Racked: All Posts by Marlen KomarThe National Shopping, Stores, and Retail Scene Bloghttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52809/32x32.0..png2018-04-23T09:30:02-04:00https://www.racked.com/authors/marlen-komar/rss2018-04-23T09:30:02-04:002018-04-23T09:30:02-04:00Why Most Men Still Don’t Casually Wear Dresses
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<p>In the mainstream, gender bending still only goes one way. </p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="AIAujp">Not once have I had a guy who, after offering to make breakfast in the morning, stood up, stretched, and grabbed one of my shifts off the floor so he didn’t have to fry up a couple of frittatas in just his socks. Never has a man walked from my room with a dress skimming the tops of his hairy thighs, the short hem flashing cheek as he rooted around for pans, the strap falling all come-hither-like down his shoulder — and me watching all of this from my bed, biting my fist. </p>
<p id="tlmzqo">We’ve seen this same scenario play out a hundred times over with <a href="https://www.racked.com/2017/4/17/15113942/woman-wearing-a-mans-shirt-after-sex-nope">women wearing men’s shirts</a>, but never really the other way around, at least in the United States. And you have to wonder: why not?</p>
<p id="5zHsaV">This observation isn’t anything new. We’ve been grappling with these imaginary lines for a long time now, and always end the conversation in the same stalemate. In 1938, for example, a mother wrote to her local paper asking what she should do about her son. He went to a costume party dressed as a girl for a laugh but hadn’t taken off the dresses since. </p>
<p id="hlpdIn">“His sisters have to keep their closets and their bureau drawers locked up to keep him from <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F249211939%2F%3Fterms%3D%2522imitation%2Bman%2522&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2018%2F4%2F23%2F17261508%2Fgender-bending-men-dresses" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">wearing their things</a>. We have tried every way in the world to shame him and his father has thrashed him several times about it, but nothing stops him. What can we do?” she asked.</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="Rx3cu4"><q> “Isn’t it queer that for a boy to want to be a girl, and look like a girl, and dress like a girl is so unusual that it fills his parents with fear that he is abnormal, whereas virtually every girl in the world wishes she were a boy?”</q></aside></div>
<p id="eqKbn1">The response back was surprisingly introspective. The advice columnist wrote, “Isn’t it queer that for a boy to want to be a girl, and look like a girl, and dress like a girl is so unusual that it fills his parents with fear that he is abnormal, whereas virtually every girl in the world wishes she were a boy and the majority of them try to look like boys, and act like boys, and dress like boys? The greatest insult you can offer a man is to call him effeminate, but women esteem it a compliment to be told they have a boyish figure and that they have a masculine intellect.”</p>
<p id="jHfP42">The reason for that has to do with the way the gender binary is enforced, and how our choice in clothing is us “doing gender.” According to <a href="http://www.femst.ucsb.edu/people/sarah-fenstermaker">Sarah Fenstermaker</a>, the recently retired director of the University of Michigan’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender, gender is a set of behaviors, ways of being, and ways of interacting that convince ourselves and everyone around us that, deep down, we are just what we appear to be. </p>
<p id="UvsGVA">More than that, the binary is built on the idea that it’s 100 percent natural and, because of that, is “naturally” recognizable. To be feminine means to be the opposite of masculine, and to be masculine means to be the opposite of feminine. Period.</p>
<p id="3b6JlS">“When we embrace something as only ‘natural,’ it means that it can’t really be changed — that it’s baked into who we are. Anyone then who strays too far from expectations that surround this naturalness is odd, deviant, and often deserving of punishment or exclusion,” Fenstermaker explains. </p>
<p id="sOya29">To be a man and want to wear feminine flounces puts a crack in the theory that these classifications are inherent, which makes you question just how natural the power that comes with masculinity is. And in a male-dominated society, that question is a big deal. Which is why we weed out and ostracize anyone who deviates — femme gay men, butch lesbians, nonbinary individuals, trans people, and straight men who like skirts. </p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="Wwl6qC"><q>“The display of skirts on men is effectively an undermining of male power — by males. To put it extremely, they are like deserting troops.”</q></aside></div>
<p id="yZlmzo">“The display of skirts on men is effectively an undermining of male power — by males. To put it extremely, they are like deserting troops. So what do we do in response? We make them gay,” Fenstermaker says. This stops the hierarchy from toppling because we reason that gay men aren’t “real” men because “real” men aren’t feminine. While it’s true that not all gay men are feminine and all lesbians are masculine, that’s the expectation used to write them off. </p>
<p id="IL3vVz">From an agender California teen being hospitalized for three weeks after a classmate set their <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/02/sasha-fleischman-attack-interview-_n_4373237.html">skirt on fire</a> after mistaking them for a gay man, to a high school student getting suspended for “attempting to <a href="https://www.smooth.com.au/best-web/boy-punished-school-wearing-elsa-costume">incite a riot</a>” for wearing a pink tutu for breast cancer awareness month (after being questioned if he was gay,) to Young Thug getting whooped by his father for wearing his <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nnknyd/why-do-people-think-men-who-wear-womens-clothing-are-gay">sister’s glitter shoes</a> at 12 years old, straying from your binary path has consequences, and men are constantly being reminded of that. </p>
<p id="aU000S">“Any expression of femininity results in a judgment that one is not a real man, and that is just a short step to not really being male,” Fenstermaker explains. That fear alone makes many straight men second-guess reaching for a mini. </p>
<p id="nMpgnf">But why were women able to put on pants seemingly scot free? Granted, it didn’t exactly happen overnight. In the beginning, there was pushback because of the power grab it hinted at — from Victorian women who went outside in bloomers getting rocks thrown at them by angry men, to <em>Vogue</em> calling women who kept their pants on after their factory shifts in the 1940s “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=4nSIDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA120&lpg=PA120&dq=%E2%80%9Cslackers+in+slacks.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=pvk3I97X2p&sig=o-nDYCHhi02gSvHr4KBuOWBEga8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjBo5yD7erZAhXhdd8KHf-PDgsQ6AEIdTAE#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9Cslackers%20in%20slacks.%E2%80%9D&f=false">slackers in slacks</a>,” to a socialite being asked to walk to her restaurant table in nothing but <a href="http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/columns/intelligencer/12203/">her tuxedo jacket</a> because pants weren’t dress-code approved, there were moments of backlash. </p>
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<p id="6ElPJt">But women in button flies were accepted fairly easily, and the reason has to do with this power balance we’ve created, which doesn’t make pants and skirts equivalent. “They don’t have equivalent power, or potency, or symbolism,” Jo Paoletti, who has spent thirty years researching and writing about gender differences in American clothing and is the author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Pink-Blue-Telling-Girls-America/dp/025300117X"><em>Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America</em></a>, shares. Masculinity is valued — it’s associated with seriousness, power, credibility, and authority, so a woman reaching into a man’s wardrobe is seen as aspirational, and it gives her leeway to play with the pieces.</p>
<p id="w4nb0B">But only to an extent. There is one important caveat to the borrowed look: A woman could emulate a man, but she couldn’t dress like one to a <em>T</em>. She had to soften the outfit with feminine touches, and if she didn’t, she was either ostracized (the way butch women and gender fluid people are) or infantilized. </p>
<p id="6a0fsd">A good example of this in action is the woman’s business suit in the ’80s. As John Molloy wrote in his 1977 style guide, <em>The Woman’s Dress for Success Book</em>, dressing like too much of a man was kind of like “a small boy who dresses up in his father’s clothing. He is cute, not authoritative.” He went on to explain: “My research indicates that a three-piece pinstripe suit not only does not add to a woman’s authority, it destroys it. It makes her look like an ‘<a href="https://books.google.pl/books?id=zQ9bWwUa7tYC&dq=women%27s+dress+for+success+1977&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj1wLiQor3TAhUlSJoKHd7vASwQ6AEIPjAE">imitation man</a>.’”</p>
<p id="uy6dzf">Why? Because women could aspire to look like the men in the corner offices, but they couldn’t actually become them. No one was going to mistake a woman dressed in Brooks Brothers for an actual man, much like no one was going to mistake a little girl putting on her mom’s heels for an adult with a checkbook. And since the boxy suits only accentuated the “smallness” of the woman wearing them (and, in turn, the natural bigness of the man it belonged to in the first place,) it only made her seem more female. </p>
<p id="yeQNXH">These mental gymnastics that society goes through to keep the genders distinct from each other serves a very specific purpose: to keep that binary hierarchy in tact.</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="vZZmpq"><q>“[Pants and skirts] don’t have equivalent power, or potency, or symbolism.”</q></aside></div>
<p id="maXjlF">“Women have a role to play, which is to be the counterpart. Women only work as the counterpart if they are distinct to what they’re the counterpart <em>to</em>.” <a href="http://marjoriejolles.org/">Marjorie Jolles</a>, the women’s and gender studies director at Roosevelt University, explains. And our need to know gender reveals the power dynamic that comes with it. How do you treat this person underneath the clothes: with authority, or subordination?</p>
<p id="y0REtg">Which leads us right back into why we don’t see men wearing this season’s knife-pleat skirts or sequined minis while out grocery shopping or drinking scotch at a bar. “Feminine clothing has absolutely no social capital for a man to put on because he’s gesturing towards a set of traits that our society doesn’t really value,” Jolles says. He’s gone from the top of the social ladder to the bottom, and that display of willingly cashing in your power is what makes the look so uncomfortable or shocking.</p>
<p id="kjfsJw">“It’s not a 1:1 comparison,” Jolles explains. “The woman is gesturing using the codes of the ruling class: men. A man gesturing to the codes of the oppressed class gets him nothing, except ridicule.” </p>
<p id="zq08hR">This ridicule is obviously one of the main reasons why most straight men won’t put on shifts, but many also won’t play with femininity even in private, where there’s no one to judge. We self-police just as often as others police us.</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="tLsOuF"><q> “The woman is gesturing using the codes of the ruling class: men. A man gesturing to the codes of the oppressed class gets him nothing, except ridicule.” </q></aside></div>
<p id="avKmYL">Fashion isn’t just a public manifestation of gender, but also a private one. “Certainly fashion and clothing are how we present ourselves to the social world and how we’re read by others, but it’s also very much about how we read ourselves,” <a href="http://www.ryersonfashion.ca/faculty/ben-barry">Ben Barry</a>, associate professor of equity, diversity, and inclusion at the Ryerson School of Fashion, says. There’s this intimate connection we have with clothes — it links how we feel in our bodies and who we feel we are inside. </p>
<p id="wcq8ao">“Clothing makes you aware of the edges and boundaries and borders of your body,” Barry says. “So wearing a dress, wearing women’s garments, even in the privacy of your own home, connects you to your body in a way that could make you feel comfortable or uncomfortable with how you perceive yourself.”</p>
<p id="F5O9wq">Especially if men are used to wearing pants and T-shirts all the time, a dress would display their bodies in completely unfamiliar ways. If they’re in spaghetti straps, their shoulders would be exposed in a way they have never seen before; if there’s a deep neckline, their chest would be cut differently; if there’s a short hem, their legs would take on a new shape. </p>
<p id="kWsd4C">“So walking around one’s apartment in a dress, how does that then make a man feel in his body? What does it make him think about how he has perceived his understanding of his own gender?” Barry asks.</p>
<p id="ErXgNi">Because of this, throwing on a dress isn’t quite so simple. “Wearing a dress in one’s home can make a man feel vulnerable in ways he’s never felt before, and that can trigger fear. Fear that you might not be so rigidly masculine as you’ve always thought.” It’s an identity crisis.</p>
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<blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/BECe46Ci4FN/" data-instgrm-version="8" style=" background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:658px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding:8px;"> <div style=" background:#F8F8F8; line-height:0; margin-top:40px; padding:62.51251251251251% 0; text-align:center; width:100%;"> <div style=" background:url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAACwAAAAsCAMAAAApWqozAAAABGdBTUEAALGPC/xhBQAAAAFzUkdCAK7OHOkAAAAMUExURczMzPf399fX1+bm5mzY9AMAAADiSURBVDjLvZXbEsMgCES5/P8/t9FuRVCRmU73JWlzosgSIIZURCjo/ad+EQJJB4Hv8BFt+IDpQoCx1wjOSBFhh2XssxEIYn3ulI/6MNReE07UIWJEv8UEOWDS88LY97kqyTliJKKtuYBbruAyVh5wOHiXmpi5we58Ek028czwyuQdLKPG1Bkb4NnM+VeAnfHqn1k4+GPT6uGQcvu2h2OVuIf/gWUFyy8OWEpdyZSa3aVCqpVoVvzZZ2VTnn2wU8qzVjDDetO90GSy9mVLqtgYSy231MxrY6I2gGqjrTY0L8fxCxfCBbhWrsYYAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); display:block; height:44px; margin:0 auto -44px; position:relative; top:-22px; width:44px;"></div>
</div> <p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BECe46Ci4FN/" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank">#westwood #viviennewestwood #fw16 #milanfw #milanfw16 #milanfashionweek #androgynous #menindresses #dress #fashion #menswear #mensdress #mensfashion #2016</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A post shared by @<a href="https://www.instagram.com/menindresses/" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;" target="_blank"> menindresses</a> on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2016-04-10T23:50:13+00:00">Apr 10, 2016 at 4:50pm PDT</time></p>
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<p id="O2GgXd">But if you take a moment and quiz the men in your life why they hadn’t skipped the shorts and put on a summer dress on a hot summer day, or went for the crumpled dress on the floor instead of their briefs, the majority of them will look at you like you asked what they would do if the world turned out to be flat tomorrow. It’s just not something they had ever considered. And there’s a reason for that. </p>
<p id="abNC8W">Since we were little, each of us has been socialized into our binary identity, and we learned that there are specific rules for each gender — not only what they are, but also how they’re enforced and how they work.</p>
<p id="Pwju3u">“Kids learn all the same rules, but what they also learn is that the consequences are different for each of them, whether they’re a boy or a girl,” Dr. Paoletti explains. “The girls learn that some of the boy things they do they will get praised for, like being good at sports. But they’ll also get a lot of attention for being good at girl things — they get rewarded for being flexible. But boys learn that the girl rules are forbidden territory. If you trespass over there you’ll get smacked down, sometimes literally.”</p>
<p id="Tn3qis">Once they learn the rules they begin policing each other, where girls won’t let boys play with their dolls, or boys tease each other for liking girly things. “For the boys all the same rules, standards, and symbols are well understood, it’s just the feminine ones have all of these red flags. And I think it takes a lot of self-awareness and self-confidence to go against that kind of training.”</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="dGP1dH"><q>“Boys learn that the girl rules are forbidden territory. If you trespass over there you’ll get smacked down, sometimes literally.”</q></aside></div>
<p id="I8NrUw">Of course, not many men actively think about this when they reach for pants on the floor. This is all going on in the background, and it comes out instead as a general feeling of “I really shouldn’t” when their training leads them to skip the dress that’s closer at hand. Paoletti likens it to the “step on a crack, break your mother’s back” game. </p>
<p id="Rij7Fo">“I remember as I got older — and I no longer believed that if I stepped on a crack I would break my mother’s back — stepping on a crack <em>still</em> seemed like a really willful horrible thing to do. Even when the rule doesn’t make any sense anymore you still feel like you shouldn’t do that. You feel guilty about it.” This translates back to skirts, and how allowing yourself to put one on gives you this uncomfortable pang of knowing you shouldn’t like it, even though you don’t necessarily know why.</p>
<p id="dWsXhx">The straight men who do go for slip dresses and front-wrap skirts seem to have one common theme between them: They have fully rejected society’s binary, and the prejudices that come with it. And not in an “I walked in the Women’s March and signed a petition for gay rights” kind of way. They live it. </p>
<p id="vlw9zG">They were able to jump the hurdle of no longer seeing the clothes linked to their sexist and homophobic connotations, and just seeing them as another thing to slip into. And because of it, they don’t necessarily see their outfit choices as a political statement, but just an everyday outfit. Much in the same way a woman sometimes walks up to her closet and skips over her jeans for a column dress, they do it for the sartorial feeling. </p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="cQbT3e"><q>“Wearing a skirt to me is just like wearing a pair of pants — it makes no difference. If the outfit looks better with a skirt, then I’ll wear the skirt.”</q></aside></div>
<p id="oUtoaa">Take Akwete Osoka for example, who identifies as straight and is the founder and model of <a href="https://www.malemadonna.com/">MaleMadonna</a>. He skips identifying as cis because he doesn’t believe in being limited by labels, and chooses to identify simply as himself, Akwete. “Wearing a skirt to me is just like wearing a pair of pants — it makes no difference. If the outfit looks better with a skirt, then I’ll wear the skirt.” But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t experience backlash for his blasé attitude towards his wardrobe.</p>
<p id="UupBKv">“Other men stare at me with disgust, as if I’m less of a man, or unworthy of being a man,” Osoka shares. People’s default reaction is to judge and assume, and he experiences from both men and women long, confused stares, constant laughter, pointing, name calling, and even moments of people taking out their phones to snap photos of him. </p>
<p id="5JYSUO">On Instagram, he had to go so far as to write a post letting people know that he was not gay, was not questioning his sexuality, and was just — really, truly — wearing a skirt for not other reason than he liked it. </p>
<p id="L25SfE">“My fashion sense is me expressing my individuality; it’s me exploring boundaries that average guys are scared to explore because of what the rest of society will label them,” Osoka shared in the post. “Society is dying to say I’m gay but I’m not. Society is dying to label me bi, transgender, etc., but I’m not. Society has a headache dealing with me because I won’t allow myself to be within a label; I won’t let society cage me in.”</p>
<p id="viTbWH"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/jordsels/?hl=en">Jordan Sellers</a>, a tech consultant who identifies as straight and cis gender, experiences something similar. “We constantly seek to categorize and organize things into little boxes. We continually hamper creativity by looking for differences in everything and everyone, rather than similarities.” And with these differences comes a need to dole out backlash.</p>
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<p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BZe29PQAbP6/" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">A post shared by Jordan / JFS aka Playboi Jordi (@jordsels)</a> on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2017-09-25T23:18:32+00:00">Sep 25, 2017 at 4:18pm PDT</time></p>
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<p id="JweW4A">When he was at a wedding in Charleston, South Carolina, he wore a skirt to the reception, and a man driving past shouted the word “faggot” out the window in anger. But to Sellers, that was a reminder of how much more worse it could be. “It was a reminder of my privilege, and stark contrast to what happens <em>every day</em> to queer people and POC. I mean, the prejudice was palpable in that city. I can’t even imagine being a black gay man in the south,” he shares.</p>
<p id="UlVz9y">The same thing happens in the LGBTQ+ community, where someone’s clothing choice is automatically linked to their sexuality, rather than allowing it to be a standalone fashion choice. <a href="http://instagram.com/sean_santiago">Sean Santiago</a>, editor and creative director of <a href="http://cakeboymag.com/">Cakeboy</a>, an LGBTQ+ print and digital platform that turns a critical eye on gender and style, has made <a href="https://www.racked.com/2017/1/31/14372528/shayne-oliver-floral-dress-vetements-men">dresses and skirts part of his wardrobe</a> and finds his wardrobe choices constantly combed for a deeper meaning. “Am I a crossdresser, am I doing this as a sex thing, am I getting off on these clothes? We just automatically jump there. If men are playing around with gender in that way, it becomes fetishized. It’s either about sexuality or part of some perversion.”</p>
<p id="9ERrTd">We’ve been grappling with these same truths for decades now, from a mother worrying about her son’s growing dress collection in the mid-century to headlines today questioning any man’s sexuality who decides to give a tunic a try. And no matter how progressive we think we are now, these same attitudes still persist in the same way they did a hundred years back. </p>
<p id="iPnLJT">As the advice columnist from 1938 pointed out, “We would send a man who paraded the streets in a decollete gown and high-heeled pumps to an asylum for mental observation, whereas a girl who gets herself up like an imitation man goes scot free.” Not until men can just as freely put on chiffon dresses as women could put on trousers, can we say that we have figured it out. </p>
<aside id="NIr0Gm"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"racked_national"}'></div></aside>
https://www.racked.com/2018/4/23/17261508/gender-bending-men-dressesMarlen Komar2018-03-08T09:32:01-05:002018-03-08T09:32:01-05:00When Nice Nails Could Change Lives
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/PmOPkYKCpCxO_YMcZKQO5SCFzlo=/32x0:6571x4904/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/58841343/GettyImages_565489017.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Photo: Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p class="c-entry-disclaimer"><i>Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods">The Goods by Vox</a>. You can also see what we’re up to by <a href="https://vox.com/goods-newsletter">signing up here</a>.</i></p>
<p>For immigrants and black women in turn-of-the-century America, well-manicured nails were make or break. </p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="MoGdDp">“Dear me, but you are luxurious in your tastes,” the manicurist said from her stool as she eyed her new customer, sharing her reading like she just peered into a crystal ball. “And pray, how do you know?” the girl asked from her spot by the door. “Oh, I can tell by your nails.” </p>
<p id="5p2ozO">This was an exchange captured in a <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F121696972%2F%3Fterms%3Dnails&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2018%2F3%2F8%2F17058062%2Fnails-class-america-history" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Detroit newspaper in 1895</a>, where the manicurist showed how a quick glance at her appointment’s hands could reveal her to be a woman who loved to indulge. Think boxes of truffles, silk robes, and hats bought at the department store — even though it seemed like she was nothing more than a working-class salesgirl. </p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="FMzPzQ"><q>“Fake it ’til you make it” was a real option now, and with the help of makeup, anyone could change their identity and rise above their station.</q></aside></div>
<p id="iy27BH">Things were changing during the turn of the century, when the bourgeoisie was no longer an exclusive, card-carriers-only club. “Fake it ’til you make it” was a real option now, and with the help of makeup, anyone could change their identity and rise above their station. Hands revealed where you fell in the social hierarchy, and not looking like you were a second-generation washer woman with cracked skin and chipped nails could allow you to climb the social ladder. It would help you apply for better apartments, answer notices for more middle-class jobs, and even date wealthier men — the kind who would introduce you to the right people over Champagne and send boxes of couture to your door. </p>
<p id="iqbOTV">There was the hope of a new and better “self” through the help of products, but coupling that with cuticle cream wasn’t as simple as it sounded. The blend made a heady mixture of fears that danced around immigration and race — and with it, the struggle to hold onto power. Clear nail polish bottled<em> </em>a lot of drama.</p>
<p id="1Vm886">When the country’s first manicure salon opened in Manhattan in 1878, it was a classist affair. Soft hands and pointed nails hinted the woman was part of the country club set: if she used her hands for work any more taxing than lifting cucumber sandwiches from tea trays, her <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F118889124%2F%3Fterms%3Dnails%2Bsociety%2Bwomen&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2018%2F3%2F8%2F17058062%2Fnails-class-america-history" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">nails would break</a>. But those who were part of the working class would have rough hands with short, easy-to-manage tips, whether they were businesswomen doing the accounting in department stores or laborers mopping floors. To have nice hands meant you had money.</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="KJLt3N"><q>To have nice hands meant you had money.<br>Or at least it used to.</q></aside></div>
<p id="1ajNFQ">Or at least it used to. A little before the turn of the century, the new idea was that as long as you kept your hands lovely, you didn’t have to be a lady. You could just imitate one. </p>
<p id="ESnHvu">This new spin was helpful to two groups of women in particular: immigrants and black women, who were especially policed and lambasted by society. </p>
<p id="Q7tZqL">At the turn of the century, headlines promised that America was going through an immigration crisis. By 1930 some 30 million Europeans poured into the States, and while history liked to wax poetic about Ellis Island asking for its huddled masses, the reality was a little different. Americans weren’t thrilled with the Europeans landing at Lady Liberty’s golden door, mainly because they were the wrong kind. </p>
<p id="iq0VM2">Rather than the British, Norwegians, and Germans who traditionally made up the country, more than 80 percent of the people coming over were “New Immigrants,” or Southern and Eastern Europeans. They were thought to be poor, uneducated, and “rough around the edges,” and nationalists liked to peddle the idea that they would become a burden on the government, placing the blame of <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F155819976%2F%3Fterms%3Dimmigrant%2Bwomen%2Bmakeup&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2018%2F3%2F8%2F17058062%2Fnails-class-america-history" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">rising crime rates</a> on their ghettos. But those complaints were just a front for the real reason behind the pushback: The new arrivals were changing “the look” of the country.</p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/79hhHCdIzAXsA53h-3yJ2gRkwzA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10309935/GettyImages_640480549.jpg">
<cite>Photo: Bain News Service/Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>A wealthy woman receiving a manicure on an ocean liner. </figcaption>
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<p id="xksKeG">In 1903 Teddy Roosevelt called it “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=jg2X0mxwOxoC&pg=PA40&lpg=PA40&dq=President+Theodore+Roosevelt%E2%80%99s+public+worry+about+%E2%80%98race+suicide.%E2%80%99&source=bl&ots=_xM9OI1iwz&sig=Dg2ztImaDSjDBJD0T0zUuQvVQWY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiph9nko4jZAhWEtVkKHSznDmgQ6AEIQDAE#v=onepage&q=President%20Theodore%20Roosevelt%E2%80%99s%20public%20worry%20about%20%E2%80%98race%20suicide.%E2%80%99&f=false">race suicide</a>,” lamenting how his fellow Anglo Americans were having less kids than the millions of immigrants pouring into towns and starting large, first-generation families. Newspaper headlines like <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F214622466%2F%3Fterms%3Dimmigrant%2Bgirl%2Bdress&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2018%2F3%2F8%2F17058062%2Fnails-class-america-history" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><em>The Baltimore Sun’s</em></a> “Family of 15 Comes to the U.S.” and <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F168391420%2F%3Fterms%3Dimmigrant%2Bwomen%2Bnails&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2018%2F3%2F8%2F17058062%2Fnails-class-america-history" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><em>The Philadelphia Inquirer’s</em></a> “Are We Becoming...A Mongrel Nation” began taking over front pages, pouring gasoline over the xenophobic flames.</p>
<p id="o8fVNl">The Immigration Act of 1924 tried to curb the takeover by creating a quota system, which slashed visas from New Immigrant countries by a whopping <em>97 percent</em>. The prejudice was real, and it had a tendency to translate itself into violent flashpoints: In 1918, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/axeman-new-orleans-preyed-italian-immigrants-180968037/">an axeman in New Orleans</a> preyed on successful Italian grocers who were thought to be stealing jobs; South Omaha in 1909 led a community-wide effort to <a href="http://www.pappaspost.com/todays-undesirable-muslims-were-yesteryears-greeks-pure-american-no-rats-no-greeks/">burn the city’s Greektown</a> down to the ground; Polish communities were raided <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=aXeFG9p15FIC&pg=PA68#v=onepage&q&f=false">by the Ku Klux Klan</a>.</p>
<p id="XqvtBt">Because of that, immigrant women fared better if they distanced themselves from their Old World image and took up a more middle-class, “American” look. </p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="3XLupe"><q>“It is the sight of what America can do for a girl, how it can change her from a peasant’s daughter to a ‘lady,’ that makes them flock to the United States under normal conditions.”</q></aside></div>
<p id="yGBWyA">Newspapers tried to back that idea, claiming that women didn’t come to the US for a better life, but crossed the Atlantic for the chance to pursue American beauty. “‘Bettering conditions,’ in the abstract, could not induce many girls to go to America,” wrote the <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F354915173%2F%3Fterms%3Dimmigrant%2Bwomen%2Bhands&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2018%2F3%2F8%2F17058062%2Fnails-class-america-history" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><em>Chicago Tribune</em></a> in 1909. “It is the sight of what America can do for a girl, how it can change her from a peasant’s daughter to a ‘lady,’ that makes them flock to the United States under normal conditions.”</p>
<p id="lpde3n">The only reason she didn’t ditch her peasant clothes the moment she stepped off the ocean liner, the <em>Tribune</em> assured, was because her budget didn’t allow it. “Wherever you see a foreign woman still clinging to a shawl, skirt, or jacket of her native land, you may be sure that poverty is the cause of her un-American appearance.” The first bump in wages a husband would get in the stockyards or steel mills, the reporter predicted, was sure to go toward a shopping trip first, food second.</p>
<p id="IOLSUa">Taking it further, women’s columns began writing how immigrants who didn’t assimilate were ugly, and ugliness was a sign of immorality and corruption — the kind that could spread to America’s own daughters if they weren’t careful.</p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/aE5cPCiGEjlmY1TRZKxDtyVJf2s=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10310019/GettyImages_513684567.jpg">
<cite>Photo: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images</cite>
<figcaption>Daily inspection of teeth and finger nails on students in Oklahoma.</figcaption>
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<p id="1jSIzm">For example, a biologist named Albert Edward, who lectured on heredity and eugenics, made a connection between the <a href="https://www.racked.com/2018/1/26/16927682/makeover-death-penalty-sabella-nitti">ugliness of immigrants and rising crime rates</a>. He believed that one child was born to every three American women, but at the same time “<a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F336077083%2F%3Fterms%3Dimmigrant%2Bwomen%2Bugly&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2018%2F3%2F8%2F17058062%2Fnails-class-america-history" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">one low-class</a>, broad-backed, flat-chested, stout-legged, high-necked, stupid ugly immigrant women will in the same time produce three.” And with a decline in beauty came a decline in intelligence, which brought a drop in morals. “The crime wave is no mystery to biologists,” he shared. Obviously not everyone believed that, but enough did to lead newspapers to publicly applaud women who quickly adopted American looks. Which, really, meant mimicking the middle class.</p>
<p id="L05zl3">The <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F354915173%2F%3Fterms%3Dimmigrant%2Bwomen%2Bhands&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2018%2F3%2F8%2F17058062%2Fnails-class-america-history" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><em>Chicago Tribune</em></a> wrote that if you walked into a factory sewing room and were asked to pick out the American girls from the foreigners, it wouldn’t be easy. “All the girls looked alike. Their hair was done up in much the same way as the wealthy young women, who do nothing, do their hair up. The complexion and expression were American. The movements of the girls, their looks, and giggles were those of the American girl.” There was no distinction between them and the Chicago girls walking down Michigan Avenue that very moment.</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="vwu6np"><q> “Nails that are hard, resembling a claw or talon, even though the owner may appear pleasant, indicate a temperament that is hard-hearted, cruel, and unchaste.”</q></aside></div>
<p id="JF5dO0">This would directly translate to nails. Papers warned against cracked, calloused hands and damaged tips — the very kind that immigrants were prone to thanks to their rough working conditions. They were signs of bad character, <em>even</em> if the person seemed nice when you first met them. “Nails that are hard, resembling a claw or talon, even though the owner may appear pleasant, indicate a <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F175103530%2F%3Fterms%3Dnails&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2018%2F3%2F8%2F17058062%2Fnails-class-america-history" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">temperament that is hard-hearted</a>, cruel, and unchaste,” <em>The Washington Times</em> claimed in 1906. But anyone could transform them by just going to the salon. ”A woman can go into a<a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F76484515%2F%3Fterms%3Dnails&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2018%2F3%2F8%2F17058062%2Fnails-class-america-history" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank"> manicuring establishment</a> with her hands as rough as nutmeg graters and her nails almost ragged. And in an hour she can come out with her hands soft and smooth and the nails in very fair condition.” Just like that, your identity was changed.</p>
<p id="ScEE7y">Black women faced similar circumstances: They couldn’t erase the racism that structured their lives, but they could use beauty as a tool for uplift. African-American women taught each other how to best wield it to their advantage through women’s magazines, the articles promising that if their tips were followed, conditions would improve. <em>Half-Century Magazine</em>, <em>Woman’s Voice</em>, and <em>Ringwood’s Afro-American Journal of Fashion </em>were the <em>Essence</em> of the Victorian era.</p>
<p id="jc58fW">“It was a version of what people in another era might have referred to as ‘fake it ’til you make it’ mentality that linked grooming and fashion with the ability to rent a better apartment or have the option of a wider variety of jobs since the people who were doing the hiring expected their employees to look a certain way,” Noliwe Rooks, author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ladies-Pages-African-American-Magazines/dp/B000F6Z7YI/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1503322073&sr=8-5&keywords=noliwe+rooks"><em>Ladies’ Pages: African American Women’s Magazines and the Culture That Made Them</em></a>, and the one who recently unearthed these forgotten publications, shares.</p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/kKdaOEZS0DiRUCl5uylngk3DErQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10309969/GettyImages_530730698.jpg">
<cite>Photo: George Rinhart/Corbis via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>A'Lelia Walker, daughter of Madame C.J. Walker, gets a manicure at one of her mother's beauty shops.</figcaption>
</figure>
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<p id="cNskE5">The more middle class you looked, the more opportunities you were offered. While all classes of ladies loved to thumb through their pages, these magazines were mostly geared toward the newly migrated women from the South who needed help fitting into their new fast-paced city lives. There were already well-established, African-American society women in these cities who lived there long before the Great Migration, and respectability politics were a real concern. They were worried over how the newer arrivals were behaving, walking around town in kitchen dresses and worn-down shoes, and they wrote in to these magazines with both complaints and tips. </p>
<p id="eyWoIp">“The kind of advice in the magazines assumed that the new migrants were coarse and unsophisticated,” Rooks explains. “There was a definite sense that the writers who were members of the upper classes of African-American society where slightly embarrassed by how some of the women who were migrating were behaving in public and concern that their behavior and appearance would reflect poorly on all African Americans. It was complex.” </p>
<p id="8RQstE">While the latest fashions and hairstyles were obvious markers of respectability, so were nails. “I can forgive a plain face in a woman, but I cannot forgive <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F118889124%2F%3Fterms%3Dnails%2Bsociety%2Bwomen&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2018%2F3%2F8%2F17058062%2Fnails-class-america-history" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">ugly hands</a>,” a writer for <em>The Courier</em> wrote in 1902. “The hand, if neglected, displays so many disagreeable traits that it is <em>positively</em> unforgivable.” </p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="3cF7eo"><q>“The hand, if neglected, displays so many disagreeable traits that it is <em>positively</em> unforgivable.” </q></aside></div>
<p id="BGPqiw">Magazines ran tarot-card-like readings of what certain nails meant about a person, always painting hands that would typically belong to working-class women as suspect. “Nails that are short and those in which the cuticle is growing over them <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F175103530%2F%3Fterms%3Dnails&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2018%2F3%2F8%2F17058062%2Fnails-class-america-history" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">in a ragged manner</a> denotes a quarrelsome nature, a love of pushing order to the extreme, and love to meddle with other people’s business,” <em>The Washington Times</em> warned. In an effort to help, magazines wrote articles explaining how to properly take care of one’s manicure, especially focusing on how poorer women could hide the nature of their work.</p>
<p id="DhgP8H">Using clear nail polish to better your life might seem kind of funny when looking at it through today’s lens, but it makes sense to use all the tools available to you. “Those who are securely ensconced in middle- or upper-class positions don’t have as much to lose if someone judges them on the condition of their nails (or what they’re wearing — consider Mark Zuckerberg and other Silicon Valley tycoons who dress in jeans and hoodies at work). But when one is in a job interview, and has a lot on the line — like social advancement or supporting a family — one needs to put the best foot (or hand) forward,” Denise H. Sutton, author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Globalizing-Ideal-Beauty-Advertising-Marketing/dp/1137021004/ref=la_B001TLI3OY_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1519134733&sr=1-1"><em>Globalizing Ideal Beauty: Women, Advertising, and the Power of Marketing</em></a>, explains.</p>
<p id="shhNAO">Manicures at the turn of the century were an equalizer — whether you were from Warsaw or Westboro, you were going to grab onto and use all the options available to create a better, less violent life for yourself. And it just so happened that an appointment at a nail salon could get you one step closer there. </p>
<p id="ZzvP0R"></p>
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https://www.racked.com/2018/3/8/17058062/nails-class-america-historyMarlen Komar2018-02-09T09:32:02-05:002018-02-09T09:32:02-05:00Department Stores Are Basically the Reason Women Were Allowed in Public
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/IZYh3TurQ-GILNgLRk8IkWBHbM8=/0x204:3206x2609/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/58510255/Macy_s_Herald_Square_LC_USZ62_123584_crop_3.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>The Herald Square Macy’s in 1907. | Photo: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Macy%27s_Herald_Square_LC-USZ62-123584_crop.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></figcaption>
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<p class="c-entry-disclaimer"><i>Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods">The Goods by Vox</a>. You can also see what we’re up to by <a href="https://vox.com/goods-newsletter">signing up here</a>.</i></p>
<p>A woman alone in public was taboo, and then came Macy’s. </p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="8WSaTZ">She was dumped on her butt at the door. Rebecca Israel walked into the red marble dining room of Café Boulevard, a restaurant in the Lower East Side’s Jewish theater pocket, hoping to try some of the paprika chicken that a New York guide recommended. Instead, she was politely but firmly tossed out onto the street. The year was 1900, and unescorted women weren’t allowed into the domain of men — or as we like to call it today, “the public” — and certainly not in a place where said men could huddle together, talk business, and hobnob over cigars and brandy. </p>
<p id="mgQkCh">In 1899, two Philadelphians visited Manhattan for a weekend trip, where they learned the hard way that a woman <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F322154436%2F%3Fterms%3Dwomen%2Bunescorted%2Brestaurant&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2018%2F2%2F9%2F16951116%2Fdepartment-stores-women-independence" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">wasn’t allowed to dine in a restaurant</a> past 6 without a man’s reservation at the door. Stubborn, they plucked a random messenger boy from the street and had him join them at their table. Then there was the mother-daughter duo who <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F64490684%2F%3Fterms%3Dwomen%2Bunescorted%2Brestaurant&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2018%2F2%2F9%2F16951116%2Fdepartment-stores-women-independence" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">came into a restaurant to get out of the pouring rain</a>, but before they had a chance to shake out their skirts, the owner had them by the elbows and was kicking them out, muttering about indecency.</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="E4dhMY"><q>The year was 1900, and unescorted women weren’t allowed into the domain of men — or as we like to call it today, “the public.”</q></aside></div>
<p id="h38YHf">What did all these women have in common? They were barging into men’s territory, which happened to be, well, anywhere outside. The world was split into two spheres during the Victorian era, and those <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=xpd2CkxWeMoC&pg=PA60&lpg=PA60&dq=Judith+Walkowitz+shopping+middle+class+victorian+women&source=bl&ots=qbnke1NOC7&sig=HhSdpPksaDiNAVctxkmVlD7MEvw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjBs6-WodzUAhVrzoMKHeanD1YQ6AEINjAE#v=onepage&q=Judith%20Walkowitz%20shopping%20middle%20class%20victorian%20women&f=false">boundaries were ironclad</a> and “naturally ordained”: men owned city centers, women owned drawing rooms, and with it came a power imbalance that was thought of as necessary to keep social order tidy. </p>
<p id="xwQerm">While there were plenty of lower-class women moving through city streets in the 19th century — from scullery maids to launderers getting to and from work, black and white women alike — it was rare to see a middle-class housewife strolling the town square alone. Other than women laborers, prostitutes were the only ones walking the pavement, so any bourgeois woman that went outdoors unaccompanied would be seen as a “public woman,” or streetwalker. Even Virginia Woolf described <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=djMU3nan23AC&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=Judith+Walkowitz+shopping+middle+class+victorian+women&source=bl&ots=7X3u47edXJ&sig=zo_1FoBnSVsvyInvmuYh3uMxnAg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjBs6-WodzUAhVrzoMKHeanD1YQ6AEIPjAH#v=onepage&q=Judith%20Walkowitz%20shopping%20middle%20class%20victorian%20women&f=false">walking down Piccadilly alone</a> as walking in a “dressing gown carrying a bath sponge.”</p>
<p id="fKcsyP">So how did women eventually break free from their domestic existence? Two words: department stores. The emancipation of women started at the makeup counter, and shopping was basically the reason they were let outside. Receipts were a woman’s keys to the city.</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="yvcL2y"><q>Not only was it flat-out illegal for [women] to enter many spaces unchaperoned, but when they did go shopping... it wasn’t exactly a fun affair.</q></aside></div>
<p id="pk6YCK">Before Macy’s came along, women were already slowly edging their way outside, but it wasn’t a very alluring idea. Not only was it flat-out illegal for them to enter many spaces unchaperoned, but when they did go shopping at the standalone boutiques or dry goods stores, it wasn’t exactly a fun affair. Rather than hitching a parasol to their wrist and ambling from shop to shop, they handed a black-suited man their list, and he silently bundled their items into brown paper before sending them straight home.</p>
<p id="xdtEwK">Because of that, women didn’t dawdle. The streets were seen as something they moved through as trespassers, and not somewhere they lingered. Across late-19th-century etiquette books, experts had one common tip for those who just had to go into town: Be invisible. No flashy clothes, no looking anywhere but straight, and no stopping until you were back indoors. If men bumped into women they knew, they were <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=L5J7kV3wM5cC&lpg=PA3&dq=dangers%20of%20city%20streets%20women%2019th%20century&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q=dangers%20of%20city%20streets%20women%2019th%20century&f=false">told to walk</a> briskly beside them rather than stopping to chat. </p>
<p id="Fv91eN">But that all changed with department stores. And with it came the scandal of women becoming full public actors; ones who demanded agency, a voice, and a seat at the table.</p>
<aside id="PJG9VW"><div data-anthem-component="actionbox" data-anthem-component-data="{"title":"Like what you're reading?","description":"Get Racked's twice-weekly newsletter.","label":"SIGN UP","url":"https://confirmsubscription.com/h/d/59F5932428C4E6CD"}"></div></aside><p id="zvh0Uu">Department stores weren’t like neighborhood corner shops where you could pick up a sack of flour and a fresh ribbon all in one go. They were fantasy palaces. They had domed roofs, marbled rooms, parquet floors with Eastern carpets, furniture draped in brocade and tufted with leather. Orchestras played in the restaurants, dress pageants were held in the foyers, and concerts spun out in tea rooms. They were like enclosed cities where women ruled.</p>
<p id="NGClOg">Macy’s restaurant in New York City could seat <em>2,500</em> women at once. Harrods of Knightsbridge, which <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ibnX6jhBESwC&pg=PA51&lpg=PA51&dq=harrods+the+most+social+rendez-vous+for+members+of+Society&source=bl&ots=J-xx3brELT&sig=uRC4-q7ntOJ6nLq_BGfUQUB6XrI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwis9sTB_f3YAhVjluAKHXW2Bd8Q6AEILTAB#v=onepage&q=harrods%20the%20most%20social%20rendez-vous%20for%20members%20of%20Society&f=false">labeled itself</a> as “the most social rendez-vous for members of Society” in London, had 6,000 employees and 80 different departments. Selfridges in London was even bigger, and it branded itself as a <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=xpd2CkxWeMoC&pg=PA60&lpg=PA60&dq=Judith+Walkowitz+shopping+middle+class+victorian+women&source=bl&ots=qbnke1NOC7&sig=HhSdpPksaDiNAVctxkmVlD7MEvw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjBs6-WodzUAhVrzoMKHeanD1YQ6AEINjAE#v=onepage&q=Judith%20Walkowitz%20shopping%20middle%20class%20victorian%20women&f=false">social meeting place</a>, where women were asked to come window shop and mingle without any pressure to buy. Ads in the newspaper cheerfully invited people to leave their homes and pile into trolleys to “spend the day at Selfridges.” </p>
<div> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/5Sn3fN3ODFjebz5m88UQVA_RqJg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10124735/Harrods_1909.jpg">
<cite>Photo: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Harrods_1909.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></cite>
<figcaption>A fashion plate of Harrods in 1909.</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="M6PfEQ">Not only did these palaces get women outside the house, but they also employed them. Crisp-bloused, young white women made up the majority of the staff, mainly because the men in three-piece suits no longer fit into how women shopped. Many shoppers came in for no other reason than for the fun of being tempted — they wanted to play and dream, and needed someone who understood the language. Because of that, these stores became, in the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=nDyoa2rMbSIC&lpg=PA161&dq=%22adamless%20eden%22%20%20filene%27s&pg=PA161#v=onepage&q=%22adamless%20eden%22%20%20filene's&f=false">words</a> of Boston department store owner Edward Filene, an “Adam-less Eden.”</p>
<p id="qgSlVj">In 1910, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=mA3ZAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA794&lpg=PA794&dq=At+every+cashiers+desk,+and+the+wrappers+desks,+running+back+and+forth+with+parcels+and+change,+short-skirted+women&source=bl&ots=7mwe9EMU72&sig=o8AcwIQNJI4FGCuRUG-9njAE14g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwic8I6zlPTYAhVikuAKHeNpAIoQ6AEINzAE#v=onepage&q=At%20every%20cashiers%20desk%2C%20and%20the%20wrappers%20desks%2C%20running%20back%20and%20forth%20with%20parcels%20and%20change%2C%20short-skirted%20women&f=false"><em>Hampton’s Magazine</em></a> perfectly described the female takeover: </p>
<blockquote><p id="IILj2c">Buying and selling, serving and being served — women. On every floor, in every aisle, at every counter, women...At every cashier’s desk, and the wrappers’ desks, running back and forth with parcels and change, short-skirted women. Filling the aisles, passing and repassing, a constantly arriving and departing throng of shoppers, women. Simply a moving, seeking, hurrying mass of femininity, in the midst of which an occasional man shopper, man clerk, and man supervisor, looks lost and out of place.</p></blockquote>
<p id="kWpZsq">Not too long after, department store doors couldn’t keep the women closed up behind doors, and they started spilling out into the streets. </p>
<p id="aaZJtw">By the 1890s, cafes, tea rooms, and confectionaries wanted to catch the business of box-laden shoppers and whipped together ladies’ menus and dining rooms. Hotels opened their doors to suburban day-trippers, and suffragettes took over banquet halls, noshing on finger sandwiches and talking riot strategies. Pretty window displays and clever ads that needed careful study had women lingering on street corners. In fact, Selfridges’ displays became so popular that they were <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=xpd2CkxWeMoC&pg=PA60&lpg=PA60&dq=Judith+Walkowitz+shopping+middle+class+victorian+women&source=bl&ots=qbnke1NOC7&sig=HhSdpPksaDiNAVctxkmVlD7MEvw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjBs6-WodzUAhVrzoMKHeanD1YQ6AEINjAE#v=onepage&q=Judith%20Walkowitz%20shopping%20middle%20class%20victorian%20women&f=false">listed in London guide books</a>, right up there with Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. Soon after, it was no longer shocking to see women milling about downtown, uptown, and all around town. They took buses and trains, rode on bicycles, ordered carriages, or came in on foot, mingling with crowds and men. It was now entertaining to be outside, and with it, being invisible became a dying practice.</p>
<p id="zO8fBY">In the 1901 <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=6gjXAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=1901+Book+of+Good+Manners,+Mrs.+Kingsland&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-1KLhofHYAhVISt8KHdYuB-YQ6AEIQDAE#v=onepage&q=unobserved&f=false"><em>Book of Manners</em></a>, Mrs. Kingsland complained, “The old rule, ‘Dress so as to pass unobserved,’ seems to have changed to ‘Dress so as to challenge admiration or attention.’”</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="RLa9D1"><q>“The old rule, ‘Dress so as to pass unobserved,’ seems to have changed to ‘Dress so as to challenge admiration or attention.’”</q></aside></div>
<p id="krByYP">But while many women were enjoying this new mobility in public life, not all of them were invited to be actors. Working-class women couldn’t go where they couldn’t afford, and women of color faced prejudice thanks to the racism that ran deep on either side of the Atlantic. In the US, being a sales girl was a white-collar job, meaning it wasn’t open to African-American applicants — it took <a href="https://journals.psu.edu/pmhb/article/viewFile/45511/45232">until the 1940s</a> for the first full-time black clerk to be hired. Mixed-race girls who passed for white would sometimes find their way <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F31963626%2F%3Fterms%3Ddepartment%2Bstore&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2018%2F2%2F9%2F16951116%2Fdepartment-stores-women-independence" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">onto sales floors</a>, but once their backgrounds were discovered they would be shown the door, no matter how many years they had worked there. One such case happened in DC in 1905, when a woman named Miss Jones was <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F31963626%2F%3Fterms%3Ddepartment%2Bstore&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2018%2F2%2F9%2F16951116%2Fdepartment-stores-women-independence" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">found out to be mixed</a> by the other salesgirls, who quickly told their customers in a rush to get her fired. Wave after wave of white women came down to protest, forcing her to be let go that same day. “They threatened to boycott me, and make things so hot for me that I was forced to dismiss Miss Jones in self-defense,” the proprietor told the paper. </p>
<p id="SeVL7Q">Black women were allowed to work in the back rooms, cafeteria kitchens, and elevators, but even then there were instances when they were let go en masse to make room for white women workers. In 1919, for example, 58 black employees were <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F33454690%2F%3Fterms%3Ddepartment%2Bstore&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2018%2F2%2F9%2F16951116%2Fdepartment-stores-women-independence" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">fired in one go</a> because the department store felt that the legal wage was “too much money to pay colored women and girls, and if they must pay it they prefer to pay it to white women and girls.”</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="8PUwGV"><q>The department store felt that the legal wage was “too much money to pay colored women and girls, and if they must pay it they prefer to pay it to white women and girls.”</q></aside></div>
<p id="dCQZTZ">As far as shopping in the departments, it depended which state you were in. In metropolises like New York City and Washington, DC, black patrons <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F68246384%2F%3Fterms%3Dnegro%2Bshopper&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2018%2F2%2F9%2F16951116%2Fdepartment-stores-women-independence" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">shopped at the same counters</a> and ate at the same tea rooms. There were wealthy, educated black families in those ZIP codes — doctors, businessmen and women, and real estate agents — and they looked for the finer things <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F33452149%2F%3Fterms%3Ddepartment%2Bstore&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2018%2F2%2F9%2F16951116%2Fdepartment-stores-women-independence" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">just like their white neighbors</a>. But when you got to places like Baltimore, African Americans weren’t allowed to shop in department stores unless they were wearing their maid’s uniform and had a list written in their employer’s hand. Black women didn’t find their freedom in shopping like white women did — for white women, the hurdle was that public space was earmarked for men; but for black women, the public was also synonymous with “white.”</p>
<p id="MFsbcZ">At the same time, there was a smear campaign underway to boot white women back indoors. Conservatives swore up and down that shopping ladies were immoral, but all of this was to hide the real worry: With women invading city centers, there was now a conflict over the meaning of public space, and women’s place within it. </p>
<p id="zIS6TI">Where once smelling salts were needed when a middle-class woman wandered into town square alone, by the turn of the century Broadway was nicknamed “Ladies’ Mile.” Where previously women were told to hide behind their front doors from the slimy gaze of men, they now were shooting off responses like Helena Swanwick, who said, “I became incoherent with rage at a society which shut up the girls instead of the men.” When before women didn’t have a right to the family’s checking book, by 1915 <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=TNdkota-2ssC&pg=PT167&lpg=PT167&dq=department+stores+1800s+feminism&source=bl&ots=hWfgrg_CFs&sig=BlK9n7bLzbawxdRzkMmYlxO55YE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjchpuo4dPYAhXE34MKHfzYAPUQ6AEITDAG#v=onepage&q=department%20stores%201800s%20feminism&f=false">90 percent of spending</a> in the US was controlled by women. </p>
<p id="xFPBqq">To push against all that, doctors released Darwin-like statements, saying that the more that women tried to leave the house, the more at risk they were for birthing inferior children. In 1905, the senior physician at Bethlem Royal Hospital <a href="https://www.britac.ac.uk/sites/default/files/78p195.pdf">stated that</a>, “The departure of woman from her natural sphere to an artificial one involves a brain struggle which is deleterious to the virility of the race.” Her nerves would be so shot leaving her “natural” domain that her womb would frazzle. </p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/EMBjb08xr0g66IDRmy65oQFbDxE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10124981/GettyImages_1539941.jpg">
<cite>Photo: Sion Touhig/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Harrods.</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="4skhAK">If that didn’t get people worried, then there was also the opinion that shopping was turning women into degenerates. In an 1868 article written by E. Lynn Linton, she outlined exactly what happened when her fellow women ventured outside of their parlor rooms: “It leads to slang, bold talk and <a href="https://pdcrodas.webs.ull.es/anglo/LynnLintonTheGirlOfThePeriod.pdf">general fastness</a>; to the love of pleasure and indifference to duty; to the desire of money before either love or happiness; in a word, to the worst forms of luxury and selfishness.” Scathing. Leaving your role would lead to sin and corruption — or, at least, society painted it that way to scare women into never budging. </p>
<p id="8k6sFO">But it didn’t scare them. They kept going. Visiting department stores opened them up to the opportunity of independence and fantasy, finance and unsupervised social encounters, which led to a chance to meet new people and share different ideas. It helped women grow outside of their tightly defined boxes. Gordon Selfridge, who opened the London-based department store Selfridges in 1909, was quoted as saying, “I came along just when women wanted to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=xpd2CkxWeMoC&pg=PA60&lpg=PA60&dq=Judith+Walkowitz+shopping+middle+class+victorian+women&source=bl&ots=qbnke1NOC7&sig=HhSdpPksaDiNAVctxkmVlD7MEvw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjBs6-WodzUAhVrzoMKHeanD1YQ6AEINjAE#v=onepage&q=Judith%20Walkowitz%20shopping%20middle%20class%20victorian%20women&f=false">step out on their own</a>. They came to the store and realized some of their dreams.” </p>
<p id="ltjLmv">There was nothing inevitable about white women establishing the right to have a place within public space. Rights weren’t given “because it was time”; rather, they were wrestled out of society’s hands. The pushback was never about entering the public sphere because it was men’s; it was about gaining autonomy, which was men’s. In a very real way, the emancipation of women started at the department store lobby. </p>
<p id="FmE3du"></p>
https://www.racked.com/2018/2/9/16951116/department-stores-women-independenceMarlen Komar2018-01-03T09:32:01-05:002018-01-03T09:32:01-05:00Why Makeup Matters to Women in Prison
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/qv7JtbsrhO0qxwL4X7oGcETza14=/146x0:2254x1581/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/58044057/GettyImages_467042458.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>The Massachusetts Committing Institution Framingham, a medium security correctional facility for women offenders. | Photo: Barry Chin/The Boston Globe via Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
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<p>“We struggle to just stay human and maintain whatever kind of dignity we can there.”</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="aHML7w">In 1908 guards stormed into a cell in Milan, tearing away bed sheets, flipping over mattresses, and yanking off pillowcases for a piece of contraband that had left the warden mystified for the preceding couple of weeks. The prisoner stood to the side, patiently watching her cell get turned inside out, her cheeks painted in cheerful red circles like a ballerina. </p>
<p id="Km3D74">They were after her blush like it was a brick of cocaine. </p>
<p id="kvS1cn">No one could understand how she did it. While the compact wasn’t found during the ransack, the guards watched her closely and soon discovered her MO: The inside stitching of the prison nightgowns were <a href="https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn2001063112/1908-02-07/ed-1/seq-12/#date1=1789&index=0&rows=20&words=Powder+Prison+Women&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1924&proxtext=women+prison+powder&y=0&x=0&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1">made with red thread</a>, and she would patiently pull them out one by one, soak them in water, and dab the stain onto her cheeks like rouge. </p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="M5qv1v"><q>Women would make their own face powder by licking the whitewashed walls of their cells, chewing the lime dust to make a white paste, and delicately dabbing it onto their faces with their fingers.</q></aside></div>
<p id="TMbWho">But that wasn’t the only beauty hack circling inside the walls of the penitentiary. To buff away a dull pallor, women <a href="https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn2001063112/1908-02-07/ed-1/seq-12/#date1=1789&index=0&rows=20&words=Powder+Prison+Women&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1924&proxtext=women+prison+powder&y=0&x=0&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1">made their own face powder</a> by licking the whitewashed walls of their cells, chewing the lime dust to make a white paste, and delicately dabbing it onto their faces with their fingers. Another woman regularly broke the prison rules so she could be sent down to confinement, where she stole wire from a window grate to make a corset. But the question remained, from both the guards and the newspaper readers at home: Why? Why go through all that trouble if the women were separated from the public, with no regular visitors, no callers, and no one to see them but the others serving time?</p>
<p id="H4qvQ3">The same question holds today. While commissary lists sell small-ticket items like foundation and lip gloss, inmates still DIY their own beauty supplies to make up for the limited options, using everything from Kool-Aid, to make hair dye, to melted Jolly Ranchers, for gel. But while interesting, recent <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2014/11/19/fakeup">reporting on fakeup hacks</a> opened an important dialogue about incarcerated women and what we expect from the prison system, triggered by a seemingly small-potatoes question: Why should the incarcerated be allowed access to makeup?</p>
<p id="vvrwhc">Scroll to the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/fashion-blog/2014/dec/18/fakeup-how-female-prisoners-in-the-us-ad-lib-their-cosmetics">comment section</a> of these articles and you’ll see angry readers take to their keyboards, firing off opinions like “It’s prison, not a vacation,” or “They broke the law, they don’t deserve CoverGirl,” stressing the point that the penitentiary is meant to punish the people inside it, not give them beauty salons and mascara wands. </p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="saWvdo"><q>“They broke the law, they don’t deserve CoverGirl.”</q></aside></div>
<p id="kZt0uE">And therein lies the problem. Makeup is a much bigger analogy for other issues in our society and prison system. Is the point of incarceration to rehabilitate, or to break?</p>
<p id="47n7ej">The history of compacts in prisons shows us that allowing women beauty products has had positive reintegrating results. Pin curls and shampoo signified salvation in 1958, when the Women's House of Detention in Greenwich Village <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1958/07/22/81920822.html?action=click&contentCollection=Archives&module=ArticleEndCTA&region=ArchiveBody&pgtype=article&pageNumber=31">opened a hair salon</a> inside its walls. The parlor was opened to teach the women a skill so they could quickly rejoin society once they were released, and seeing how they were freed with an average of 25 cents in cash — or a little over two dollars in today’s times — preparing them for work was a common-sense policy.</p>
<p id="tgWsDc">But the need for salon chairs wasn’t just about money; it was also necessary to help fix a much deeper problem. Edith Imre, an owner of a successful beauty shop on 56th Street, was the one who advocated for the salon after she saw the conditions of the prison meant to house the 600-plus inmates. “No matter what she has done, every woman has a <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1958/07/22/81920822.html?action=click&contentCollection=Archives&module=ArticleEndCTA&region=ArchiveBody&pgtype=article&pageNumber=31">right to self-esteem</a>,” Imre said. And that's what it's all about: not having a new dye job on the taxpayer’s dollar, as the naysayers say, but holding on to a sense of control and learning how to rebuild (or even discover) one’s sense of worth. </p>
<aside id="alCVW1"><div data-anthem-component="actionbox" data-anthem-component-data="{"title":"Like what you're reading?","description":"Get Racked's twice-weekly newsletter for more shopping recommendations.","label":"SIGN UP","url":"https://confirmsubscription.com/h/d/59F5932428C4E6CD"}"></div></aside><p id="qiw7kK">This is important when you look at the statistics: While men make up 93 percent of the <a href="http://womensjustice.net/illinois">prison population today</a>, the women’s prison population has <a href="http://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Incarcerated-Women-and-Girls.pdf">grown by 700 percent</a>, rising from 26,378 in 1980 to 215,332 in 2014. But since men make up the bulk, the entire system has been designed to handle their specific risks and needs, ignoring women completely. “I think of it as a system that was originally and primarily designed by men for men, to house a predominantly violent male population, for the most part. Many of the facilities were designed with that assumption, even if it wasn’t true,” Deanne Benos, founder of the <a href="http://womensjustice.net/about">Women’s Justice Initiative</a>, says. </p>
<p id="uHSnCO">The WJI works to address the lack of gender-responsive practices for women throughout the criminal justice system, acknowledging that while men and women are equal, they’re differently situated, meaning that the policies and reforms that work on men won’t necessarily work on women. But, suffice it to say, they have their work cut out for them. “Largely, the rules and policies and staff are predominantly male,” Benos says. “And any forms of misogyny and bigotry in our society just realizes itself in spades in a setting of command and control like a prison.”</p>
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<cite>Photo: Carlos Chavez/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Inmates watch TV in the converted day room at the California Institution for Women in Chino, CA.</figcaption>
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<p id="I5FJiZ">Which is why women, and particularly women of color, are consistently ignored in the conversation of criminal-justice reform.</p>
<p id="LD1bzc">Race is a relevant factor: While the rate of African-American women in prison has been falling, and the rate of white women has been increasing (rising by 56 percent), women of color are still unfairly impacted. Black women are incarcerated at <a href="http://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Incarcerated-Women-and-Girls.pdf">more than twice the rate</a> of white women, even though they only make up 12.7 percent of the female population, with white women making up 61.7 percent. </p>
<p id="x578XZ">And while most of these women are behind bars because they broke a law — which is why so many people react with a battle cry when they hear inmates are offered Maybelline while serving their time — most people don’t realize what we’re actually doing is criminalizing survival. Almost 90 percent of women in the system have experienced sexual abuse and violence, and most during their childhoods. Their past puts them on a direct path toward incarceration, so much so that Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) called it the “survivor-of-sexual-trauma-to-prison pipeline.”</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="H6RYy8"><q>To look at the breakdown, an overwhelming 86 percent are sexual abuse survivors, 60 percent experienced caregiver violence, and over 90 percent of women who were convicted of murdering a partner were victims of partner abuse.</q></aside></div>
<p id="7Qxhzw">To look at the breakdown, an overwhelming <a href="https://storage.googleapis.com/vera-web-assets/downloads/Publications/overlooked-women-and-jails-report/legacy_downloads/overlooked-women-and-jails-fact-sheet.pdf">86 percent are sexual abuse survivors</a>, 60 percent experienced caregiver violence, and over <a href="http://www.correctionalassociation.org/domestic-violence-survivors-justice-act-campaign">90 percent</a> of women who were convicted of murdering a partner were victims of partner abuse. Then take into account that 32 percent have serious mental illnesses and 82 percent suffer drug or alcohol addiction, which oftentimes was used to self-medicate in order to cope with the side effects of their past. These statistics create a domino effect that’s hard to ignore: Those with histories of abuse are 77 percent more likely to be arrested than women who did not suffer that kind of trauma.</p>
<p id="T3TxPk">Knowing this, we then throw these women into a setting that could trigger their past and PTSD — where they’re put through strip searches and pat downs, have their movement restricted, get verbally torn down, and are disciplined by looming male authority figures who trip violent memories.</p>
<p id="qrWGRE">Rehabilitate, or break? </p>
<p id="ZIJ1ZJ">The reason so many women reach for makeup while confined isn’t just to feel pretty, but to rebuild their self-worth and to feel like they have some sense of choice. Especially considering how choice was taken out of their hands throughout their history. Using pen ink for mascara has a deeper psychological basis than we’re giving it credit for.</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="SjHEpi"><q>“Having someone have that degree of control over you — deciding whether or not you can wear makeup — is a power dynamic of taking choice away.”</q></aside></div>
<p id="jrbtQY">“We lost so much, and most women in the penitentiary have been abused and traumatized for most of their lives,” Monica Cosby, who was incarcerated for 20 years and is now a prison-reform activist, shares. Not being able to put on makeup feeds into that abusive loop. “Having someone have that degree of control over you — deciding whether or not you can wear makeup — is a power dynamic of taking choice away, and it’s abuse.”</p>
<p id="zIO0e4">While makeup won’t solve these deep issues, the need for it behind bars is a mental, not a physical, one.</p>
<p id="3JjW39">Which is why history is full of women pulling the same fakeup moves. In <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F48791359%2F%3Fterms%3Dprison%252Bmakeup&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2018%2F1%2F3%2F16797784%2Fmakeup-prison" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">1946 Ottawa</a>, incarcerated women picked out prison books in crimson binding, soak the covers, and use the red stain as blush or lipstick. In the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1977/09/25/archives/new-jersey-weekly-county-prisoners-escape-uniformity-inmates-escape.html?_r=1">1970s in Bedford Hills</a>, women improvised makeup by dipping a finger into toothpaste, rubbing it on a colored picture in a magazine, and using the pigment as eyeshadow. Another fan favorite technique was using melted black shoe polish as mascara, and mixing Noxzema and coffee to make liquid makeup. </p>
<p id="FLDaXb">Benos points out that on the outside, society teaches women they have to be beautiful to be worth anything, and then once they’re in prison, we mock, demoralize, and punish them for trying to keep to that standard. “It’s just like a trick,” she says. “We send these messages to them in public, we fail them when we don’t stop patterns of abuse, then we criminalize their arrival, and put them into a setting where we don't allow them to practice the self care that will ideally help them when they return back to society, to their families, and to our communities.” In response to the people who feel like prison shouldn’t be “soft” on inmates, she stresses, “You’re putting people further into the system.” Rather than preparing them for a second chance, we’re ensuring they’ll got through a revolving door back into the penitentiary. </p>
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<cite>Photo: Andre Chung for The Washington Post via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Prisoners at Maryland’s Correctional Institution for Women talking to Stephen Moyer, Secretary of the Maryland Dept of Public Safety and Correctional Services.</figcaption>
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<p id="hxj5F5">In Benos’s studies, she received regular reports from staffers and inmates alike on how the system works to damage rather than rehabilitate. “When Logan in Illinois was converted into a women's prison, they herded the women together in buses from the other prisons and lined them up outside,” she says. “A high-level source shared with us that the person that was in charge of the lines that day was lining the women up saying, ‘You women are nasty; you’re just a bunch of smelly whores. You’re disgusting.’ Constant words that challenge your self-esteem.”</p>
<p id="PZnxvw">There was a reason why women licked the paint off of walls for concealer or crushed pencil crayons into lotion to create foundation. “Letting us wear makeup or letting us not wear makeup is just part of the bigger issue of our humanity being recognized,” Cosby says. “The more you dehumanize someone, the less human they become. We struggle to just stay human and maintain whatever kind of dignity we can there.”</p>
<p id="eQ2wIX">Sometimes, these acts of dehumanization happened when penitentiaries would take men’s prison policies and paste them on top of women’s facilities, not caring that people from different ends of the gender spectrum respond very differently to procedures. </p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="sjZxnf"><q>“The more you dehumanize someone, the less human they become. We struggle to just stay human and maintain whatever kind of dignity we can there.”</q></aside></div>
<p id="UUZ9rH">In men’s state prisons in Illinois, for example, hairstyles like braids and dreadlocks were banned because they were thought of as a place to hide contraband. So when a Chicago prison was flipped in 2013 to a women’s penitentiary, they decided that women who had those hairstyles could not wear them if they wanted to see their children, visit family, or go to court visits. In one case, a male officer forced a black woman to take her braids out to go to a court date, and he couldn’t understand why she broke down and began to cry hysterically. </p>
<p id="oCPEc6">“You know, prison is a choice,” he told Benos. “They came here out of choice, so they don’t get to choose their hairstyle; they don’t get those things. They made choices in life.” </p>
<p id="DC9MJh">“Of course there are choices in life that people have, but there are risk factors that are not a choice,” Benos explains. “Child sexual abuse is not a choice. The lack of social services and mental healthcare that might miss a young girl and her family, that might throw her into homelessness and drug abuse, isn’t really a question of choice anymore. The real choice is [that of] those in power to decide what is the most productive and humane way for the individual and for society and our communities to address these issues.” When you consider the fact that the officer could have just used a wand to check for contraband, it’s apparent these protocols are designed to degrade, not to protect.</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="NNMHZ7"><q> “You know, prison is a choice. They came here out of choice, so they don’t get to choose their hairstyle; they don’t get those things. They made choices in life.” </q></aside></div>
<p id="cTC2ji">It’s not surprising that the woman reacted as emotionally as she did; not when you understand the big picture. “You come from a position of no control in your life because you come from a setting of abuse,” Benos says, “and then the one thing that allows you to put on your face for the world — your coping mechanism — is your appearance, and then someone takes that power from you; it’s going to create a set of deeper mental health issue and behavioral issues.”</p>
<p id="F7VG2l">Talking about makeup in prisons isn’t just talking about eyeshadow palettes for sale at the commissary or having hair relaxers stocked on salon shelves. It’s about addressing the fact that a huge portion of our society is funneled into a pipeline that lands in a cell. We know this, but don’t implement the kind of policies that will help rehabilitate them toward a better life after their sentence. We take a hard-nosed stance on law and order, but there’s almost no conversation about how to help people re-enter society once they have paid their dues.</p>
<p id="Wlkkpx">And reenter they will. In fact, 98 percent of people leave prison and re-enter society, coming to a neighborhood near you.</p>
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<cite>Photo: Barbara Davidson/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>At the Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, California, LaSonya Wells (left) and Karima Holloway listen to fellow inmate Gina Tatum talk about budget cuts to their rehabilitation program.</figcaption>
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<p id="YMwsWc">“What kind of people do we want coming back?” asks Jennifer Vollen-Katz, executive director of the <a href="http://www.thejha.org/">John Howard Association</a>, a prison watchdog and correctional policy organization. “Do we want people who are even more broken when they came in? Or do we want people who had an opportunity to better themselves? To get educated, acquire job skills, training? But [who] also had an opportunity to work on the thing that was part of the problem that led them to whatever behavior led them to prison.” </p>
<p id="uNxHCT">Many Americans believe the point of the prison system is to hurt. But we should be more interested in outcomes. “I would advocate that as a society we stop being mad and we start being realistic and we start thinking about what it is that we want out of this system,” Vollen-Katz says.</p>
<p id="7GAYuj">And this realization isn’t new. In a 1934 article in the<em> </em><a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F203856365%2F%3Fterms%3Dprison%2Bcosmetics&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2018%2F1%2F3%2F16797784%2Fmakeup-prison" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><em>Battle Creek Enquirer</em></a>, the Michigan newspaper pointed out that the prisoner doesn’t stand a chance if “a system is imposed which tends to embitter rather than rehabilitate him.” The chaplain argued that the 1930s system was not only filling up prisons faster than they were being built, but also making hardened criminals out of the people “who could be rehabilitated to normal, safe, and productive lives.”</p>
<p id="A5r3vW">Knowing what we know, we have to ask ourselves: When will we start realizing it’s more beneficial to help rather than to hurt? And if we can’t relent on something as inconsequential as a tube of mascara, then when will we take action on bigger issues, such as <a href="https://nomoremoneybail.org/">abolishing money bail</a>, which criminalizes the poor; challenging the <a href="https://www.aclu.org/issues/juvenile-justice/school-prison-pipeline">school-to-prison pipeline</a>; stopping the<a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2016/01/prisons_have_become_warehouses_for_the_mentally_ill.html"> torture of the mentally ill</a> in confinement; or objecting to the end of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/09/skype-for-jailed-video-calls-prisons-replace-in-person-visits">in-person prison visits</a>? </p>
<p id="oWKa65">And when we instead stomp our feet and yell “lock ’em up” at the most vulnerable among us, what, exactly, does that say about us a society?</p>
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https://www.racked.com/2018/1/3/16797784/makeup-prisonMarlen Komar2017-10-30T09:32:01-04:002017-10-30T09:32:01-04:00What the Civil Rights Movement Has to Do With Denim
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<figcaption>People holding hands and singing during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Washington DC, August 23, 1963. | Photo: Paul Schutzer/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)</figcaption>
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<p>The history of blue jeans has been whitewashed.</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="j8CP5F">The rugged Marlboro Man. Brooding James Dean. Dusty gold miners and slicked-hair greasers with cigarette boxes rolled up in their T-shirt sleeves. The history of blue jeans is about as American as apple pie, coming from working-class origins with a pioneering spirit. </p>
<p id="KrYyWd">But do you know what else is all-American? Having the weekday lunch special hurled at you during a counter sit-in, facing a raised baton during a protest march, and walking a mile to work because your civil rights boycott has reached the bus, all while wearing those same cuffed jeans. The only difference is that while history likes to recount the Americana-heavy scenes of gold rush camps and Route 64 drives when discussing denim’s past, it’s not often that you hear about the freedom fighters who, in large part, helped bring the look to the mainstream.</p>
<p id="86rLyc">While Elvis Presley and the cast of <em>Rebel </em><em>W</em><em>ithout a Cause</em> helped spark a new appreciation for bootcuts among the Youthquake culture, most people considered them too closely linked with the working man to wear them. For example, in 1969 nearly 200 students got suspended from their high school for<a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F188256187%2F%3Fterms%3Dblue%2Bjeans&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2017%2F10%2F30%2F16496866%2Fdenim-civil-rights-movement-blue-jeans-history" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank"> wearing dark blue pants</a> because they too closely resembled blue jeans. They were mostly something you wore while cleaning out the garage, not something you put on for cocktails. </p>
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<cite>Photo: NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Mississippi SNCC March Coordinator Joyce Ladner during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom political rally in Washington, DC, on August 28th, 1963.</figcaption>
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<p id="BJctxe">But the revolutionaries on the front pages of newspapers helped denim become a staple in everyday people’s wardrobes. “It took Martin Luther King’s march on Washington to make them popular,” wrote Caroline A. Jones, author of <em>Machine in the Studio: Constructing the Postwar American Artist. “</em>It was here that civil rights activists were photographed wearing the <a href="https://books.google.de/books?id=B-fpIbJZzmYC&pg=PA402&dq=civil+rights+activists+used+blue+jeans&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjRmJ639OXWAhVCWRoKHTSAD2gQ6AEIPzAE#v=onepage&q=civil%20rights%20activists%20used%20blue%20jeans&f=false">poor sharecropper's blue denim overalls</a> to dramatize how little had been accomplished since Reconstruction.”</p>
<p id="IWigxO">While at first activists snapped on their overalls out of practicality — they were tired of mending tears from attack dogs and high-pressure hoses, and jeans could withstand the abuse — they also put them on to bring back a not-too-distant past. They used to be referred to as ‘<a href="https://jsh.rice.edu/uploadedFiles/Ford%20JSH79%20Aug13.pdf">Negro clothes</a>’ — slave owners bought denim for their enslaved workers, partly because the material was sturdy, and partly because it <a href="https://jsh.rice.edu/uploadedFiles/Ford%20JSH79%20Aug13.pdf">helped contrast them</a> against the linen suits and lace parasols of plantation families — and their inclusion in the civil rights movement suggested that pointed societal divide. For much of the black community, the activists’ symbolism was obvious. Separate then; separate now.</p>
<p id="FORO0X">“There were some African Americans who felt that to wear jeans was disrespectful to yourself,” says James Sullivan, author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jeans-Cultural-History-American-Icon/dp/1592402895"><em>Jeans: A Cultural History of an American Icon</em></a>. “For many African Americans, denim workwear represented a painful reminder of the old sharecropper system. James Brown, for one, refused to wear jeans, and for years forbade his band members from wearing them.” Sullivan points out that if you look at pictures of the sons and daughters of the sharecropper generations of the early 20th century who moved north to get away from the fields, you’ll notice that they wore suits, ties, and hats to their factory jobs, partly to create that distance. </p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="KaTrM5"><q>“It took Martin Luther King's march on Washington to make them popular... civil rights activists were photographed wearing the poor sharecropper's blue denim overalls to dramatize how little had been accomplished since Reconstruction.”</q></aside></div>
<p id="3UUnX0">Although some protestors knew their white neighbors would chafe against seeing them walk the streets in sharecropper clothes — and used that to their advantage — the strategy wasn't promoted by all Freedom Fighters. Respectability politics was still a popular tactic for gaining support. In 1965, before gearing up to drive down to three hard-core segregationist states in the Deep South to register people to vote, a NAACP representative went to the front of the room during a secret civil rights meeting in New York City, and flatly declared, “We don't want any girls in blue jeans. We don't want any boys in beards.” They wanted people’s hair pressed and collars crisp, knowing how quickly the evening news would misrepresent them if they came in anything less than their Sunday best.</p>
<p id="2YZthp">But the responsibility to always look respectable wasn’t just a strategy move, but a burden forced on activists in order to keep white supremacists away from their front doorsteps. As Dr. Tanisha C. Ford explains in her essay “SNCC Women, Denim, and the Politics of Dress,” white supremacists would specifically <a href="https://jsh.rice.edu/uploadedFiles/Ford%20JSH79%20Aug13.pdf">attack the moral character of black women</a> as a reason to keep their neighborhoods separate and their voting boxes white. Black women had to go above and beyond to prove their respectability in order to protect their characters, and the men and children in their communities. By looking like the type of woman who could bake a bundt cake in a French twist, black women were able to show their Christian propriety and manners, contrasting themselves against the racist stereotypes their white neighbors tried to pin on them. Jeans were not an option.</p>
<p id="ixsRdt">But as more and more groups headed south for registration projects, more volunteers started to trade in their bobby socks for bootcuts. </p>
<p id="rOsri5">It wasn’t just for comfort and durability. To register to vote as a black person was to risk losing your job, or worse, your life by inviting the Klu Klux Klan to your backyard. The fear was evident in the statistics — in Mississippi, <a href="https://books.google.de/books?id=eRcU6gDHV10C&pg=PT38&dq=black+civil+rights+and+jeans+1960s&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjIhJeKv-TWAhXRPFAKHccMAAYQ6AEIWDAI#v=onepage&q=jeans&f=false">fewer than 7 percent</a> of the eligible black population was on the voters list, and in many rural Southern counties there were none at all. And here were these student groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee trying to convince black farmers to risk everything, handing them a clipboard while wearing penny loafers. It created a class divide, and blue jeans were not only the language that would bridge the gap between them, but their show of solidarity. </p>
<aside id="M7POtW"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"racked_national"}'></div></aside><p id="c2WcBs">Even more than that, by putting on the working man’s uniform, revolutionaries showed they didn’t have to dress in a way their <a href="https://jsh.rice.edu/uploadedFiles/Ford%20JSH79%20Aug13.pdf">white peers deemed “acceptable”</a> in order to gain the rights that were theirs to begin with. Even if activists showed up in banker’s pinstripes, that wouldn’t convert segregationists into allies. “No matter what the whites’ sense of justice tells them needs to be done for Negroes, are they going to let themselves to be <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F302309813%2F%3Fterms%3Dblue%2Bjeans%2Bnegroes&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2017%2F10%2F30%2F16496866%2Fdenim-civil-rights-movement-blue-jeans-history" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">bulldozed into doing it</a>?” asked the <em>Missouri Springfield Leader and Press</em> in 1967. Whites refused to be “pushed” toward equality. The movement’s clothes weren’t the issue, and having their appearance policed was just another way of being controlled.</p>
<p id="kGmM7l">Denim was very much the look of the black freedom struggle, but like most nonconformist messages — from the anti-establishment punks with their queen’s tartan to the anti-capitalist beatniks with their berets — it was co-opted by the mainstream; taken out of its original context in order to fit into people’s wardrobes. But unlike those well-known and heavily referenced underground movements, most people aren’t aware which of their denim styles were copied from civil rights protestors. Instead, those same styles were lauded as “new.”</p>
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<figcaption>Stokely Carmichael, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and a leader in the Black Panther political party, talking to members of the press at the House Rules Committee.</figcaption>
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<p id="WOWH2J">“The Trucker code that Levis introduced in the ’60s at the height of the hippie heyday was basically a throwback to the denim bond jacket style that the working and sharecropper class has been wearing for decades,” Sullivan explains. What we think of as the classic Levis jacket today was introduced as a new style in 1962, but poor sharecroppers in the Deep South have been wearing it for decades. “If it was cold enough to wear jackets, they would wear overalls or jeans, and then a barn jacket on top. The connection to the rural, back-to-the-land working class of the sharecroppers inspired, in some part, the all-denim, top-to-bottom look that hippies ended up wearing.” Hippies aimed to be “salt of the earth” with their communes and community farms, but for black sharecroppers, the style was a function of poverty, not fashion — it could not be so easily removed. But the look hit the mainstream, and soon every high school kid and suburban dad was wearing the style. </p>
<p id="5pVFW6">While the history of blue jeans has roots in dude ranches and rockabilly dance halls, it also winds through the struggle for equality and racial justice. It’s an era as important and American as the Wild West. Not only ranchers wore denim jackets, but also black tenant farmers; not only cowboys lived in their jeans, but bondmen in fields; and it wasn’t only truckers in overalls driving through the night down to Dixie, but Civil Rights icons with registration lists. They should be remembered as clearly and loudly as the rest. </p>
https://www.racked.com/2017/10/30/16496866/denim-civil-rights-movement-blue-jeans-historyMarlen Komar2017-08-28T09:32:01-04:002017-08-28T09:32:01-04:00In the Cold War, Makeup Was a Weapon
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<figcaption>Photo: Corry/Stringer/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>How red lipstick was part of the US’s arsenal. </p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="C2rVPc">When you think of the Cold War, you probably don't think first of Dior-clad moms with atomic hairstyles vacuuming their living rooms in heels. Or Elizabeth Arden-inspired women, with their red lipstick and stiletto nails, clicking their way down Third Avenue in a sweep of crinoline and gingham. Or sweater-set-wearing girls getting the ribbon in their hair just right before heading out the door. But in a war of ideologies — where it was consumerism versus communism, Us versus Them — women became soldiers and their compacts became bullets.</p>
<p id="3EfEb2">When the freedom to spend separated Americans from Soviets, consuming — everything from ranch homes to the newest TV sets — became patriotic. But there was a special emphasis on how those purchases especially helped women: With all the new vacuum cleaners and washing machines available, that freed up more time for homemakers, allowing Mrs. Housewife to slick on her lipstick, smooth her bubble cut, and serve her casserole dinner with a smile. </p>
<p id="BI2yAY">That idea became clear in the “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=wFRSat2M0YEC&pg=PA88&dq=kitchen+debate+nixon&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj3wJrDwt7VAhUDyYMKHUOjCmcQ6AEILDAB#v=onepage&q=kitchen%20debate%20nixon&f=false">Kitchen Debate</a>," a televised conversation where President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev stood in a model home’s kitchen display, a setup meant to resemble the suburbs, goading each other's shortcomings. Microwaves and electric ovens became metaphors for ideologies, and pointing at the shiny, white linoleum, Nixon said, "In America, we like to make things easier for women. What we want to do, is make life more easy for our housewives." While the Russians might have been ahead with rockets and Sputnik, Nixon said, America would come out on top because of domesticity.</p>
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<p id="EXBZDj">And this is where compacts became ammunition. To show how communism was failing the Soviet Union, Russian women were cast as haggard, poor, exploited workers — a far cry from the Pucci-wearing housewives loading up their American dishwashers in stainless steel kitchens. </p>
<p id="1xN0Qo">A June Cleaver wife was like a victory sign being thrown up, and newspapers helped lob the propaganda. Headline after headline broke a kind of dystopia from behind the Iron Curtain, where women’s looks were proof their country has disappointed them. They were described as tough, short, and hefty, with shoddy cosmetics and sad wardrobes. Captions painted them as “<a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F180082084%2F%3Fterms%3Drussian%252Bwomen&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2017%2F8%2F28%2F16164052%2Fcold-war-makeup" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">frizzle-haired</a>” and “shiny-nosed,” with “<a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F213439769%2F%3Fterms%3Drussian%252Bwomen&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2017%2F8%2F28%2F16164052%2Fcold-war-makeup" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">useful pool-table legs</a>” and figures that wouldn’t tempt a second peek. “They can mix and carry mortar and set ballast steel rails on the railroads. They are female but not, in our word, ‘feminine,’” wrote <em>The Shreveport Times</em> in 1959. </p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="UBQLlx"><q>Russian women were cast as haggard, poor, exploited workers — a far cry from the Pucci-wearing housewives loading up their American dishwashers in stainless steel kitchens. </q></aside></div>
<p id="jaZnhs">On the flip side, even if the States were bombed, their women would rise out of the rubble perfectly coiffed and ready to tend to their steaming homes. The federal Civil Defense Administration claimed that American homemakers could still cook and tend to their families “with <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=7BXRDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA101&lpg=PA101&dq=Civil+Defense+Administration+with+%22bricks+and+rubble%22&source=bl&ots=qe1vG7hZUB&sig=mIx9ElRAOyubK2QUUIK2IvK8Ec0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjWm5SIw97VAhWl7YMKHe_pBxUQ6AEIOTAG#v=onepage&q=Civil%20Defense%20Administration%20with%20%22bricks%20and%20rubble%22&f=false">bricks and rubble</a>” after an atomic attack.</p>
<p id="fNdL1k">As for their Eastern European counterparts, it wasn’t that they were naturally unkempt; it was because of the inferior political system. Remember, American women were no strangers to difficult work — in World War II they stood in production lines and built rifles with their manicured hands. But while they worked, factories supplied lipsticks in changing rooms and booked makeup workshops for breaks to help them retain their femininity. To be a woman doing a man's job — and not keeping up her appearance — was a big tell that one’s party was failing her. </p>
<p id="vKCXWC">But over in the USSR, there was a whole other narrative. Russia stressed that it was a woman's world, where women were the ones running labs, directing research institutes, running steel factories, and taking podiums to both teach and run the country. Communism liberated them. Government newspapers advised men to <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1957/09/22/96026093.html?action=click&contentCollection=Archives&module=ArticleEndCTA&region=ArchiveBody&pgtype=article&pageNumber=23">take their wives to restaurants</a> so that they could spend more time at work and less time at such "unproductive tasks" like staying home and cooking for their families. Women didn’t need the trappings of consumerism, like hair appointments and the latest lipstick colors, because they were independent wage earners — they didn’t need to hook husbands in to provide for them. Flashy fashions were seen as toys for the inactive woman, which became clear when, on a visit to New York City, Soviet ladies asked with amusement if Manhattan housewives washed their faces first or just <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F213439282%2F%3Fterms%3Drussian%252Bwomen&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2017%2F8%2F28%2F16164052%2Fcold-war-makeup" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">put on lipstick</a> before getting out of bed. </p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="EJFUr7"><q>But over in the USSR, there was a whole other narrative. Russia stressed that it was a woman's world.</q></aside></div>
<p id="ymYeCR">“The Soviet feminine ideal in films and television was of a strong woman who could please her man, raise the children, and oversee the construction of an apartment block,” Gregory Feifer, former NPR Moscow correspondent and author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0092XN8L4/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1"><em>Russians: The People Behind the Power</em></a>, shares in an interview. “The lack of decent clothes, let alone beautiful ones, along with a constant shortage of makeup and many other consumer goods reinforced the image of women as regular proletarians. At the same time, sex and seduction were represented as Western vices in Russian propaganda, a reflection of decadent capitalist society.”</p>
<p id="0vLGiO">But while the Soviet state used its unmade women to show how liberated they were from the Stepford Wives across the Atlantic, America had its own propaganda to counter with. “A woman in Russia has a chance to be almost anything,” <em>Look </em>magazine agreed in 1954. “Except a woman.” They weren’t forced out of the home because their country believed in equality, the press assured its readers. It was because the wages were so low it was impossible for Soviet men to carry the household on their own. "Married women have to take jobs in the majority of cases because their <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1951/05/07/87255618.html?action=click&contentCollection=Archives&module=ArticleEndCTA&region=ArchiveBody&pgtype=article&pageNumber=24">husbands do not earn enough</a> to support their families at the prevailing high prices, yet they concurrently have to bear the burdens of keeping house and raising children,” <em>The</em><em> New York Times</em> reported in 1951. “This is a peculiar kind of ‘equality’ and ‘progress.’” </p>
<aside id="K1xLxx"><div data-anthem-component="actionbox" data-anthem-component-data="{"title":"Like what you're reading?","description":"Get the Racked newsletter for even more great stories, every day.","label":"SIGN UP","url":"http://newsletters.racked.com/h/d/C4595F1D5E0088D6?_ga=1.36581730.373041903.1487623315"}"></div></aside><p id="xGKr7e">The press would go out of its way to find women that would prove their point, like Oksana Kasenkina, who <a href="https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.67971/2015.67971.The-Readers-Digest-Omnivus_djvu.txt">leapt from a window</a> of the Russian consulate in New York in order not to go back. A former Russian school teacher, she was supposedly being held captive in the building until a steamer could take her back to the USSR. Rather than being forced to return, she jumped to a possible death. After her heroic escape, the press urged her to explain why she took such extremes to avoid home. She shared that the only women that escaped the “<a href="http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9505E2DC133CE23BBC4C51DFB5668382659EDE">life of backbreaking labor</a>, hunger, and privation” were the “wives and sweethearts of the Communist aristocracy.” And because of all of this suffering, a Soviet woman “ages fast and dies prematurely.” In comparison, American women, with their powdered noses, were proof that their political system took care of its citizens in tangible, easy-to-measure ways. </p>
<p id="FraVJV">Moscow liked to brag that they had women doctors and scientists, newspapers wrote, but visitors reported that streets were plowed of snow “by an army of women, many of them old.” They were constantly bent over double because of the Communist machine. </p>
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<p id="og6EqA">“In Sochi, women in overalls and babushkas <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9402E1DE1331E43ABC4A53DFB7678383649EDE">shovel mortar on a construction site</a>. On a Kremlin wall, women make the repairs. In the provinces, women drive the street cars. In every town, women with twig brooms sweep the streets, day and night,” the<em> New York Times</em> reported in 1958. "Of all the human sights in the Soviet Union, none makes a more lasting impression on a Westerner than the legions of stolid, dowdy, hard-working women." </p>
<p id="i4x2sf">But that didn’t mean Soviet women weren’t dying to break free. From stories about these women shopping for <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F195865340%2F%3Fterms%3Drussian%252Bwomen&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2017%2F8%2F28%2F16164052%2Fcold-war-makeup" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">“Western look” shoes</a> on the Berlin black market to paying a shocking amount of money for stockings, the press stressed that they wished they could resemble their Western sisters. “When Moscow women get the chance, they don't mind <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F230036595%2F%3Fterms%3Drussian%252Bwomen&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2017%2F8%2F28%2F16164052%2Fcold-war-makeup" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">paying almost a week's wages</a> for a pair of American nylons of the latest design,” <em>Fort Lauderdale News </em>reported in 1953. “There is a black market in the stockings, and well-informed persons in Moscow told me that a pair of black-heel and black-seam nylons could be bought there for around 150 rubles. That's the equivalent of $37.50 at the official rate.” Compare that to the <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F160742592%2F%3Fterms%3Dcost%252Bof%252Bnylon%252Bstockings&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2017%2F8%2F28%2F16164052%2Fcold-war-makeup" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">$3.70 for a bundle of three</a> that American women spent. </p>
<p id="789ttB">Russian women had the same instincts as women elsewhere, the news explained. They wanted powder compacts and the latest department-store dresses, prettier stockings and wardrobes that weren’t beige — anything to make themselves more beautiful. “So when Russian women have an opportunity to buy Western things they rush for the chance." Even the wives and companions of high Russian officials were rumored to<a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F311368519%2F%3Fterms%3Drussian%252Bwomen%252Blipstick&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2017%2F8%2F28%2F16164052%2Fcold-war-makeup" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank"> cut out dresses from old American magazines</a> and bring them secretly to tailor appointments, bribing dressmakers to craft them the out-of-date fashions so they could feel more beautiful. Because of this, American women were encouraged to look as glamorous and polished as possible. These red lipsticked ladies with their petticoat skirts and clicking heels were proof that America was winning the war. </p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="oEF5UG"><q>Russian women had the same instincts as women elsewhere, the news explained. They wanted powder compacts and the latest department store dresses.</q></aside></div>
<p id="liH7qP">But while the press highlighted how Russian women wanted to be more like Americans, American women were making strides to be more like their comrade counterparts. In 1953, a<a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F198688156%2F%3Fterms%3Dwomen%252Bworking&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2017%2F8%2F28%2F16164052%2Fcold-war-makeup" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank"> survey by the Labor Department</a> showed that a whopping 19 million women made up the female workforce, with more than half of them married. And it wasn’t just newlywed wives who had yet to clear out their desks that made that statistic — “older women” between the ages of 35 and 45 were 40 percent of that bracket. "In the past 13 years, there's been almost <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F80045130%2F%3Fterms%3Dwomen%252Bworking&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2017%2F8%2F28%2F16164052%2Fcold-war-makeup" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">a complete reversal</a> in the proportion of single and married women holding jobs," the women's bureau said.</p>
<p id="LQw1Ih">So in the end, there wasn’t really much difference between the June Cleavers of the West and the Grindls of the East. “There's <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1514733&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers.com%2Fimage%2F144708817%2F%3Fterms%3Drussian%252Bwomen&referrer=racked.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.racked.com%2F2017%2F8%2F28%2F16164052%2Fcold-war-makeup" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">not much difference between women</a> no matter what language they speak — English or Russian,” Olga Curtis, a female journalist, penned for <em>Asbury Park Press</em> in 1960. "It's nice to report that women on Gorky street, Moscow, are very much like the women on State street in Chicago." Even if the lady comrades believed in and supported their regime to the fullest, that didn’t mean they still couldn’t want “prettier dresses and two lipsticks in every purse,” as Curtis put it. Just like in the States, they came in all shapes and sizes, worked to support their families, dabbled in different styles, and taught their daughters how to become women. </p>
<p id="pcF57D">Women were women after all, no matter if they were in Omaha or Omsk. </p>
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https://www.racked.com/2017/8/28/16164052/cold-war-makeupMarlen Komar