Women Fight for the Right to Wear Pants - 1923 (Charleston: home, public school)
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In West Virginia, nothing changed as much in the 1920s as opportunities for women.
More women than ever before worked outside the home, attended school, and started professional careers.
Teacher Fannie Cobb Carter of Charleston became the first black newspaperwoman in West Virginia and a leader in the fight against illiteracy.
In 1922, two years after women received the right to vote, Izetta Jewel Brown, an actress and suffragette from Kingwood, became the first woman in the South to run for the United States Senate.
In 1923, a fourteen-year-old girl in Roane County was arrested for wearing pants.
It was a violation of a local law banning females from dressing in "anything that impersonates males attire."
The next day, she and three girlfriends paraded through Spencer in forbidden clothing.
Not long after, the issue of "pants or no pants" dominated Spencer's next election.
Politicians and church members fought hard to maintain the ordinance, with the voters deciding women could wear pants.
Theoretically, following the election, "women could wear the pants in the family."
I remember my grandfather telling this true family story.
He married Zella in 1905...
she was a lovely lady from a good area family.
At that time, women usually had two dresses...one to wear and one to wear when the other was being washed.
They were made out of a heavy black flannel fabric.
He bought her 6 dresses and the print was fashonable and bright for womens attire.
He said this...
"Zella was a lovely lady and I was not going to have her dressed as the other women were...drab and reflecting the drudgery of their work...she could change every day...and did.
Many Wv'ian laws reflected the Puritan values of old Virginia...once a 'mindset is put into place, it is difficult to remove.
My goodness, how things have changed. The article makes no mention of the legality of men dressing in women's attire....lol
You're not making fun of my Pope are you? Just because he's standing on a stage wearing a dress before the world majority of women... ummm... doesn't mean he stole a womans job....
DK those puritanical values weren't horrible. I actually appreciate the company of women like Zella because she's just like my grandmothers in her own way. The awful part about Puritanical values was a community inflicting itself on others to live up to a standard they themselves couldn't uphold, leaving little room for the eccentric, the artist, the entrepreneur, the... well, most people. I'd like Zella very much if she were leading by example, but I'm not so sure she'd tolerate me. I prefer culottes, but the skeeters during gardening season insist I wear pants no matter the heat.
The difference between my grandmothers cooking and all others... there was love and prayers in every dish. I could taste them and I sorely miss them. She never got around to teaching me how.
I think it's more modest and appropriate for women to wear pants.
1. People can see up a dress. Dresses blow upward when it's windy. You have to watch how you sit and bend when wearing a dress. If your period leaks through in a dress, there's a huge red stain on the back (with pants, at least it's hidden in the crotch of your pants). These situations don't happen when someone is wearing pants.
2. Women don't have frontal body parts that are accentuated by pants. However, pants do accentuate men frontal body parts, which is gross. Therefore, men should be the ones that wear dresses.
Not as long ago, in the early 1960's, NONE of the girl's at my public school ever wore pants to school (unless it was a "snow" day). We all wore dresses to school, then came home to change into our "play clothes". Even on "gym" day, we girls had to remember to wear shorts under our dresses. Seems so strange now, but that's really how it was, where I grew up anyway.
Then, sometime around the mid-1960's, it became acceptable for girls to wear pants to school, anytime, snow day or not. Yeah! Out came the plaid bell-bottoms!
Betty Boyd, Dean of Women at WVU in the mid-1960s would not allow female students to wear slacks on campus. The marching band did not have majorettes.
Because Boreman Hall had no enclosed place to line up for meals, women there could wear slacks (and even shorts) with a long coat over them. However, more than one coed wore only her night gown under her coat on her way to 8 a.m. classes.
Dress for football games was a suit with a corsage.
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Pants Versus Dress
