Favorite Old Thing of the Week (??)

So I think I started the Favorite Old Thing post and then did maybe two weeks hence the question marks in the title sooo let's try this again, shall we?

One of the greatest tools that I've found on the internet for studying historical objects is the online archives that museums work tirelessly to photograph and publish online for the world to see. I can't wait for the Chicago History Museum to launch their own archive of objects because that collection deserves to be seen on a world wide basis. One of the existing online collections that I continually return to for examples of historical dress, however, is the Metropolitan Museum of Art's. Currently, the Met has 341,940 objects at our disposable to browse through or to conduct a specified search. I was browsing through the collection in research of my last post on the Charles James exhibit when I came across this gorgeous sweater.

The Met dates this sweater at 1895. The clues that point to this date are the leg-o-mutton style sleeves, which came into popularity in 1890, and the intended use of this type of sweater, which would have been for sportswear. It may be hard to believe that a woman would have played tennis in an ensemble like this with our Under Armor and barely there Nike outfits that the Mrs. Williams's play in today, but it is true that this sweater would have been considered "casual wear" in 1895. The state of its condition is really remarkable and makes pieces like this very rare in museum collections because its intended use would have allowed for wear and tear and made it an unsuitable piece to be donated.

Prior to the rise of women playing sports it was considered dangerous for women to participate in rigorous physical activity because her energy needed to be conserved for "childbearing and rearing." As a young woman who played college basketball, it is unfathomable to think that women had to be restricted to "calisthenics, dancing, walking, and horseback riding" for exercise. Thankfully, by 1900, even the fashion world had begun to approve of sports for women:

"But aside from the team spirit there are wonderful physical advantages in basket-ball. Of all the team games that men play, for many long years not one was available for the women's colleges... Basket-ball, however, was available from the first, and it was not many months after its invention in 1892 that it was welcomed in all of the women's gymnasiums...The fascination of the game attracted the girls to the gymnasiums, and they took this exercise willingly and even eagerly when chest-weights, dumbbells, and rowing-machines seemed a drudge. The excitement of play, too, permitted them more exercise with less fatigue, the advantage of which is apparent."

-- J. Parmly Paret, Harper's Bazaar, October 20, 1900

Resources are Metropolitan Museum of Art website and "Women in Pants: Manly Maidens, Cowgirls, and Other Renegades" by Catherine Smith and Cynthia Greig.

Working Girl.

Okay, so... I know I've taken a little bit of a hiatus from blogging, a month to be exact, but the "moving back to Memphis, new job, and trying to settle" madness is behind me I promise I will be more diligent. Besides blogging, other things that I need to tend to are studying for the GRE (yuck....) and getting on top of editing my paper that will be submitted with my grad school apps in the fall. I thought bringing the topic of this paper into today's blog post would be a nice way to kick start everything :]

Working girls..

In today's society working women are more than common place. In fact if a woman isn't working it's usually because she married wealthy, is retired, or is under 15. Before the late 1800s, however, a woman's "sphere" was restricted to domestic settings. As the Industrial Revolution took off in America during the late 19th century, work opportunities for women outside of the home also rose. Factories and shops needed cheap labor and there were plenty of single, immigrant women in the urban communities across the east that needed to support themselves.

Most commonly these women are known for the hardships they experienced such as dire working conditions, meager pay, long work hours, and the danger they encountered in the factories, like the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911.* Historians like Kathy Peiss and Nan Enstad, however, have presented a different side of the story for these young women.

These young, single women made up a demographic that this country had never encountered before. The garment factories in which they worked were producing ready-to-wear fashions that they could afford to purchase in the department shops popping up in shopping districts across the metropolis's of America. Dance halls in which men and women intermingled were breaking down the Victorian concept of separate spheres for the sexes. In part, these women laid the foundation for the social revolutions of the 1920s and the middle class flapper girls.

The image of young working women in the early 1900s may look very different from my comrades and I running around bringing you your food and drinks in our Blue Monkey shirts, shorts, and tennis shoes, but essentially the ideals of making a living and taking steps toward bettering ourselves are there for the young working woman of 1911 as well as 2011.

*146 women perished in this industrial disaster due to locked doors and no fire exits in the factory.

Images from Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York by Kathy Peiss and Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure: Working Women, Popular Culture, and Labor Politics at the Turn of the Twentieth Century by Nan Enstad.