If technical terms, uncomprehended by any class of readers, be used, it is simply for the sake of brevity; and because, as Kant says, “completeness must not be sacrificed to popularity,” the attainment of which would be “a didactic triumph, attained only by omitting everything complicated, and saying only what exists already in the consciousness of every one.”
The two rules for clothing evidently are given when we say, first, that it should be sufficiently warm to prevent the heat generated by the body from being too rapidly lost; and second, that it should be sufficiently loose to allow unimpeded muscular action, whether voluntary or involuntary. But it is very rare to find either of these rules observed by girls, and it is also rare to find mothers who are aware that their daughters are daily violating them.
First, as to the warmth: Every girl who is to be reared in this climate of extremes and sudden changes should wear shirt and drawers of wool next her body, and woolen stockings, during at least eight months of the year.[4] The merino underclothing, so generally worn, is preferable to cotton or linen, but all-wool flannel is far better; and if trouble is anticipated from shrinking and fulling, the use of red flannel will prevent this entirely. I am not speaking of becomingness and grace; I am speaking of health and conservation of force. Each organism can generate but a certain amount of vital force, and if a large proportion of this has to be expended in keeping up the even temperature of the body, a smaller part than otherwise will go to the carrying on of the other functions. But relieve the system from the continual drafts made upon it, resulting from insufficient clothing, and it will be able to assume duties to which before it found itself inadequate. Some exceptions must be made to this statement in the case of those to whose skins flannel proves an irritant—but they are comparatively few; and even in these cases the flannel could be worn outside, if not inside, of the cotton or linen underclothing. The mother who will see to it that from her earliest years the girl is protected, over all parts of her body, by flannel underclothing, may simply prevent evils which, afterwards, she and the most skilful physician combined will find themselves unable to overcome. But the facts are, that, from the earliest days of life, when the dimpled neck and arms must be admired by visitors, through the days of childhood, when, dressed during the coldest weather of winter in linen and white cambric or piqué, with her body unprotected from the chill, the little girl is led slowly and properly up Fifth Avenue, to the nights when, heated by dancing, she exposes bare neck, shoulders and arms to draughts of cool air, she is, as a general rule, never warmly enough dressed for our climate. I repeat, then, that for proper protection a girl should always be, during at least eight months of our year, clothed, body, arms, legs, and feet, in wool; and pass to the second thought on the subject—i.e., clothing with regard to the mechanical effects of pressure.
We have been continually told that our girls ought not to wear corsets. It has been well said by some woman, that if a man could succeed in fashioning a woman exactly as, according to his theories, she ought to be fashioned, he would not admire her after the work was done; and though the remark was made only with regard to intellectual education, it can be well applied to this subject of corsets. If now, at this present moment, all women were to satisfy this demand, and leave off their corsets, the very men who entreated them to do so, would at once entreat them to resume them. The truth is, that it is not the corsets in themselves that are injurious; they become so only when they are so tightly drawn that they prevent free inspiration, or when, by their great pressure, they force the yielding ribs from their normal curve, compress the lungs, and displace the organs of the abdomen, crowding them into the pelvis, and thus displacing or bending out of shape the organs therein contained. Let the girls keep on their corsets, but instead of the unyielding cotton, linen, or silk braid, let these be laced by round silk elastic cord. They will then give support where it is needed, and yet will yield freely to the expansion of the chest, returning again as the air is expelled, and so preventing discomfort. This is a very simple expedient, and yet perfectly successful, and the girl who has tried it for three days will discard the inelastic braid forever. I say elastic cord, and not ribbon, because the elastic ribbon is too strong, and does not sufficiently yield.
Girls do not know that they dress too tightly. They will repel indignantly the idea that they “lace;” and yet, if they be asked to take a full inhalation, it becomes perfectly evident that the outside resistance is a very positive element. To prove this, it is only necessary for them to put on their corsets laced as above described, and then try to button the dress. It will, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, be found, I think, that the dress, which before came together without the slightest difficulty, will no longer meet. There is necessary no other proof that an unnatural pressure has been habitually used, although, from the very fact that it has been so long habitual, the girls are entirely unconscious of it. The Chinese women, I suppose, are not conscious of their compressed feet, and the two cases are exactly parallel. No dressmaker knows the meaning of the words “loosely fitting.” She is not to be blamed. She looks at her work with an artistic eye, as a Parisian glove-fitter looks at his, and wrinkles are the one thing which she spends her life in striving to avoid; and, as a general thing, she is not a student of Wordsworth to the extent of assuming as her motto,
“Nor shall she fail to see,
Even in the motions of the storm,
Grace that shall mould the maiden's form
By silent sympathy.”
It is not enough to say to the dressmaker. “Make it perfectly easy and comfortable,” and then trust to her judgment that it will be all right. The only test for a girl's clothing, as to tightness, should be, “Can you take a good, full breath, and not feel your clothes?” If so, they are loose enough; if not, let them out, and keep on letting them out till you can. Nor is there the slightest need that this kind of dressing involve “dowdiness,” or “slouchiness,” a characteristic abhorrent to every true woman. Every woman expresses her character in her dress; and where “slouchiness” exists, it means something more than comfortable dressing. It means a lack of neatness and order, a want in the ideas of suitability. It is sure to manifest itself in other ways, and will not be prevented by dresses never so tightly fitting.
The next thing to be considered is the place of proper support for the voluminous clothing below the waist. This gives a certain definite weight in pounds and ounces larger than is generally supposed, and as a result of the law of gravitation, it would all fall if the tendency were not counteracted by a corresponding pressure. This pressure is almost universally being sustained by our girls at the hips, and it comes just where the trunk has no longer, except in the spinal column, any bony support, depending alone on the yielding muscles.
It is idle to assert that the corsets support the dependent weight. In the old times, when corsets had shoulder-straps, this assertion might have had a shadow of truth, but now, when they never have them, their weight must simply be added to the total amount of weight of skirts, to find the number of pounds of downward pressure. They serve only as a kind of fender to prevent the tightly tied skirts from cutting into the muscle, and therefore, conducing to prevent discomfort, only serve to delude the girl into the belief that they hold up her skirts. This weight, evidently, should be borne by the shoulders, where the firmly-jointed skeleton, upheld from below, offers a firm and safe support. But give a girl shoulder-straps, and she finds the pressure over so small an area on the shoulders unbearable, and besides, the process of dressing becomes then a matter of almost as much complication as the harnessing of a horse, when some inexperienced person has done the unharnessing. Suspenders, though answering the purpose perfectly for men, will not answer for women, and even when made especially for them, are found inconvenient. The girl should wear, over her corsets, an under-waist, fitted precisely like the waist-lining of a dress as to seams and “biases,” or “darts.” It should be made of strong shirting, neatly corded at neck and “arm-seyes,” and finished around the waist by a binding of the width of an ordinary belt, set up over the waist so as to have three thicknesses of cloth for buttons. To these buttons, four or more in number, the skirts should be hung. The weight comes then on the shoulders, and is evenly distributed there, so that it is not felt. This statement, of course, implies, that the waists are sufficiently large. Moreover, which is only an incidental matter, the waist answers as a corset-cover, and as a dress-protector at the same time, and in the winter, when dresses cannot be washed, it becomes a matter of necessity to have something to answer the latter purpose. In the summer, when low linings are desirable, these waists can, of course, be made low in the neck. The shoulder-support then becomes narrower, but on the other hand, the weight of the clothing to be supported is very much less than in the winter, so that no inconvenience will be found. These waists themselves can then, if desired, take the place of linings for thin summer dresses, and if this be done, another incidental advantage will be the greater ease and nicety with which muslins and calicoes can be “done up.” It should be borne in mind, that within twenty years the weight of the dress-skirt has been also laid upon the hips. Before that time, our dress-waists and skirts were made in one. Of late years they have almost never been so made; that is to say, the shoulders have had, so to speak, absolutely nothing to do, and the hips and waist, everything. In any case, skirts should be furnished with buttons, not strings. It is too easy to draw a string a little tighter than it should be drawn.
Another fashion which our girls have adopted of late years, should be spoken of. As if they had gone to work to discover the only way in which pressure could be increased, they have discarded the old fashion of gartering the stockings, and have buttoned these up by bands of strong elastic ribbon, to a band placed around the waist. This arrangement, it seems to me, exhausts all the possibilities of dragging pressure around the waist, and in this view, it may be looked upon as a negatively encouraging feature. They have, certainly, in respect to the support of clothing, done their very worst. They are trying to the full their powers of endurance, and any change must be for the better.