femininity

Dawdling away at the reference desk the other day, I put the word “pantsuit” into CATNYP as a word search, wondering what would come up. Well guess what? One item showed up and it was on Hillary Clinton!

Yet over the course of an online perusal of Clinton’s unsuccessful campaign for Democratic Party presidential nominee, I found the word “pantsuit” over and over again, often in a negative context. This brought me back to wondering about the original reception of feminine trousers, especially when made into a formal pant suit or pantsuit.

Even more daunting was the realization that I had actually grown up in the period when women finally won social acceptance for wearing pants. Fashion history surveys and reference books don’t give much space to this topic, except to say that this change occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, with better acceptance in the 1980s when more women than ever entered the workforce.

The blog I mentioned earlier, www.wornthrough.com, is written by Monica Sklar. She’s had a varied career in many aspects of costume, academic and retail, but I particularly salute her, for she’s presently in a Ph.D. program about Apparel and Culture. For those interested in news on costume and fashion history conferences, exhibitions, scholarships, and curatorial and research jobs, including a sprinkling of insights from the field, this is a site to check out.

Back in 1993, the Library held an exhibition called “A Change of Clothes: Femininity, Fashion and Feminism.” I was looking at the brochure the other day, and found something written there that piqued my curiosity.

“Three important concepts—femininity, fashion, and feminism—can help us understand the origins of modern dress. First, there is a historical relationship between a woman’s outward appearance and her essential femininity. Second, western society promotes fashion as a worthy pursuit for women, drawing them into a world of self-imposed rules and regulations based on imitation, conformity, and consumerism. However, current clothing modes and styles have been radically affected by 20th-century changes in women’s status, employment, and social mobility. Third, in recent years, feminism (a misunderstood and maligned concept even today) has challenged long-held assumptions that women and their apparel have a subordinate role in society.”

Fifteen years later, do these words still ring true? We’ve just had the first woman candidate for American president campaign long and, ultimately, fruitlessly wearing pants more often than skirts. Yet fashion is seen as a support to many women’s dreams—just look at the success of “Sex and The City.” At the same time, however, feminism also seems to have become more of an ambivalent option for many young women. What do these developments, seen from the perspective of 2008, say about how far women have come in society?

And what about the “18 million cracks” in the glass ceiling that Hilary Clinton referred to in her concession speech?