Workers: Amelia Bloomer

Amelia Bloomer (1818-1894) was an early suffragist, editor, and social advocate. After writing about a less-restrictive style of dressing for women, she became inextricably linked with it. She’s the reason we think of pantaloons as “bloomers.” And ever since, the women’s rights movement has used them as a symbol of protest and equality. 

For Further Reading:

• Amelia Bloomer Didn’t Mean to Start a Fashion Revolution, But Her Name Became Synonymous With Trousers
• Amelia Bloomer
• "Alas! Poor Adam"

This month we’re talking about workers: Women who fought for labor rights and shaped the way we do business today. They advocated and innovated to make the “office” – wherever it is – a more equitable place.

History classes can get a bad rap, and sometimes for good reason. When we were students, we couldn’t help wondering... where were all the ladies at? Why were so many incredible stories missing from the typical curriculum? Enter, Womanica. On this Wonder Media Network podcast we explore the lives of inspiring women in history you may not know about, but definitely should.

Every weekday, listeners explore the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of groundbreaking women throughout history who have dramatically shaped the world around us. In each 5 minute episode, we’ll dive into the story behind one woman listeners may or may not know–but definitely should. These diverse women from across space and time are grouped into easily accessible and engaging monthly themes like Educators, Villains, Indigenous Storytellers, Activists, and many more. Womanica is hosted by WMN co-founder and award-winning journalist Jenny Kaplan. The bite-sized episodes pack painstakingly researched content into fun, entertaining, and addictive daily adventures.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello from Wonder Media Network. I'm Jenny Kaplan and this
is Wamanica. This month, we're talking about workers, women who
fought for labor rights and shaped the way we do
business today. They advocated and innovated to make the office
wherever it is, a more equitable place. Today, we're talking

(00:22):
about a woman who became an accidental icon of feminist
fashion by adopting a then radical style. She revolutionized the
way women dressed and therefore the way they worked. Meet
Amelia Bloomer. Amelia was born in eighteen eighteen in Homer,

(00:44):
New York. Amelia's first job was teaching. By eighteen forty,
she married David Bloomer, and the couple moved to Seneca Falls,
New York. Around this time, women's roles in American society
were changing. Before the Industrial Revolution, the home was central.
Many women produced their own goods and food and did

(01:05):
unpaid labor as homemakers. As the country steadily industrialized, lifestyles adapted,
men and women increasingly began working outside the home. Amidst
this upheaval, social norms for how women dressed remained. Victorian
women's clothing was incredibly restrictive. Each morning, Middle and upper class,

(01:27):
women woke up and squeezed themselves into whalebone corsets and
shimmeied into layers and layers of petticoats. The outfits weighed
up to fifteen pounds and caused pressure on the hips, overheating,
trouble breathing, and crushed organs. The full sweeping skirts caused
women to trip on stairs or even get caught in
factory machinery. This manner of dress made it difficult to

(01:49):
sit down, let alone spend long days at work. In
Seneca Falls, Amelia became interested in social reform and joined
the burgeoning women's rights movement. Her husband encouraged Amelia to
channel her passion into writing, so in eighteen forty nine,
Amelia created The Lily, the first newspaper for women. At first,

(02:10):
the bi weekly newspaper was a temperance journal with articles
promoting abstinence from alcohol. Amelia started the paper so women
could have their voices heard, but her stances weren't exactly
what we would consider feminists today. Amelia uplifted the stereotype
of women as homemakers, a lifestyle she saw threatened by
too much alcohol consumption. Gradually, the articles in The Lily,

(02:34):
got more radical. Amelia met Elizabeth Katy Stanton, prominent suffragist
and a fellow member of the Temperance movement. Elizabeth wrote
articles for The Lily under the pseudonym Sunflower. In addition
to Temperance, she wrote about a broader scope of women's issues,
child bearing and education, and she even moved into politics,
critiquing laws that she felt were unfair to women. Amelia

(02:57):
was inspired by Elizabeth's writing and became more interesting did
in women's rights. That's how she found herself wrapped up
in a fashion news story. In eighteen fifty one, she
read an editorial written by a man talking all about
a new style of dress for women. Amelia wondered in
her own editorial, why not also support women's rights. The

(03:19):
dress reform was intriguing, though the outfit was inspired by
what Muslim women were wearing overseas. It combined knee length
skirts with loose pants known as Turkish trousers or pantaloons.
Elizabeth Katie Stanton was wearing the new fangled get up
and Amelia adopted it too. In April of eighteen fifty one,

(03:40):
Amelia wrote an article advocating for it, and she included
a picture of herself in the reform dress. Soon after
the article was published, letters came pouring into Amelia's office
by the hundreds. Circulation for the Lily shot up from
five hundred per month to four thousand. Women started to
call the Pantaloon's bloomers after the woman who popularized them.

(04:04):
Turns out, many women were desperate for a new way
of dress that would allow them to go about their
days more comfortably. Elizabeth wrote that wearing bloomers made her
feel like a captive set free from his ball and chain.
In the aftermath of the article, Amelia also faced her
fair share of iyre vitriolic opinion pieces, cruel political cartoons.

(04:26):
To a conservative subset, bloomers marked a woman as masculine, radical, blasphemous. Eventually,
Amelia and other women's rights activists returned to wearing full
length skirts. She wrote, we all felt that the dress
was drawing attention from what we thought of far greater importance,
the question of women's right to better education, to a

(04:46):
wider field of employment, to better remuneration for her labor,
and to the ballot for the protection of her rights.
In eighteen fifty three, Amelia moved from Seneca Falls to Ohio,
where she continued to edit The Lily. By then its
circulation had reached six thousand. The next year, though she
sold the paper and moved to Iowa, she remained a

(05:08):
contributing editor for the paper for the next two years.
Amelia herself may have stopped wearing bloomers, but wearing pants
only became more popular from that point on. In the
women's rights movement, pants served as a symbol of freedom
and equality to men and labor activists down the line
wore pants as a form of protest, including some will

(05:31):
be hearing more about this month on Wimanica. Today, pants
are a widely accepted part of a woman's wardrobe in America,
and we have Amelia and her bloomers to think. Amelia
was outspoken about temperance and women's rights until her death
in eighteen ninety four. She was seventy six years old.

(05:52):
Amelia is immortalized with the sculpture in Seneca Falls. It
depicts the fateful moment when Amelia introduced Elizabeth Katie Stanton
to Susan B. Anthony. The bronze statues of Amelia and
Elizabeth are both wearing bloomers all month we'll be talking
about workers. For more information, find us on Facebook and

(06:12):
Instagram at Wamanica Podcast Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my
favorite sister and co creator. Talk to you tomorrow