Perhaps some of you have asked yourself why some people who have lived in the USA they usually call panties "bloomers". As in many other cases, the word "bloomers" is a euphemism; that is, an expression that substitutes another that is considered evil, obscene or offensive. It comes to us from the surname of an extraordinary woman: Amelia Bloomer. Suffragette, editor and reformer of women's clothing, He named a more comfortable fashion for women by promoting it in their magazine.
The suffragists used as a model for their own newspapers the publication of Amelia Bloomer, which she defined as: "a necessary instrument to spread the truth of a new gospel to women".
Amelia Bloomer
Amelia Bloomer, As a young woman, Jenks was born in 1818 into a modest family in the city of Homer, New York. As was usual at the time, her regulated studies lasted only a few years, which was not an impediment to her having worked as a teacher before she was 17 years old. After that age, he moved to live with his sister married to Waterloo and after a year began working as a governess. When he was 22 years old, he married Dexter Bloomer, a lawyer, who was the owner of a New York newspaper: the County Courier. Dexter encouraged her to write on it.
Amelia, a fighter woman, attended the first convention in favor of women's rights held in the USA. and that took place in Seneca Falls. One year after the famous meeting, Amelia Bloomer decided to start a project: a female newspaper, becoming the first woman to be the owner and editor of a newspaper dedicated to this specific audience. Although initially shared the address with a committee of women from the anti-alcohol group "La Temperance", who were the ones who chose the name of the publication: "The Lily", shortly after, Amelia Bloomer He decided to take the reins alone. He changed the address and began to include topics on women's rights and subtitled the magazine as "dedicated to the emancipation of women from intemperance, injustice, prejudice and intolerance." The Lily (The Lily) was a great impulse for the suffrage ideas and delved into such important and controversial issues for women as on issues of social reform, property rights, slavery, employment, education and the reform of the feminine dress.
It is because of this crusade that he undertook to modify the feminine clothes, that his name is still used in some places as a euphemism for the panties, although initially "bloomers" designated only a type of bulging panties that you will surely remember having seen Some older woman in your family.
The idea of the new way of dressing women was not Amelia Bloomer , but Elizabeth Smith Miller, a great defender of women's rights. This woman created a suit that she thought was more rational to replace the uncomfortable skirts of the moment. Her dress was composed of loose pants gathered at the ankles, similar to the bloomers worn by women from the Middle East and Central Asia, topped by a short dress or a two pieces also short. Her brother-in-law, friend of Amelia Bloomer, adopted the dress and came dressed in the editor's office. When she saw it, she decided that it was what the woman needed to get rid of the constraints imposed by fashion and her magazine became the main propaganda of the new feminine dress. It is for this divulging work that the fashion of the bloomers is known as Bloomer.
However, the novel designs were not very successful despite the fact that Amelia Bloomer He made an effort to dress them and to publish patterns and ideas so that all the women could make them in their homes. Many magazines and newspapers, especially dedicated to the masculine public, made mockery and befa of the attire, to such a point that little by little it was left by its defenders who folded to the relative comfort of the crinoline.
Despite this failure and that he sold the magazine to another suffrage player a few years after starting its edition, Amelia Bloomer continued working as a writer for the women's rights and in favor of the female sugragio throughout his life. He died at 76 years old. Although not as well known as other sugragistas, her attempts to reform feminine dress contributed to achieve advances in that field.
There are many women who have gone down in history anonymously or are remembered only for part of their many achievements. This is the case of Amelia Bloomer , but in Supercurioso we have also approached the figure of another extaordinary woman: María la Judía, the first alchemist in history that was the one that gave name to the popula ¡Baño María! Did you know?