Bold Spirit - Linda Hunt [36]
But breaking through the cultural taboos presented a major challenge. Progressive women, wanting lightness, comfort, and ease of motion joined the “rational dress movement” and formed a society that protested against tightly fitted corsets and heavily weighted skirts. Such extravagant fashions rendered healthy exercise almost impossible, but even more important, clearly affected women’s health. As women doctors began practicing medicine, they recognized all the unhealthy effects of irrational fashions and were especially convinced that corsets could cause a displaced or prolapsed uterus, atrophy of abdominal muscles, damage to the liver, displacement of the stomach and intestines, and constriction of the chest and ribs.13
In eastern circles, especially among educated females, women’s clubs began to challenge cultural fashions and linked this to the health of women. At the Brooklyn Health Culture Club, a female physician elaborated on the implications of wearing dresses that touch the ground. “It jars her back violently, hurts her head and tells on her nerves.” She explained how every inch on the bottom of a skirt counted in weight and fatigue and affected a woman’s ability to digest food when their stomachs were so pinched and pressed with bands. “Is it any wonder that we have congestions, tumors and all sorts of things?”14 A teacher of physical culture for women modeled the “short” skirt that she stated was all the rage in Paris; the “rule” was to wear a skirt between five and eight inches from the ground. From reporter’s descriptions, this fits the type of skirts that the sponsor asked Helga and Clara to wear.
Of equal concern was the filth that long skirts picked up from the streets and brought into the home, and the drag upon spine, hips, and abdomen that caused a state of exhaustion. “More women die annually in our country from the effects of faulty dressing than from all contagious diseases combined and the invalids from this cause alone form a great host that no man can number,” insisted Dr. Emily Bruce.15 Yet, a female doctor in 1896 who tried to convince women to discard corsets and wear more sensible dress complained, “In nine cases out of ten a woman clings to her corset as the drowning man clings to a straw.”16
Such radical ideas challenging cultural norms caused the then President of the United States, Grover Cleveland, to distrust and denounce the popular women’s club movement that sometimes fostered these discussions. “These [women’s clubs] are harmful in a way that directly menaces the integrity of our homes and the benign disposition and character of our women’s wifehood and motherhood,” the President insisted. “I believe that it should be boldly declared that the best and safest club for a woman to patronize is her home.”17
When Helga and Clara changed into this costume, their apparel attracted immediate attention, and reporters almost always commented on their shorter skirts. Now perceived by the public as “new women,” it is possible they began to perceive themselves differently, too. While dressed in their long Victorian skirts, they presented a certain conventional and safe respectability to the farmers, ranchers, and small-town people they relied on to provide them with hospitality. These more practical clothes, required by the stipulation of their contract, gave them a new leg freedom as they forged streams, climbed mountains, and walked over twenty-five miles each day. But now, before any one even talked with them, their reform costumes inevitably caused a stir, perhaps even suspicion.
They started wearing shorter skirts in Salt Lake City as part of their contract, a new experience for Helga and Clara.