Immodest Dress

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 25, 1910

On the page devoted to the “Plain Ideas of a Plain Country Woman” in the Ladies’ Home Journal for August, some very plain facts are very plainly set forth. While we deplore the strides made by organized vice, and the increasing immorality in all classes of society, it is the part of wisdom to recognize the fact that evil does not spring full-fledged into being on the instant. Rather, it is a growth, a development, having its roots often in surroundings and under conditions where least expected. Some of these conditions, which form a nourishing—almost a forcing—soil for the justly deplored immorality of the present day are so trenchantly portrayed in these words of “The Country Contributor” that it is a privilege to give them a wider reading:—

“I am not a stupid old woman, who talks about the good old times, and prophesies destruction for the rising generation. On the contrary, I never give way to the discouraging thought that things are growing worse. Women are much more comfortable in their clothes than they were when I was a child. I am convinced, too, that we are right in doing away with heavy underwear of the sort that holds impurities close to the body, and closes the pores of the skin. There is a medium of common sense regarding all these things; and while there is no doubt that many women and girls commit acts of sheer madness in going too thinly clad in winter, I believe that good will, in the end, result from discarding very heavy underwear.

“The thin bodice, or blouse, has become a fixture in woman’s apparel, and is in itself an evidence of our advance in common sense. When I was a girl, the odd waist was a thing practically unknown. All our dresses had ‘bodies,’ or ‘basques,’ or, perhaps, polonaises; and everything, except the sheerest wash fabric, was lined and interlined, and

stiffened with crinoline and stays.

“... When I was a girl, it was thought necessary for women going to public places to wear some little accessory, such as a cape, mantilla, scarf, or fichu, to hide the figure. Our skirts were more flowing, and the number of petticoats we wore was appalling—to the laundress at least. I wonder how we carried all the things we wore. I remember seeing my pretty young sister dress for a party with four stiffly starched white petticoats! On a sunshiny day, if we wore a light gown, our precautions lest somebody might ‘see through us’ were painful; and the girl who looked as if she had not on enough petticoats was disgraced. We seldom went up-town when I was a girl.

“I look at the girls of to-day, swinging along bareheaded, their corset-covers strung on pink or blue ribbons shining boldly through thin ‘peek-a-boo’ waists, their thin skirts outlining their figures, and their feet clad in frivolous pumps, and I do wonder sometimes where it is going to stop. And then I wonder, too, if, perhaps, we were not a little happier, even in our hampered state, than are the girls to-day with all their freedom to explore many things that were mysteries to us. I lived in a little village (and live there still), and I never lost the sense of novelty in going up-town where the stores were, or failed to draw somewhat on my courage in crossing the ‘north side of the square,’ which was for years the principal business center of the town. If I had walked across that square bareheaded, and with my neck and arms exhibited to the gaze of every man, rough or gentle, whom I might meet there, I would have been set down as a girl of only one type, and nice people would have snubbed me. . . .

“People are putting their heads together a good deal in late years over the immorality of young men at college. It is admitted that conditions are awful, yet what are we to do? Does it never occur to girls and women that they are very largely responsible for the morals of the men in their world? I am convinced that the general appearance of girls and women on the streets, at places of amusement, and even at home, has, in late years, an immoral effect upon young men. There is much in modern fashions to suggest our idea of the ancient Jezebel. I heard a city man of much sane judgment say that in these days a man could scarcely distinguish a fashionable lady from the more prosperous of the women of the town.

“I went with a wealthy friend of mine to look at a gown she had thought of purchasing. The saleswoman told her she had sold it that very morning to one of the most notorious women in the city. In my eyes the gown had been from the start a wretched rag of tawdry finery, unfit for a lady to wear; but I knew many ladies who were wearing such gowns, and who thought them ‘dead swell,’ and the price of the ‘little gown,’ as they called it, was one hundred fifty dollars. Now the fact that a lovely lady and the mistress of a house of ill fame should take a fancy to the same gown, and that the latter should get it, to the chagrin of the former, is in my mind significant of my argument that there is something wrong with the fashions, and that they are based on lines of immorality. The odd shapes in hats, the queer effects all along the line of personal adornment, are not, and can never be, ladylike, no matter how ‘popular’ they are.

“Among other things which I think bear the patent stamp of pure immorality may be mentioned the ‘peek-a-boo’ waist. Its name certainly should convey to us its manifest impropriety. Yet I have heard girls speak of these waists by this name in the presence of young men. Have you thought, mother, of the sheer bad taste exhibited here, to say nothing of the impropriety? What can be the object of a hole in a waist, save to show what is under it? You say the girl’s corset-cover and the dainty ribbon that ties it ‘look so pretty.’ Doubtless your daughter looks pretty in her night-dress, but you do not wish her to sit on the front veranda in it. Yet would not this be almost as proper a proceeding as her going down-town with her underwear plainly displayed through the open pattern of her ‘peek-a-boo’ waist?

“If you ask me plainly if I believe that such dressing on the part of nice girls has an immoral effect upon the young men they associate with, I answer frankly: ‘Yes.’ It is a breaking down of safeguards we once set up for young folks, and I believe the breaking down of these safeguards leaves the transition from youthful passion to plain immorality a much simpler step than it was in the old days of greater modesty and a more severe moral code. The girl herself may not, indeed, suffer from this exposure of her charms, because she does it unconsciously. Woman’s vanity blinds her to the impropriety of the thing she is doing, and she forgets that she may thus harm others without actually suffering herself.”