CHAPTER II.

D R E S S R E F O R M.

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That the style and cut of the covering of the "mortal coil" has had its influence in the marriage relation, from the days of our first parents until now, no one will deny. That the Dress of women has ever been just what it should be, in order to protect the person, and allow freedom of motion and circulation, and not make the wearer a slave to it, was not approximated, until some of the Women Physicians of America took the subject in hand, and directed its arrangement in accordance with the laws of health, and the necessities of life. It is a well known fact, that the opposition brought to bear, is in proportion to the importance of the subject to humanity. And hence as Dress Reform for women is of paramount importance, it can be readily seen that the ignoble have ample reasons for opposing what will throw barriers in their path--what will remove the easy facilities for monster vices.

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Everything that makes woman in any degree independent of man, and, as a consequence, independent of marriage for support, is frowned down by a certain class of individuals. But when it makes them independent in marriage, their opposition is unbounded, and they really seem to feel that they are doing "God service" by persecuting those who are trying to save their physical, and by saving the physical, improving the mental strength.

Strange it is, that men do not understand how much better it would be for them , in many respects, if women were all dressed in a hygienic manner; but as they are not, they actually do all in their power by tongue and pen, to oppress those who dare to dress hygienically.

There is no doubt that the ignorance of the real principles, and the crude and incorrect ideas of many, induce some people to pursue the course just indicated. But time's surgical instruments will remove the scales from the Saul's eyes, and they will be as zealous in sustaining, as they are in persecuting.

To elucidate the effects of fashionable Dress upon the marriage relation, we need only say, that, as far as the expensiveness is concerned, that many men will not marry, because the voluminous and numerous Dresses, with their 60 other paraphernalia, requires a small fortune to replenish the ever changing fashionable styles.

Young men are often heard to say that "if a wife's clothes did not cost any more than their own, they could afford to marry." It is but natural that honest young man should be afraid to marry, when they see their friends so embarrassed in consequence of the extravagance of their wives in Dress. The lessons inculcated by failures in business as a consequence of having a fashionable wife, are learned and pondered over, until the youthful affections have waned, and the years of adaptation have passed.

It is not only silly that an immortal mind should be absorbed for half a lifetime, on fashionable fillies, to be arranged on the "casket" that contains this invisible piece of immortality, but it is a sinful waste of time and energies ; both of which are essential in many directions that are at present overlooked. The thousand perplexities of fashionable Dress, wear so upon the temper of a woman, that she cannot be amiable. A new garment is scarcely finished before a later fashion has made its appearance, and something new , or an alteration in the old, suggests itself, and the devotee of fashion, if she is poor, is nervous over the expense and labor, that are unending; if she is rich, over 61 the stupidity of dressmakers, and their slowness in finishing their work, even with the sewing machine to hasten the finishing of dozens of tucks and puffs and ruffles!

So much of the nervous energy is expended on Dress, and dressing, and carrying the burdensome stuff, that a morbid sensibility is induced which women cannot prevent. At the exhibition of this, men lose their patience, believing there is no necessity for a woman ever to be so nervous and easily annoyed at little matters. Not only does the husband and father suffer from this continuous irritability, but the children that are and those that are to be , partake of the same.

It is time that parents felt the responsibility that rests upon them, in regard to the transmission of highly wrought susceptible organizations to their children, that make them so wretchedly sensitive to all sorts of earth-life influences.

Let a horse be compelled to wear a harness that is uncomfortable, and with all his great strength of nerves, but a little time will elapse before he is so restless that his driver feels obliged to seek out and remedy the irritating cause. But if a human being writhes under something that injures the nervous system, 62 others are not as careful as they should be, to ascertain the cause, and hence the censure under which many poor wives labor.

The effects of Dress upon woman's physical being specially are such as to injure the happiness of the marriage relation. Few young women are to be found, that are fit for marriage, because they have been dressed in such a manner that weakness if not mechanical displacements have resulted.

Scarcely a woman can be found old enough to marry, who is not afflicted with some ailment produced by wearing an unhygienic Dress. From the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, the women are unhealthfully attired, and as there can be no happiness without health, it is obvious that the marriage relation as well as every social relation is embittered when there is no necessity for the same, unless there be a necessity for pleasing a vitiated taste, to the exclusion of health.

Nearly every roof covers a debilitated woman. No one will, for a moment, harbor the idea that god intended such a condition. Even half civilized or savage life is better in some respects than those professed-to-be highest enlightened conditions of society. To illustrate: In China the women compress the feet, 63 but they allow freedom of the chest. In India they wear heavy anklets, but they do not wear long or heavy skirts, injuring women as women, and posterity also. In Kamschatka they do not tie up their hair, and put weights of false hair on their heads , crazing them with pain or benumbing the whole cranial surface.

In Turkey, the fact is recognized, that the women's limbs are flesh and blood as well as the men's, and are therefore susceptible to the influences of the weather, and need to be as well protected; and hence the custom of the sexes dressing nearly alike. Those who would find fault with the men of that country, for allowing the women to dress like them, (instead of wearing our most fashionable clothes, or rather those of Paris,) would immediately be credited with weak or bad motives.

As women are distinct, separate individuals, in the marriage relation as well as out of it--as they are sharers of the great labors, and the greater sorrows and burdens of life, there are as great or greater reasons, why they should be as hygienically dressed as men; and their minds and hearts and consciences, are capable, and will direct them right, just as soon as the way is opened and woman has sweet liberty to 64 live up to her noble womanhood, without being hampered and cramped in this direction.

The credentials of the consciouness of the stinted growth of the mental interior, are visible in the faces of the women who are carrying the terrible burdens of Dress, that does result in so much of real unhappiness in the marriage relation. A husband has no more fight to dictate about the cut of his wife's clothes, than has the wife to interfere with her husband's, and it is time that the barbarous ideas of men assuming such prerogatives, were swept away, and the inherent right of woman to dress as she pleases established.

God has either given noble capacities to women, of He has given her power to receive them, for the fact is evident that she is in possession of them, and has a firm disposition to appropriate the same, even if against the express wishes of men; believing as she does that powers for good were not created to moulder unexercised.

Thousands of the wrongs to woman, would be prevented, if women dressed in a hygienic manner, and those wrongs that are not at all to be legislated upon, because they are beyond the sphere of human legislatures. One of the great sources of unhappiness in the marriage relation, results directly from the chilling influences that freeze up the sympathies of wives, that have been so overburdened with their clothes, that they could not cultivate the flowers of beauty in the garden of the soul, where the chilling winds of nervousness were constantly blowing away all beautiful sentiments.

If men were really what they profess to be, "the protectors of women," they would never arrest one for dressing herself in a comfortable and health and life saving manner. They would not attempt to compel women to dress so that the facilities for vice would always be easy, but would sanction a Dress that is quite the reverse, and no man would attempt to invade the family circle of his neighbor. But until the "good time coming" comes, when women can dress hygienically without being martyrized , thousands of wrongs and sorrows must result every year, that are perfectly needless, aye, agonizing!

The idea that "women cannot be distinguished from men," is a piece of bosh that was remedied according to the ideas of the men in the latter part of the fourteenth century, by compelling the women always carry a distaff in one hand, so that there should be no mistake in regard to the sex.

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A vast amount of the many trouble of married life, results because of the illness of wives who are debilitated by Dress. So alarmingly great has this "general debility" become, that there is not a thoroughly educated M.D. to be found, who does not know that there is scarcely a woman who is not a sufferer from the wearing of long Dresses, even if they fall but to the ankles. There is a weight and swaying motion that nothing can overcome. There is an excess of clothing on some portions of the system and a deficiency on others. No women are dressed in such a manner that the warmth is equally distributed, except the Dress Reformers, and such alone are attired in a manner that will not produce or aggravate mechanical displacements of the abdominal and pelvic viscera.

The greatest sorrows from which women suffer to-day, are those physical, moral, and mental ones, that are caused by their unhygienic manner of dressing! The want of the ballot is but a toy in comparison! But time and a seeming propriety, prevent the author from making full elucidations and comparisons in this book, as it is for the general reader, and is not for women exclusively.

The wretched manner in which little children are dressed before they have a personal 67 control of their clothes, is figured up by sextons to the tune of many thousands every year. In 1860, 300,000 deaths occurred before the age of five years! In the same year, 77,309 deaths resulted from consumption, and inflammation of the lungs!

Has Dress nothing to do with the happiness of the marriage relation, when the parting of friends, who died of dress or the improper arrangement of Dress, fills the soul with an amount of sorrow that is almost insupportable?

There are those who seem to care very little about life , only as it serves them to display a beautiful face, and thus with open eyes to the suicidal manner in which they dress, continue to violate hygienic laws, and every soon destroy what Aristotle called "one of the most precious gifts of nature;" what Theophrastus called "a mute eloquence;" what Diogenes called "the most forcible letter of recommendation;" what Plato called "the privilege of nature;' what Bion called "a good that does not belong to the possessor, because it is impossible to give one's self beauty."

It is however possible to preserve beauty, even after the frosts of age shall have appeared, if one shall have dressed in a hygienic manner, and also to preserve an increasing beauty of 68 mind, that must always be an accompaniment of one who is in good health and aspiring after what is better and nobler than the fashionable follies of Dress, that covers all sorts of evils, and creates thousands of sorrows in the home circles.

Let our clergymen of all creeds, imitate the Pope of Rome, and come out boldly, and talk in fitting language against the evils of so much Dress. His Holiness concluded a long letter as follows, in exhorting women to "cultivate their minds; cultivate their hearts; cultivate virtue; for all of glory cometh from within," and not from Dress.

Again we assert that, from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, women are dressed in an unhygienic manner, while men assume all the comforts and conveniences of Dress that they desire, without any one saying unto them, why do ye thus? We may, in our Christian enlightenment, talk of the absurdity of the Chinese pinching and deforming women's feet, but if we had a particle of real modesty we would never mention it in the face of the facts of outrages a thousand-fold worse.

It is stated that the most fashionable American belles have submitted to the removing of the little toe on each foot, for the purpose of being able to wear a very small shoe. It is a fact that all of the vital organs of women are so compressed by stays or corsets that health is impaired and life shortened, not only, but the lives of their children are monstrous disappointments as it regards length, and in all other respects. Woman's "make up" generally after having been given from her mother a feeble constitution, is one mass of ever-changing absurdities.

THE HEAD.

There is no way the hair can be worn without injury, save in a perfectly free and flowing manner, except it be to plait the same, and let it fall without being a weight or burden on the head. There are numerous cases of those in comparative health who cannot endure even the latter mode; indeed they cannot endure the weight of the hair, if it fall longer than men's usually does. Astonishing as it may seem, the weight causes an intense pain, as though a heavy weight was attached to the hair.

Coarsely organized women cannot understand this, any more than men, but such women do very well understand what a relief it is to be freed from chignon, extra braids, frizzes, surly, rats, mice, combs, pins, etc. etc., and they almost 70 without exception complain of pains in the head, which result from the wearing of these extras, and the compression caused by tying of the hair, and the strings and elastics to keep the same arranged.

Many an O dear! Escapes the lips of women, who, before going out, must perform the head gearing labors, that they declare are so tiresome. The first thought is the arranging of the hair, and the constant thought afterward, is to be careful not to get it disarranged; and the head must be held just so, and there is a constant feeling of being all fixed up, which one cannot get out of their brains, as long as the fixings are painfully reminding them of their presence.

Who can reasonable expect that a woman can be of an amiable disposition who is undergoing a species of torture, at the very citadel of where dispositions are manufactures? Who can reasonably expect that the mother will be able to give everything that is desirable to her children in nature, when she is herself having the mental quality producer in torture all the waking moments of the months that she is giving being, life, soul, to a little immortality?

Dress up the heads of lady Floras, lady Greys, lady Temples, or any other of the great horse raisers; let them be in absolute discomfort all through their lives from the same tortures that the mothers of human beings wear on their heads, and we would soon see the results in their ladyships' colts, in their dispositions and intelligence. Of what use or value is a magnificently formed horse that is wanting in intelligence, and with a balky disposition? The balky traits are the mental ones that are inherited, and generally from the mother.

The mass of men have long since learned how to treat the animal, and it is to be hoped that in the course of a dozen or twenty centuries more they will learn that the happiness of the marriage relations of their children depends upon principles not far remote from those already learned in the animal kingdom.