Pantaloons & Power

Book excerpt: Clothing is often an indication of an individual's status, and gender. By the early nineteenth century clear definitions had developed regarding how American women and men were supposed to appear in public and how they were meant to lead their lives. As men's style of dress moved from the ornate to the moderate, women's fashions continued to be decorative and physically restrictive. This visible separation of the sexes was paralleled in other arenas - social, cultural, and religions. Some women defied this convention and cut their skirts short, abandoned their corsets, and put on trousers. In Pantaloons and Power Gayle V. Fisher shows how the reformers' denouncement of conventional dress highlighted the role of clothing in the struggle of power relations between the sexes.