Photo of these pants
courtesy M. Wagner/German Archaeological Institute.
Apparently, the Greeks made fun of them, laughing at people for wearing sacks or bags on their legs. But I don't know that they arrested or jailed anyone wearing them, men or women. The Greeks and Scythians had a healthy trade relationship.
Sources:
https://qz.com/quartzy/1597688/a-brief-history-of-women-in-pants/
https://flashbak.com/the-girl-suspended-for-wearing-pants-new-york-city-1942-414698/
https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-california-retrospective-20141023-story.html
http://historicheroines.org/2015/09/20/wearing-pants-how-mary-edwards-walker-broke-gender-stereotypes-during-the-civil-war-and-beyond/
Did you hear about our little kerfuffle in the library? The Book Bandit? The Hidaho?
At the Coeur d'Alene Public Library someone has been hiding books critical of President Trump and other topics he or she would prefer people don't read about.
One of the hidden books was Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump by Rick Riley, a former sports writer for Sports Illustrated. As interviews with the Coeur d'Alene head librarian broke round the world, Riley wrote an op/ed piece for The Washington
Post announcing he would donate 10 copies of his book and come to hide them himself.
Photo borrowed from Colin Mulvany / The Spokesman-Review
My husband has been a big fan of Riley's articles in Sports Illustrated for decades so we drove over last night to hear the author speak. It was a packed house. Riley mentioned several times that he's in retirement, but he could have a career in stand-up comedy if he wanted.
Still, his message was serious, "The way a man plays golf says a lot about him. We play honestly because it’s not about winning or losing,” Reilly said. “It’s about the integrity of the game.”
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