Getting things done

Females, fashion and forging futures

Troublemakers in Trousers: Women and What They Wore to Get Things Done profiles 21 women from history who, for various reasons, dressed in men’s clothes. It includes a pharaoh, warriors and pirates. There’s Toni Stone, the first woman to play major league baseball. There’s Lilian Bland, who made history in 1910 as the first woman to design, build and fly her own motorpowered aircraft using bicycle handlebars, an empty whiskey bottle, and her aunt’s ear trumpet. There’s Marguerite Johnson, who, during World War II, became the first Black woman streetcar conductor. Marguerite would later change her name to Maya Angelou.

The idea for the book occurred to me as I was doing research for another project and stumbled across this fact: until a 200-year-old law was revoked in 2013, women in Paris could be arrested for wearing pants in public. I then became fascinated by the challenges so many women have faced for most of history, negotiating the world in long skirts.

Of course, in certain cultures and periods of history, men have also worn (and still wear) long, dress-like garments, but where that happens it tends to make practical sense for them to do so (such as living in hot climates). Women’s fashions, very broadly speaking, have historically rarely been practical.

But Troublemakers isn’t about general fashion trends. It’s much more personal. It gave me the chance to write about women I’ve long admired. Every one of them demonstrated strength and courage in the face of injustice, double standards, mockery, and life-threatening danger. Here is how my author’s note begins: “When I was in thirdgrade, I showed up at school wearing a black and white checked pantsuit. It was the seventies, so I’m pretty sure it was one hundred percent polyester. I thought I looked extremely “dy-no-mite”. My class was going on a field trip— some sort of outdoor nature expedition—and I figured that surely the dress code for girls wouldn’t apply that day. I was wrong.

The school principal called my parents. My dad had to leave work and bring me a skirt to change into.

That was a pivotal moment in my life—an awakening of sorts. I became suddenly aware that double standards and dumb rules existed, and a lot of them were unfair to girls in particular.” I connected with every one of these women and I hope my readers will too.

SARAH ALBEE, Author of Troublemakers in Trousers: published by Charlesbridge

www.sarahalbeebooks.com

TURN TO PAGE 48 to read about COP27 at Putney High School