WHAT'S SHE GOT IN HER POCKETSES?
WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE AND POCKETS
Annika Barranti Klein | Aug 3, 2020
pT fae WEE)! | Wornen’s heroes are everyone's heroes!
f In celebration of the 100th anniversary
of the passage of the 19th amendment
giving women the right to vote, we
read books that are by, for, and about
powerful women of all ages. A pre-teen
who helped discover the world’s first
dinosaur bone, a young women in the
early 20th century who braved the
ees illness and death of the radium
factories and fought « groundbreaking
battle for workers’ rights, or teens—one black, one white—who rely on each
other to survive a night of violent race riots in their city—these are the stories
of remarkable women of history and resourceful everyday girls.
~7 |
aR)
The suffragist movement and women’s suffrage in general has many ties to
pockets. I started thinking about the links between suffrage and pockets
while reading about witches. It’s related, honest.
Pockets are mentioned about 70 times in Alix E. Harrow’s forthcoming
novel The Once and Future Witches (Orbit, October 13, 2020), a book that
can best be described, in Harrow’s words, as “suffragettes, but witches.” (My
Kindle ARC says it’s 72 mentions; I consulted with Harrow for confirmation,
and her Word doc says 69.)
From the novel (page 51 in my copy): “It’s one of
those respectable, pocketless affairs that obliges
ladies to carry stupid little handbags, so Juniper
can’t carry so much as a melted candle-stub or a
single snake tooth with her. Bella informs her
that this is the precise reason why women’s
dresses no longer have pockets, to show they bear
no witch-ways or ill intentions, and Juniper
responds that she has both, thank you very damn
much.”
Tt is 2020. Women—at least white women like me—have had the right to
vote in the USA for 100 years. But we still lack pockets in our garments in
any meaningful fashion. Allow me to elaborate with an anecdote.
In 2016, when my son was 10 years old, | washed jeans belonging to him,
myself, and my husband, and noted the difference in pocket size. I was able
to fit my entire hand into my 10-year-old’s pocket. In my husband’s jeans,
my hand went in up to the elbow. In mine? My fingers went in all the way
to...the second knuckle. All three pairs of jeans were commercially made
and widely available.
Does this story mean that all pockets are unequal? No...but they are.
A VERY, VERY BRIEF HISTORY OF WOMEN'S POCKETS
(Note: this history covers American pockets and some British pockets but
largely ignores Indigenous populations and the rest of the world.)
Historically, women’s clothing has been pocketless for...basically ever. At
cone time, all clothing was pocketless and people of all genders carried their
sundry goods in bags. But while men’s garments have had pockets sewn in
since sometime in the 17th century, women have at various times used
pockets that tied around our waists with strings, carried an assortment of
bags, and generally suffered while our male counterparts stuffed their
pockets full of whatever they wished to carry and stuck anything too large
in our bags.
* Pre-17th Century: everyone carries bags if they carry anything
17th-19th Centuries: menswear gets pockets; women’s pockets are
little pouches on a string that can be tied around their waist and worn
between petticoat layers
Early 19th Century: fashions change and women’s clothing lines are too
slim for pockets; reticules (handbags) come into fashion
Mid 19th Century: sewing pockets directly into seams comes into
fashion—but does the trouble end there?
I feel quite certain that the history of pockets in the 20th century is worthy
of a whole dissertation, but I am not including it here as ] am focusing on
the suffragist movement of the second half of the 19th century and first
fifth of the 20th century.
FURTHER READING ON THE HISTORY OF POCKETS
Mansfield University Press’s The Culture of Fashion: A New History of
Fashionable Dress by Christopher Brewer covers 600 years of fashion,
focusing on Europe and America
In Taschen’s Fashion History from the 18th to the 20th Century
(Bibliotheca Universalis) the Kyoto Costume Institute examines world
women’s fashion from the 18th century to the present
PhD candidate Karen J. Kriebl’s From Bloomers to Flappers: The
American Women’s Dress Reform Movement, 1840-1920 can be found
here.
The Politics of Pockets by Chelsea G. Summers covers much of the
history of pockets, from the starting point of Hillary Clinton’s suffrage
reminiscent pant suit at the 2016 DNC
A follow-up from Summers: When it comes to women’s pockets, size
really does matter
The Gender Politics of Pockets by Tanya Basu focuses mainly on modem
pockets
The Bewildering and Sexist Histo: Women’s Pockets by Chanju
Mwanza gives a brief but good overview
And for a British perspective, The V&A gives us A history of pockets
But what, you may be wondering, has this to do with suffrage? IAM SO
GLAD YOU ASKED. I hope you're sitting down, this may be a lot.
BICYCLES AND HATPINS AND KNITTING NEEDLES, OH MY!
The modern bicycle* was invented in 1885 (earlier variations on the idea
had been around since 1817) and by the mid-1890s it was a popular form of
transportation for people of all genders. In 1895 The New York Times
published an article on women’s bicycle costumes (unfortunately, only the
abstract is available to non-subscribers). In the article, a (male) tailor was
quoted extensively, claiming that all women wanted bicycle costumes with
pockets specially made to hold their pistols. As you might assume, men.
hated this, because why would a woman need to carry a pistol except to
shoot men? I assume this is largely accurate, as men are the number one
threat to women’s lives. (Please note that intimate partner violence
happens in relationships with people of all genders.)
“There is a whole nother article in me on the freedom the bicycle allowed
women, but The Atlantic has already covered it more than adequately, with
extensive notes about bicycle costumes and how much men hated them.
Is there any truth to the claim that women were en masse electing to carry
pistols in their pockets? I have absolutely no idea. I kind of doubt it, while
hoping it is 100% true.
Around 1903, women—still largely lacking pockets—began to use their hat
pins as weapons against “mashers,” lecherous men who took advantage of
crowded public transportation and anonymous street encounters to grope
women. You have likely never seen a hat pin; imagine a straight pin, as used
for sewing, but the approximate size of a bread knife. Hat pins went through
ahat and secured it to the wearer's hair beneath (which was often itself
pinned up). They were no small item, and likely hurt like the dickens to be
stabbed with. This was so effective that men in Chicago and other cities
would go on to vote for laws against the hat pin peril, further proving that
‘women needed the vote.
L. Frank Baum satirized this so-called hat pin peril in the second Oz book,
The Marvelous Land of Oz, with General Jinjur and her army using knitting
needles as weapons in their revolt against the Scarecrow’s rule. Baum’s
satire does not appear to be in support of suffrage, though he himself
supported it; the book does end with Jinjur and company taking the
household duties back over from their ridiculous husbands who cannot
handle them, which is hardly progressive.
QUEERING THE SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT
Queer women of the suffrage movement (many of whom might today be
trans men or nonbinary, but at the time that language was nonexistent and
the concept largely unknown) such as Annie Tinker and Margaret “Mike”
Chung, often wore men’s clothing with its ample pockets. While this
choice is more likely tied to their gender expression than specifically to
pockets, Tinker in New York and Chung in San Francisco certainly made
waves in the 1910s—and were largely denounced by the mainstream
suffrage movement because they were not making themselves appealing to
men in order to win the vote. A few years later, San Francisco lawyer and
president of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s
Clubs Gail Laughlin notably refused to wear an evening gown (her day wear
‘was menswear) until pockets were added.
“Learn more about Mike Chung, who was the first known female Chinese
American doctor, in Doctor Mom Chung of the Fair-Haired Bastards: The
Life of a Wartime Celebrity by Judy Tzu-Chun Wu.
Suffragist suits were briefly popular as well, bearing some resemblance to
our modern day women’s suits with the important addition of as many
pockets as could be added. Based on both menswear and bicycle costumes,
suffragist suits were popular only briefly but certainly managed to annoy
and amuse during their time in the spotlight.
SATIRE AND THE SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT
Charles Hoyt was a playwright who met his second wife, Caroline Miskel,
when she starred in his satirical play A Temperance Town. He went on to
write A Contented Woman for her to star in: another satire, this one
showing the divide between miserable suffragists and happy housewives. I
cannot find any information on whether Hoyt was personally pro- or anti-
suffrage; he died in 1900. The play’s poster shows discontented suffragists,
hands in their pockets.
Theatrical poster for Hoyt’s A Contented Woman, via the Library of Congrass
From 1914 to 1917, Alice Duer Miller published a column in the New York
Tribune called Are Women People?, later collected into a book of the same
name. I close with her 1915 poem from that column.
“WHY WE OPPOSE POCKETS FOR WOMEN”
1. Because pockets are not a natural right.
2. Because the great majority of women do not want pockets. If they did
they would have them.
3, Because whenever women have hed pockets they have not used them.
4. Because women are required to carry enough things as it is, without
the additional burden of pockets.
5. Because it would make dissension between husband and wife as to
whose pockets were to be filled.
6. Because it would destroy man’s chivalry toward woman, if he did not
have to carry all her things in his pockets.
7. Because men are men, and women are women. We must not fly in the
face of nature.
8. Because pockets have been used by men to carry tobacco, pipes,
whiskey flasks, chewing gum, and compromising letters. We see no
reason to suppose that women would use them more wisely.
(Miller’s work is in the public domain, and the entire book is available at
Project Gutenberg.)
After the vote was won, bicycle costumes and suffragist suits were largely
abandoned. We won the vote but lost the battle for pockets.
A note: most of the authors mentioned in this article are white. American
suffrage was won at the loss of true equality, as the white women leading
the fight decided that racism would prevent them from winning if they had
Black women in leadership; In fact, several prominent suffragists fought
against the 15th amendment, arguing that Black men should not have the
vote before white women. The story of American suffrage is complex and
full of white supremacy, and the 19th amendment was truly only for white
women.