She Wears the Pants
The Reform Dress as Technology in Nineteenth-Century America
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4026466 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Catherine Mas (0000-0003-2164-5185, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 58 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 35-66 |
| Publication date | 2017-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Technology and Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0040-165X • E-ISSN: 1097-3729 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/tech.2017.0001 |
| PMID | 28569704 |
| OpenAlex | W2588251218 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
| References cited | 12 |
This article examines the American dress-reform movement, detailing the ways in which reformers conceptualized clothing as a social and bodily technology. In the mid-nineteenth century, women began making and wearing the "reform dress"-a costume consisting of pants and shortened, lightweight skirts-as an alternative to burdensome feminine fashions. When ridiculed in public for wearing overtly masculine garments, dress reformers insisted their clothing was healthful, functional, and natural. This article discusses women's use of medical science and technical knowledge in their rejection of fashion, promotion of sexual equality, and efforts to change mainstream clothing practices. When approached from a technological perspective, the reform dress reveals broader tensions in an industrializing American society, such as changing gender relations and new understandings of the relationship between humans and technology
Aesthetics · Art · Clothing · Mainstream · Perspective (graphical) · Political science · Politics · Promotion (chess) · Sociology · Visual arts · Architecture, Design, and Social History · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law
Cradle of the Middle Class
A shopkeeper's millennium
Wash and Be Healed
Transforming Women's Work
The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts
Hydropathic Highway to Health
The Burned-over District
Dressed for the Photographer
Categories of Difference, Categories of Power
Technological World-Pictures
"Slow and Low Progress," or Why American Studies Should Do Technology
The 'Freedom Suit
| Unique citing works | 7 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,88 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2025 (8) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |