Uniforms for Women

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

I HAVE to confess that after reading Mr. George’s article, ‘Uniforms for Women,’ in the November Atlantic, the two questions chiefly abiding with me were whether his uniform $2.50 straw hat would be trimmed with buttercups or daisy-wreaths; and what in the world ‘ very doggy ’ might convey to the British mind. My visions of Fifth Avenue bobbing and seething with endless buttercups, of a trolley-car likewise bristling with buttercups, of a church auditorium quivering summer and winter with prayerful buttercups, were equaled only by a dream of a ballroom swaying with ‘ stuff of good quality, hanging in straight folds,’ which is to say, many meal-sacks all in the same color, of some excellent durable material like tweed or broadcloth. Would any of these costumes be ‘very doggy,’ I wonder?

But it is not fair by Mr. George’s intention and conclusion to mock too lightly at him for betraying a delightful masculine ignorance of feminine A B C’s; though he plans for us a wardrobe so frugal that we should almost have to go to bed while its articles were washed and pressed, and even denies us our faint echo of the bright jewels that have shone on the necks of queens and tinkled on the wrists of gypsies since the world was young. For he is beyond argument in his main contention that many women, rich and poor, spend an unreasonable and criminal amount of time and of money on their garments. Fashion is a witless and noxious goddess. The appearance of her devotees is often neither modest nor useful nor beautiful, and the effects of her worship reach far into the economic and social problems of the day. It is true that a ‘mental baseness’ develops in those women whose sole ideal is to keep up with the style, — to be ‘smart’; just as it does in those men whose end in life is money, money, and a bigger, newer automobile than anybody else has.

But it is hard to believe, as Mr. George would have us, that woman’s determining motive for dress is ‘ to insult and humiliate her sisters.’ Women are not all cats. If they are, why is Mr. George a Feminist, looking forward to a world inspired and controlled by these same feline monsters? There are many women, faithful in their homes and in the business world, who dress fashionably for the same simple reasons that constrain a man to wear a clean collar and get a shave and a shine with ordinary regularity. It is true that false social standards demand far too much of them, but that is not the fault of their own selfish vanity.

No doubt to these women, usually the best and most efficient of their sex, any relief from the overstrain after silly conformity would be welcome. Therefore,— taking them as true and reasonable representatives of feminine ideals,—why not, indeed, a uniform? Trained nurses, deaconesses, Salvation Army lasses, wear their garb without self-consciousness and loss of whatever charm is theirs by nature. Why is it that the idea of a rigidly standardized uniform for all women strikes us as so impossible that we are laughing at it before we have given it the thought it deserves ?

I think that the most general reason for our laughter is at the same time the most compelling one. It’s the ‘natur’ of the critter ’ that seems an eternal obstacle in the way of regulating women’s clothes or motives. Probably men’s clothes could be much more strictly uniform than they are, and no one would wink an eyelash; but women’s? As a young husband said with a smile when his wife apologized for some needless pleasant vanity, ‘Why not? I was n’t marrying a man, was I?’

It is true that the male birds and beasts, and the almost equally primitive male human animals of savage tribes, surpass the female in gayety of feathers and crests, beads and stripes; but as the race emerges from its childhood, the eternal youth of the spirit seems to be loft largely in the keeping of women. They retain the shining, shifting, fluent quality that is their characteristic strength and weakness, even while they try to grow in power and wisdom. The woman who does not love color and ornament and certain happy elemental playthings is not often the one to whom men and children turn for affection and understanding.

Uniforms for women? Put them all in neat hats, and navy-blue orphanasylum suits with short skirts and stout boots (that is my vision, perhaps an offensive one to Mr. George, whose pardon I pray), —young and old, fat and thin, dark and fair, — it is so funny that once more I forget that the suggestion is intended to remedy a real and biting evil.

When would the standardization begin ? The very babies in their bassinets must conform, too. Wouldn’t every little girl in the city be out in the Public Gardens sticking dandelions in her hair, and robbing the tulip beds, just to find something to ‘dress up in’? And would n’t many a sensible woman have a secret uncensored collection of silken wrappers and soft slippers, into which she might slide with a sigh of relief, as if she were coming back to herself from the worthy and direful uniform? Or would no secret ‘flimsies’ be allowed: only a stout gray blanket wrapper, for each woman the world over?

The financial side of the argument seems presented less cogently than it might be, because Mr. George draws his statistics of the cost of dress from the extreme expenditures of society women, and the silly ones who deliberately ape them. He might have asked the wife of the Professor in the Small College how much the evening gown that she wears to the Faculty receptions costs. The woman who teaches, who nurses, who paints or writes or does social work, — what has she to do with thousand-dollar evening gowns and furs worth a king’s ransom? Between the rich with their extravagance and the cheap poor with their equal folly, lies a great class of women who, it is true, would like to dress well if they could afford it, but who address themselves to life with no less joy and zest because they cannot. A few statistics from them would bring Mr. George’s figures down to a more moderate scale. It is not fair, in such a quest, to cite any individual case as typical. The lady of multitudinous night-gowns and she of feathery shoes are not on the callinglist of most of us who read the Atlantic, though no doubt we could find their equals if we set out to search.

No, — a uniform, no matter how wisely chosen for use and beauty and economy, would not solve the difficulty. If it were not perfectly standardized, — more so than men’s costume, — it would fail of its purpose from the start. If it were, it would make the world a little more of a factory and a little less of a flower garden. And more than all, no uniform will produce more efficient, thoughtful, unselfish, and high-minded women. You cannot effect such changes from the outside in.

It must go deeper than a uniform. It must be that the very spirit of women shall be set free from the gripping, frivolous hand of Fashion. Some great inward illumination must show them their responsibility as the physically creative and spiritually unifying element in society, and must make them willing to share more of men’s cares with their hearts if not with their heads. Then they will see life as a wider stage than a platform for their own peacock struttings, and they will need no uniforms. Their clothes may be beautiful or ugly, costly or cheap as gunny-sack, but they will never be at the expense of any one’s good or joy or progress.

The millennium? Yes. But I do not think it any less likely to come than the day of uniforms.

It is not possible to keep from laughing, graceless as my laughter is. A Feminist world in gaiters: I see it solemnly and efficiently on parade. My private Millennial Feminist world is full of white and russet and green and blue and rose and gold, with many a jewel-gleam and soft silken shimmer: an impossible world, I know.

But away with boots and gaiters and hats by the million! Away with stuff hanging in endless straight folds! Votes for Women, — yes, surely in good time, — but uniforms! The stars in their courses cry out, and laugh!