Women's Fashion Though the 1900's to the 2000's

Women in the 1920s in Due north Carolina

Related Entries: Women; Roaring Twenties; Gertrude Weil

"A New Woman Emerges"

by Louise Benner
Reprinted with permission from the Tar Heel Inferior Historian. Spring 2004.
Tar Heel Inferior Historian Clan, NC Museum of History

A woman of 1920 would be surprised to know that she would exist remembered as a "new adult female." Many changes would enter her life in the next x years. Significant changes for women took place in politics, the dwelling house, the workplace, and in education. Some were the results of laws passed, many resulted from newly adult technologies, and all had to practice with irresolute attitudes toward the place of women in society.

The almost far-reaching alter was political. Many women believed that information technology was their right and duty to take a serious part in politics. They recognized, also, that political decisions affected their daily lives. When passed in 1920, the Nineteenth Subpoena gave women the right to vote. Surprisingly, some women didn't desire the vote. A widespread attitude was that women's roles and men's roles did non overlap. This idea of  "split spheres" held that women should concern themselves with domicile, children, and faith, while men took care of business concern and politics. Due north Carolina opponents of woman suffrage, or voting, claimed that "women are not the equal of men mentally" and being able to vote "would have them out of their proper sphere of life."

Though ho-hum to use their newly won voting rights, by the end of the decade, women were represented on local, state, and national political committees and were influencing the political agenda of the federal government. More than emphasis began to exist put on social improvement, such every bit protective laws for child labor and prison reform. Women agile in politics in 1929 still had trivial ability, just they had begun the journey to actual political equality.

With regard to education, North Carolina'south female high schoolhouse students seldom expected to get to college. If they did, they usually attended a private college or Adult female's College in Greensboro (now UNC-G), where at that place were no male students. Nearly of the Adult female's College students became teachers or nurses, equally these were considered suitable professions for women. North Carolina State College (now NCSU) enrolled its first adult female student in 1921, but it was not until 1926 that North.C. State decreed, "A woman who completes work for a degree offered by the institution [tin can] be graduated." In 1928 only twenty-ane women were enrolled there.

The University of North Carolina opened housing to female person graduate students in 1921, but they were not made welcome. The student newspaper headlined, "Women Not Wanted Here." Few North Carolina women earned degrees during the 1920s. Simply times were changing, and each year more women earned college degrees.

At the offset of the decade, near Northward Carolina women lived in rural areas without electricity. Imagine trying to keep nutrient fresh without a refrigerator, ironing (no drip-dry clothing then) with an iron that had to be reheated constantly, cooking on a woodstove, going to an exterior well for water, and always visiting an outhouse instead of a bathroom. Rural electrification did not achieve many North Carolina homes until the 1940s.

Urban women found that electricity and plumbing fabricated housework different, and ofttimes easier, with electrically run vacuum cleaners, irons, and washing machines. Electricity meant that people could stay upwards later at night, because electric lights were more than efficient than kerosene lamps and candles. Indoor plumbing brought water inside and introduced a new room to clean—the bathroom.

In the United States in the 1920s, only virtually xv percent of white and thirty percent of blackness married women with wage-earning husbands held paying jobs. Most Americans believed that women should not work exterior the abode if their husbands held jobs. As a event of this attitude, wives seldom worked at exterior jobs. Even so, some married women in drastic demand took jobs in textile mills.

By 1922 North Carolina was a leading manufacturing state, and the mills were hiring female flooring workers. Cotton mills also employed a few nurses, teachers, and social workers to staff social and educational programs. These mills did non rent black women, however, because of segregation. As a consequence, white millworkers frequently hired black women as domestic and child-care workers. Fewer jobs were available in tobacco factories because most of their 1920s machinery was automated. The largest North Carolina tobacco manufacturers did utilize both black and white women, but strictly separated workers past race and gender.

At the same time, public acceptance of wage-earning jobs for immature single women was growing. No longer existence limited to work equally "mill girls" or domestics, these women began to perform clerical work in offices and retail piece of work in shops and section stores. It became acceptable for working girls to live away from their families. Some young married women worked until they had children. Working for wages gave women independence, and past 1930 1 in 4 women held a paying job.

Despite increasing opportunities in employment and education, and the expanding concept of a "woman'due south identify," spousal relationship remained the goal of almost young women. Magazine articles and movies encouraged women to believe that their economic security and social condition depended on a successful marriage. The majority worked merely until they married.

Working women became consumers of popular products and fashions. Women who would never tolerate the strong smells and stains of chewing tobacco or cigars began to smoke the new, and relatively clean, mild cigarettes. Cigarettes were advertised to women as a sign of mod sophistication, and the 1920s "flapper" is usually pictured with a cigarette in her paw.

Today the easily recognized image of the flapper symbolizes the 1920s for many people. The flapper—with her short skirts, short hair, noticeable makeup, and fun-loving attitude—represented a new freedom for women. The sometime restrictions on apparel and beliefs were existence overthrown. Highly publicized flappers shortened their skirts, drank illegal alcohol, smoked, and otherwise defied order's expectations of proper conduct for immature women.

Is this glamorous and rebellious image of the flapper a true representation of the 1920s woman? Non entirely. In guild to be a flapper, a woman had to have enough money and free time to play the part. Higher girls, unmarried girls living at habitation, and independent office workers almost frequently presented themselves equally flappers. Yet, the average woman did wear the fashions made popular by flappers. As often happens, unconventional habiliment was gradually integrated into fashion and adopted at all income levels. Sears, Roebuck, and Company claimed that 9 million families made purchases from its catalogs in 1925. The clothing sold through catalogs was based on high-fashion styles from Paris.

Flappers popularized slender, boyish fashions. Figures were flattened with undergarments. Hemlines, straight or uneven, gradually crept upward, and waistlines dropped. High-fashion evening wear in tubular, sleeveless styles featured beading and fringe. Solar day dresses copied the evening lines, if not the trims. Brusk skirts were complemented by flesh-colored stockings worn with decorative shoes. Hair was cut close to the head and covered outdoors by the close-plumbing fixtures cloche chapeau. It became respectable to wear makeup. Betwixt 1920 and 1930, women'south appearance changed completely.

Women found their lives changed in more than than appearance, however. Society at present accustomed that women could be independent and brand choices for themselves in didactics, jobs, marital status, and careers. Women's spheres had broadened to include public equally well as dwelling house life. The "new woman" was on her way.

At the time of this article'due south publication, Louise Benner worked every bit a curator of costume and textiles at the N Carolina Museum of History.

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