Bloomers

1848 - a revolutionary year. So revolutionary that the Wikipedia article "Revolutions of 1848" starts with a small list of the major European countries that did not have a national revolution, before discussing the majority that did. In February of that year, Karl Marx had set the tone with his Manifesto of the Communist Party.

On July 19th 1848, the village of Seneca Falls NY began a two day convention on women's rights that would get its name on the revolutionary map. As well as making a particularly rousing declaration, it made a significant stride into practical revolution when local resident Amelia Bloomer introduced her eponymous underwear. Although premiered in 1848, they did not get a significant public outing until the summer of 1851 (Crystal Palace wasn't the only Great Exhibition of that year).

For the first time, women could do a bit of basic athletics without showing any more leg than Victorian morality prescribed. Combined with bicycles a few decades later, they gave women an unprecedented freedom of mobility (the bicycle has its own starring role in the revolutionary movement, which I might look into one day). Patriarchy did not take kindly to bloomers: they were vilified in the press, and the New York Times describes with relish the arrest of two "disorderly bloomers" (the word denoting the wearer - compare "hoodies") for the shocking act "of unblushingly stopping gentlemen, with their wives".



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