According to Herodotus, when Greek soldiers met the Scythians in battle, they were amazed to see Scythian women on horseback fighting alongside the men, all wearing pants and decorated armor. When they went back to Greece they immortalized those Scythian women for posterity as the legendary Amazons in their poetry and art. Painting them looking both chic and fierce, their pictures of the Amazons are some of the earliest Western artworks showing women in pants. But even though pants came to the West from the Scythians and others (along with riding horses), in the West, wearing pants was associated with warfare and restricted to men only. Perhaps, remembering those Amazons, men feared what might happen to them if women were able to wear pants and get their hands on some weapons.
By law and custom, for centuries women have been forbidden from wearing men’s clothes. But women did it anyway, taking the risk of discovery to escape a life of confinement and drudgery. Many ran away to join the military or to take a job restricted to men, and sometimes to be able to live with another woman in peace. If a woman had no family or husband to support her, sometimes her only other options were prostitution or starvation. Choosing to wear pants was often a matter of life or death. Faced with these stark choices, some women took to the sea. (The British Navy always needed sailors and clearly had very lax recruitment standards. It was basically, “are you capable of hauling on a rope? Welcome aboard!”) The notorious Hannah Snell (pictured below) served in the British Marines for many years as a man and eventually received a pension for her service. Many other uncounted women joined the Army. In the days before official ID, a clever woman could fool most people into believing that she was a man if she dressed the part. We may never know how many uncounted women went “off the grid” in the past, but there are clues that they numbered in the thousands.
As evidence, we know that there are more than four hundred documented cases of women serving in the Army in the Civil War alone. Dressed as men, they served alongside their husbands or brothers, or took their places in secret. Some were only discovered after they were wounded or killed. Many of these women continued to dress and live as men for the rest of their lives, preferring the freedom that wearing pants gave them. Ironically enough, current day female Civil War re-enactors frequently face resistance to their participation from the male re-enactors. Even though the presence of women in uniform on Civil War battlefields is historically accurate, some men continue to deny that women have a right to participate as soldiers.
Women in the American West wore pants as a practical necessity. The West was no place for long skirts: it was either muddy or dusty and skirts were a hindrance while doing the physical labor that frontier life required. City records show that a “Marie Susie” lobbied the Board of Aldermen for the right to wear pants in Gold Rush-era San Francisco, saying that she had worn “masculine habiliments” for twenty years and wished to be protected against arrest for doing so. (Police then would routinely harass anyone dressing “differently.”) She said that she had started dressing as a man when she first came to in San Francisco, and had gone to work in the gold mines, (wishing to be neither a prostitute nor a maid) eventually earning enough money to start her own business. Many women worked then disguised as men, because mining jobs were plentiful, (they needed workers and didn’t ask too many questions); and while the work was hard, the pay was good. A smart woman could set aside a small fortune; for example, Ferminia Sarras came from Nicaragua with her family to work, and was so successful in mining she is now known as Nevada’s Copper Queen.
Out on the frontier, old photos show us women in pants working in logging camps and operating heavy machinery. Dressed in men’s work clothes, women rounded up cattle, raised families, and ran businesses. It’s no coincidence that women had the right to vote in Western states first; there they were able to show that they were more than equal to the men. Wearing pants will do that for a woman.
Back in the cities, Rational Dress Reformers campaigned for pants for women as a more healthful alternative to Victorian fashion. They claimed that corsets and heavy skirts had rendered women virtual prisoners of their clothes, arguing that the confining clothes were both unhygienic (because long skirts dragged in the dirt) and immoral because they changed a woman’s shape for fashion. The Pro-Corset conservatives argued that looking respectable and being properly dressed was a lady’s duty, and if ladies were uncomfortable, being uncomfortable was a burden that all moral women should happily bear. Anything less would be shirking their duty to husbands and families. When Amelia Bloomer lobbied in her newspaper for a shorter dress over loose “bloomer pants,” (which she thought that women should wear so they could exercise) it was considered a radical idea, as exercise for women was considered dangerous. Most doctors advised against it, saying that it would adversely affect a woman’s fertility. (Members of the IOC still seem to think so.) Besides, it would take a woman out of the home, where she belonged. Pro-corset apologist Arabella Kenealy felt that this exercise idea was preposterous nonsense, decreeing, “If women needed to exercise, all they needed to do was the commonplace household chore.” But the growing number of middle-class women with new leisure time didn’t want to do more chores. They wanted to play popular sports like tennis and bike riding, and so they modified their clothing to participate. And even though wearing trousers was considered shocking by many women at the beginning of 20th century, as women became more active they began to wear easier, more pant-like alternatives to “lady-like” Victorian Dress for sportswear.
As always, not everyone was in favor of radical ideas for change. Prominent feminists were more concerned with gaining women’s rights than dress reform, and most of them dressed like “ladies” to avoid detracting from their main cause of securing the vote. Conservatives ridiculed “rational” styles, and warned that allowing “ladies” to wear pants would be more dangerous than a ticking time bomb. Many religious leaders feared that women wearing pants would become immodest (code for promiscuous.) It wasn’t “ladylike” (code for questioning male authority.) Girls would be wild, instead of quiet and modest, and no one would want to marry them. The family would be destroyed. Men would become weak and effeminate. They wrote editorials fretting that cross dressing by women would cause social and moral chaos, ranting that that the differences between the sexes “would be obliterated.”
As any rational adult knows, the best way to make something more popular is to write sermons and editorials against it. Fashion and attitudes gradually turned away from heavy Victorian and Edwardian-style dress as women’s clothing evolved toward simpler and looser styles in the years just before and after WWI. More women were working outside the home in factories and offices. As younger women gained greater freedoms they embraced the popular and more androgynous fashions of the Twenties. Maybe those young women were feeling just a little rebellious. Influential designers like Paul Poiret and Coco Chanel included pants for women in their collections, showing pants as a fashionable wardrobe choice for entertaining, and for tennis, riding, and other sports. Actresses and socialites wore the new pants to be just a little naughty and to look more modern.
During WWI and WWII women wore pants while working as conductors, miners, factory workers, and many other jobs previously limited to men. When the wars were over women were fired and told to go back home and wear dresses. But after WWII wearing pants had become more socially acceptable as well as fashionable for sportswear and casual dress. Movie stars like Marlene Dietrich, Katharine Hepburn, and Audrey Hepburn had made wearing pants seem cool and sexy. By the fifties many young women were comfortably choosing pants for casual wear. In the sixties most young women were wearing pants and even the more radical jeans without thinking twice (it was just a bonus when old people didn’t approve.) With the popularity of designer jeans and pant suits, in the seventies women of all ages were wearing pants at work and at home. With increased numbers of women both entering the workforce and getting elected to both Congress and state governments, women were able to flex their growing political power and challenge laws restricting women’s clothing choices. In a great moment in pants-wearing history, Rep. Charlotte Reid wore pants on the floor of the House in 1969 with no known adverse effects to society.
With the passage of Title IX in 1972, schools receiving Federal funds were prohibited from discriminating on the basis of sex. Title IX made it law that school districts could no longer require that girls wear dresses to school. (They still try though, continually banning short skirts, leggings and other “dangerous” fashions.) In a landmark victory for Equal Rights, the California employment code was changed to say that businesses could no longer require women to wear dresses as part of their dress codes. Even so, many places still have obsolete laws on their books that prohibit pants on women. Only recently a student named Shafer Rupard was asked to leave her High School Prom for wearing pants, even though there are no rules against them.
In the nineties, Hillary Clinton made history by being the first, (and so far, only) First Lady to wear pants in her official portrait. She wore her pant suit as a not-so-subtle political statement. If you look at her picture, you’ll see from her body language that she is posing as if she were a man. (Her portrait reminds me of one of George Washington’s.)
In 2012, after intense pressure from Canadian citizens, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced that they had changed their policy against women in pants and would “permit” them in full dress occasions. (I especially like their phrasing, “Earned the right” to wear pants, as if women did not have this right to begin with.)
Some conservative evangelical sects still prohibit women from wearing pants, citing Deuteronomy 22:5. They aren’t considering that at the time the Bible was written, not even men wore pants. Most Old Testament scholars dispute their ultra-conservative interpretation, but the evangelicals probably won’t change their minds. In their view, women and their clothing are still as dangerous as dynamite if left uncontrolled.
Parisians only recently repealed a law dating back to the French Revolution that required women to ask city officials for “permission” to wear pants. Even though the law had been unenforced for decades, men had not thought to change it. The law was finally officially revoked by France’s Women’s Rights Minister, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem in 2013.
Mormon women chose to wear pants to church in a gesture of solidarity to protest women’s unequal status in the Mormon Church. Nothing says equality more than a nice pair of pants. In the language of clothes, pants equal power. Pants on a woman disrupt the status quo. They certainly aren’t “lady-like.”
What we will be wearing in the future is harder to predict. Many designers have shown men in skirts, but skirts haven’t yet caught on with men. (Men’s skirts are in the “ridicule” stage now, just as trousers were on women 150 years ago. It did take a few centuries for women’s pants to be socially acceptable, after all.) Who knows what clothing the next visionary designer, our Paul Poirot of the future, will design? Maybe she sees us all wearing sleek futuristic unitards, like Catwoman or Mrs. Peel. Advances in fabric technology may allow our future clothes to render us invisible, or change colors while we wear them, or glow in the dark. The new 3-D printers will enable us to print individualized clothes for every person, in a custom size and color. Our new customized clothes might monitor our vital signs with microcomputers, helping us to stay cool or warm, and relieve anxiety by monitoring stress. Our phones could be built into the very fabric of our Catwoman unitards, and the GPS could speak directly into our ears.
It won’t be long before our future clothes will be programmed to look like business casual during the day, and timed to look like formal wear later that evening with the new programmable fabric. That means that soon we’ll have the power to look thinner or shapelier, taller or shorter, while wearing what looks like work clothes, even though we’re all really wearing pajamas in disguise.
Tags: clothes, fashion, feminism, history, kathleen cooper, PANTS, someone please write an eastern history of pants for us thank you
I’d really like unitards, though we’d also have to get past current body-shaming nonsense before we could. People would definitely shame my body in a unitard.
Though it’d be great if we could get away from gendered clothes entirely, and people could just put on a nice pair of trousers, or a nice dress, or a nice chain-link unitard that fit them, regardless of their gender and presentation.
As someone who constantly has problems with the crotches of pants being too high, I am terrified of unitards becoming common. Also, I am a Troi-esque hourglass. I do like the tunic-leggings-boots look of Mass Effect, though.
For me, it’d be an Elvis bodysuit at all times.
*claps* hurrah! Pants forever and always!
I have nothing much to add; THIS IS REALLY AWESOME. I shudder to imagine living in a time before the commonplace availability of pants to women. I got nothing against a skirt or dress every once in a while, but pants are my default comfort zone.
I know ladies who swear they are more comfortable in a skirt or a dress and I just don’t believe it. In theory they are more comfortable, I mean, who would say no to a hanging sheath of fabric and nothing else? But there’s always the risk of a strong wind showing off just a bit too much. And maxi skirts aren’t that much better, you actually need to clutch your skirt in your hands when walking upstairs! Although I admit, putting small animals and children under you hoop skirt is a lot of fun.
As someone who tends to keep to knee-length or slightly higher dresses for work, I have to say that winds have not been a significant issue! I think that my dresses tend to have enough wait to stay put, or they’re cut in a way (I wear a lot of sheath dresses) that they’re not prone to swinging.
Also, I tend to have stouter waist/straight silhouette when facing someone, and it’s easier for me to find dresses that work with that proportion than pants that fit and deal with the fact that I have a butt/thighs.
But whatever! I’m glad I can (and do, outside of work) wear both.
Yeah, I also have a really difficult time finding pants that fit me! I have a very high waist, a belly, and relatively slim hips and thighs. So anything that fits my legs doesn’t want to button, and anything that buttons ends up looking like parachute pants! (Which is certainly a fine look, but not exactly what I’m going for at work.) Skirts feel so much more versatile– I can pull them up or down to wherever feels right at that moment. I just wear my shorter skirts with tights, even in the summer. I’m in an overly air-conditioned office most of the day, anyway.
However, outside of work, I do love my stretchy skinny jeans. (but oh, they have to be so so stretchy)
This! I have the same shape, and long enough legs to pull off pretty much any hemline, which means that any skirt that fits my waist, fits me. Pants have to fit in multiple dimensions.
Dresses are practically my summer uniform for work AND weekends. In the Texas heat, I will pick a hanging sheath of fabric over pants or shorts any day of the week–no sweating around my waist! But I do agree that maxi skirts are more trouble than they’re worth, and there’s no room in there for a cool upward breeze. 🙂
I am one of those weirdos that is more comfortable in a dress because pants always cut me in weird ways unless they are SUPER SUPER stretchy. Curse my weird dent.
But seriously, I couldn’t see wearing a skirt for any of my field work. Viva pants!
I think, if you could remove the social stigma, some guys would probably prefer skirts as casual wear. No crotches! It’s like the clothing version of being able to spread your legs on the subway!
I have a male friend who unironically wears utilikilts most of the time.
This is Portland, though.
Our partner wears skirts sometimes, although not as often nowadays because with two little kids it is not very practical. But it does delight our daughter. 🙂
I have read that for optimum crotch health, it would be better if women wore pants and men wore dresses.
I’m one of those women, and you should believe us! I do wear pants occasionally (mostly in the winter- right now, I don’t think I’ve worn a pair of pants for weeks) but I definitely find dresses and skirts more comfortable. No matter how loose or stretchy the pants are, the waistbands always dig, and they seem to require more adjustment, i.e. hitching them up whenever I stand, etc. (I’m excluding leggings in my definition of “pants” here- I do wear leggings quite a bit!). Also, it’s much easier to find skirts and dresses that fit and flatter than it is to find pants with those qualities._I generally wear shorts or leggings for athletic activities, but I’ve worn skirts for hiking, etc in the past and I haven’t found it to be overly cumbersome. Gusts of wind and walking upstairs in maxis are a bit annoying, to be sure, but the comfort of skirts is worth it to me!_Haha, sorry, I realize I’ve gone a bit overboard in my impassioned defense of skirts…
I’m more comfortable in skirts most of the time–I’m wearing jeans right now and am uncomfortably conscious of how stiff the fabric is. I have a rayon jersey maxi skirt that is deliciously cool in summer. I have a wool jersey dress that is like a warm hug all winter long. They both feel like pajamas. Basically, if it’s knit, I’m all for it.
That being said, I do have to take precautions to avoid the dreaded Thigh Chafing, which cuts into my carefree skirt-wearing ways a little bit. Ah well.
I have a sock full of cornstarch in my bathroom. Before I leave in the morning, on days when I’m wearing a skirt, I apply a liberal dusting of cornstarch to my inner thighs, and all is well.
Not very many winds or stairs affect my life. I sometimes will wear light stretchy shorts underneath a very short skirt or dress, but rarely wear pants. The shorts are stretchy and leave more skin exposed than pants, which is more comfortable than real pants for me.
Oh yeah, you can take care of the wind with a good lining that skims your body more closely, or just wearing an A-line with a stiffer/heavier/more substantial fabric than fluid cotton jersey. Avoid full/circle skirts on windy days. (Or wear boxer briefs.)
I am one of these women! I have a large butt and thighs, and it is so difficult to find pants that fit. Also, I don’t like how they make my butt so noticeable–I do NOT want my male coworkers examining me like that. Also, pants restrict my movement in a way that only the slimmest pencil skirts can rival, and binding waistbands + menstrual cramps is a recipe for disaster.
I do not have problems with the wind. If it is a windy day, I wear a skirt that won’t be Marilyn Monroed, and maybe layer some tights or shorts under there for good measure. Then again, Philly is not a windy city.
BEST SOLUTION
okay i used to totally agree with you, but I have a long waist/torso so waistbands on pants usually fit too low, and now that I’ve gained a lot of fat in my belly and hips, EVERYTHING is “low rise” which looks awful. but pants with a proper waist just don’t fit my crotch.
So I’ve taken to wearing skirts more and more. I’ve never got over my habit of sitting wide-legged or hitching up my skirt to scratch my leg or whatever, like a toddler, so I wear shorts, too. They’re basically bike shorts or leggings. The Skimmies from … I forget, the J-name brand at department stores … are really awesome. They’re a microfiber close-fitting slip-short with a lot of stretch and no binding and they also help with the summer sweating and chafing. They’re so thin that they don’t add any bulk, and I still have my skirt to catch the breeze, which is great.
The Skimmies are my favorite, but sometimes the legs bunch up a bit and I have to pull them down. I’m also very fond of the $5-10 bike shorts/leggings from the local athletic store, the ones with the thin fabric and hardly any waistbands or seams.
I basically don’t go without shorts under my skirts anymore. I don’t know how I did before this spring, when I decided to do it. I wear my dresses SO much more often, and it’s so much more comfortable. (Also, I live in Florida with no a/c in my car. Pants are sometimes 100% unbearable.)
I would wear skirts to work more often (I wear them around the house a lot), but I NEED MY DAMN POCKETS. Also, I refuse to climb a ladder while wearing a skirt. It’s not the modesty issue that bothers me, it’s the possibility of stepping on my hem and plummeting to a horrible death.
I am really looking forward to being able to 3D print my clothes one day! I think this is the most excited I’ve ever been for a potential invention, except teleportation, which doesn’t seem to be an actual possibility yet. It’s just so futuristic and awesome! And also, my clothes could actually fit me one day!
Stanning for skirts and croptops on men as the fashion trend of the future since 2013
Shame. Only masculine clothing is one-size-fits-all. Or maybe kilts will catch on?
Exercise “adversely affect a woman’s fertility. (Members of the IOC still seem to think so.)”
Amen, sister!
I mean, if anyone’s fertility is going to be affected by exercise (or exercise-related mishaps), it’s people with external gonads (not all of whom are men, not that those members of the IOC would recognize that either).
I love learning about the history of clothing! This was great.
(and now I have the MST3K pants song in my head. “Pants! Pants! Sing the praises of pants!”)
This post pleases me immensely. Especially the Troi/Jellico picture at the end. Grrrr, Jellico.
this was such a good read!
i want to know more about pants culture around the world, too. anyone know a good place to start?
This one is lots of fun: Smith, Catherine, and Cynthia Greig. Women in Pants: Manly Maidens, Cowgirls, and Other Renegades. New York: H.N. Abrams, 2003.
For a more scholarly approach on cross dressing and gender issues: Cross Dressing, Sex and Gender, by Vern Bullough and Bonnie Bullough 1993
these look great! thanks for the recs!
I mean, I like skirts. But I always have that lingering thought in the back of my mind when choosing clothes…”must be ready for ANYTHING” at all times. Thus jeans and sturdy shoes if I’ll be out of the house more than a few hours. Plus I always feel half naked in skirts. :-/
“Many women worked then disguised as men, because [software development] jobs were plentiful…” is how that reads to me but it would and you can’t get me into a skirt even with a quite threatening eyeball, so.
This horrible cretin from my college wrote this piece about how women shouldn’t be allowed to wear pants my freshman year. My college’s old newspaper website went down but here is a mirror from Wayback Machine. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080516223353/http://media .www.dailytexanonline.com/media/storage/paper410/news/2007/11/20/Opinion/Who-Wears.The.Pants-3112061.shtml” target=”_blank”>https://web.archive.org/web/20080516223353/http:/…” target=”_blank”>.www.dailytexanonline.com/media/storage/paper410/news/2007/11/20/Opinion/Who-Wears.The.Pants-3112061.shtml
Everyone thought it was a joke but NO, IT WAS NOT A JOKE. This dude lived in my dorm and he was really into weird stuff like instituting a monarchy and seemed really enraged by the idea that women think they can just choose whatever sex partners they want. There were also a lot of other weird things about him, but mostly he just seemed like a sad, weird rando.
The picture at the end. Perfection. OMG.
The BEST Herodotus pants reference is when we learn that the Persians wear LEATHER PANTS.
See Herodotus 1.71: “O King, you are getting ready to march against men who wear trousers of leather and whose complete wardrobe is of leather…”
‘ὦ βασιλεῦ, ἐπ᾽ ἄνδρας τοιούτους στρατεύεσθαι παρασκευάζεαι, οἳ σκυτίνας μὲν ἀναξυρίδας σκυτίνην δὲ τὴν ἄλλην ἐσθῆτα φορέουσι…
ETA. See http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Hdt….
Those Persian pants were shocking to the Greeks, but anyone who has ridden a horse bareback with bare legs will soon agree that pants are an excellent invention.
Favourite women disguised as men?
I think mine is Margaret Ann Bulkley, whose family helped her disguise herself as a man and get into medical school in Scotland under the name James Barry. She worked as a doctor for FIFTY YEARS, performed one of the first successful C-sections ever (the baby was named after ‘him’) and travelled all over and ended up Inspector General of Military Hospitals. She even got into a huge fight with Florence Nightingale! It was only after she died in 1865 and his body was examined that the truth came out.
You need to write her biography!
Yes! Do it! It doesn’t look like there’s any recent biographies on Dr. Barry.
Yes, write this biography!
Mine is Rusty Kanokogi, who fought as a man (well, as herself, but not explicitly as a woman) in a YMCA judo championship, won gold, was stripped of her medal, and then went on to a lifetime of causing trouble/ making women’s judo into an olympic sport.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/sports/olympics…
I haven’t finished reading the article yet, but I was wondering just yesterday about the history of pants and wondering how they came to be a menfolk-only garment, so this is truly excellent timing. Toast, please stay in my brain forever.
Can we use this as an excuse to talk about Esther Quek and her absolutely STUNNING suits? I mean look at this woman:
I want to marry her. …Or steal all of her clothes! I don’t know, it’s very confusing.
Pants are overrated …
I do like them. But ugh, choosing ones that fit, that stretch with my body throughout the day that don’t get baggy with wear/wash, that don’t wrinkle like crazy where my body folds in half when I sit, that don’t have tight/high crotches. Pants that look good with shirts tucked in but don’t show the fabric bunched underneath. Pants that are slim-fitting but don’t show panty lines. PANTS.
Low-rise pants for women are the devil — so uncomfortable.
Someone please quickly invent a time machine, so I can go back and buy a drink for those dynamite fly girls in their combat boots, and bomber jackets, and those no-nonsense, hells-yeah-we’re-here-to-get-the-job-done pants!!!
Can I borrow your time machine to then steal the bike with the GIANT wheel, and also the entire outfit of the lady who is riding it?
Absolutely, the time machine will be available to all Toasties, for forays back into our herstory. And oh my god yes, what an amazing outfit! But take Esther Quek with you and introduce them. That should distract bicycle woman long enough to steal the outfit.
I am one of these women! I have a large butt and thighs, and it is so difficult to find pants that fit. Also, I don't like how they make my butt so noticeable–I do NOT want my male coworkers examining me like that. Also, pants restrict my movement in a way that only the slimmest pencil skirts can rival, and binding waistbands + menstrual cramps is a recipe for disaster.
I do not have problems with the wind. If it is a windy day, I wear a skirt that won't be Marilyn Monroed, and maybe layer some tights or shorts under there for good measure. Then again, Philly is not a windy city.
For me, it'd be an Elvis bodysuit at all times.
Can I borrow your time machine to then steal the bike with the GIANT wheel, and also the entire outfit of the lady who is riding it?
I am 21 years old and wore only pants for the first 20 years of my life, barring formal events. Then I suddenly realized that it’s often easier to find a dress that fits properly than a pants + shirt combo, especially for interviews and things. I also realized that when I wear a dress, I can FEEL my “cute young white woman” privilege increase exponentially. Finally, I enjoy that the past century’s feminist advances allow me to choose either pants or a dress/skirt according to my whimsical desires.
Semper ubi sub bracae.
Great essay!!!
No to unitards, it is TOO HARD to use the toilet
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