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Hoop Mania: Fashion, Identity, and Religious Condemnation in Nineteenth-Century Utah
Hoop Mania: Fashion, Identity, and Religious Condemnation in Nineteenth-Century Utah
BY MICHELLE HILL
The hoopskirt usually conjures up images of Scarlet O’Hara and southern belles. The fashion for hoopskirts (or crinoline) in the mid-nineteenth century was not limited to the South, however, as it spread across the United States, even to remote places like Utah. With the arrival of the Utah Expedition in 1858, the isolation of the Mormons began to crumble. The increasing number of outsiders coming into Utah Territory brought changes in many areas of the pioneers’ lives, including fashion. Some of the women who accompanied the army were stylish officers’ wives acquainted with the latest styles hoopskirts. Their clothing, along with that of other newcomers to the territory, fueled debates over self-reliance, women’s roles and identity, and the encroachment of worldly influences. Mormon leaders decried women’s appetite for expensive imported fabrics, dresses, and accessories. Religious and social opposition to this new vogue existed outside of Utah as well.
Women’s fashion raised questions about sexuality, gender, class, and morality in Victorian Europe and the United States. The wider societal issues raised by dress in the nineteenth century were mirrored in the changing social and material culture of the Mormons caused by the de-isolation of Utah and documented in the continuing opposition Mormon leaders had toward fashion. Fashion was, for church leaders, a sign of encroaching worldliness as well as dependence on outside economic and social forces. The reactions of religious leaders in Utah (as well as throughout the United States), journalists, and women themselves demonstrate the power of social change as seen through controversial fashions like crinoline. And for those Utah women who wore hoops, the style may well have been not only an act of fashion but also one of self-expression.
When the first Mormon pioneers came over the plains to Utah in the 1840s, they wore clothing of the day. Their simple clothes were modified for the hard journey, although they might have brought some of their finery if they had room in their wagons. When the Latter-day Saints fled Nauvoo they left most of their belongings behind and were limited in what non-essentials they could bring in wagons. The supplies recommended for the trip to the Salt Lake Valley included a one-hundred-pound allotment for clothing and bedding per person, but often the wagons were overloaded with personal belongings and some needed to be thrown out. 1 Fine silks and dresses with all the trimmings were most likely not allowed to take up vital space in the wagons, though women might have packed one nice dress for special occasions and kept this dress until it wore out. 2
Once Mormon pioneers settled in the Salt Lake Valley, the desire for nice clothing from the East was apparently revived. Some of the earliest contact the Mormons had with the outside world was in 1849 with miners traveling across Utah to California. They bartered goods with the Mormons and brought in things like lace, gloves, and buttons that helped stimulate the early economy of Utah. 3 However, geographical isolation and lack of money kept the women in Utah from keeping up with fashions as easily as the rest of the country. Over time, new emigrants came into Utah and brought with them much-needed supplies, including store-bought cloth, often at request of those already living in Salt Lake City. 4 These droves of new emigrants—Utah’s population increased by almost 30,000 people between 1850 and 1860—might have brought with them updated fashions of the time, but it is unlikely. 5 Throughout later emigrations, Brigham Young designated a limit on baggage, encouraging only a “change of clothing.” 6 Most pioneers who came to Utah during this time were poor Americans or poor immigrants from Europe and, with the baggage restriction, they could have brought few of the latest fashions. This was one of the factors causing the clothing to have little embellishment and simple design during the first decade in the valley. 7
One of the main ways Latter-day Saints learned about changes in eastern fashions was through the press. Periodicals from the states made it to Utah through later pioneers, businesses trading with the territory, and a sporadic mail system that developed over the course of the 1850s. The mail was anywhere from a few weeks to a few months late on a regular basis because of the hardships of traveling through rough and sparsely populated terrain. Many articles in the Deseret News speak of mail coming from the East and the difficulties the mail faced. 8 Despite this, eastern magazines managed to find their way to Utah. Excerpts from Graham’s Magazine show up in the Deseret News as early as 1851, demonstrating an interest in articles from women’s magazines. The Deseret News likewise made nods to Harper’s Magazine (1852), Godey’s Lady’s Book (1855), and Peterson’s (1855) early in the decade. 9 Godey’s itself published a poem written by a Utahn in1853; by 1859, the journal reported that “Subscribers in Utah is an old story with us.” 10 In 1861 the main mail route to California switched to the Central Route through Utah in response to the beginning of the Civil War, which likely improved mail service in Utah, further contributing to the breakdown of the area’s isolation. 11 In addition to recent immigrants and mail, returning LDS missionaries also brought descriptions of changing styles and, occasionally, actual dresses. 12
To understand how fashion evolved in Utah it is necessary to first discuss the styles of the 1840s and changes that occurred in the 1850s and 1860s. A typical dress of the 1840s consisted of a Y-shaped bodice that came to a point at a low waist and full skirts (fig. 1). This taste for full skirts had begun in the late 1820s, and the circumference of the skirts increased with every decade. To widen skirts, the creators of women’s fashion had to be inventive. At first petticoats were starched to achieve rigidity. When that was not sufficient, women wore layers of petticoats. As the fashion for fuller skirts increased through the 1830s, starched petticoats could not hold the weight of the fabric in the desired conical shape. Around 1839, crinoline fabric, which was stiffened with horsehair woven into cotton or linen, was invented, and this helped for a time. Other innovations, such as petticoats reinforced with cords or whalebone, attempted to keep up with the ever-increasing skirt size. 13 The key invention that helped skirts reach their largest size was the steel cage crinoline, patented in England in 1856 (fig. 2). 14
Figure 1. The dresses in this image reflect typical fashion of the 1840s, with Y-shaped bodies, tight sleeves, low sloping shoulders, and full skirts. This style of shoulder and skirt inhibited movement.
Godey’s Lady’s Book, March 1844
Improvements in steel manufacturing made by the Bessemer process in 1856 made this invention possible. The Bessemer process allowed for cheaper production of steel, which could then be used in commonplace products such as clothing. 15 Other inventors capitalized on the basic format of the steel cage, and new prototypes came out every year, some made from steel and some from whalebone.
In the eastern United States the hoopskirt had gained a wide usage even before the steel version appeared. In fact the fashion was so common that easterners assumed that it was worn by everyone, including women in Utah. In July 1856, for instance, the New York Times mentioned a parade which a fake Brigham Young and six of his wives are fashionably dressed in hoopskirts, holding a sign lampooning two of the hot political topics of the day: polygamy and slavery. As the “Mormon Problem” of polygamy became an important national issue, Mormons continued to gain coverage in newspapers and illustrated weeklies of the day. With the mustering
of troops by President Buchanan in 1857 in response to reports of trouble in Utah Territory, representations of Mormons in the eastern media grew. Various cartoons published in Harper’s Weekly, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, and Nick Nax between 1857 and 1858 depict Mormon women in fancy dresses with hoopskirts. 16 An 1858 Nick Nax cartoon pictured Mormon women taking up the cause against the army, even standing watch with their hoopskirts lined up in rows to make it look like there were more troops in their “Crinoline Camps.” Punch, meanwhile, joked that President Buchanan should just send fashion magazines to Utah because “the necessity of Crinoline will destroy polygamy. It will render Brigham Young himself unable to support more wives than one.” 17 The irony of these cartoons was that the major merchants had left Utah in the fall of 1857 after hearing about the troops. 18 They would not have been around to supply any crinoline, even if that fashion had already reached the territory.
Figure 2. A steel cage crinoline, circa 1860, in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. —
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Mormon women struggled to live in a harsh environment but desired to preserve civility in their homes and regain some of what they were used to in the eastern United States or Europe. 19 Despite this desire to emulate current fashions they most likely did not wear the clothes ascribed to them by the eastern weekly magazines at this stage. In addition, mail service from the East was sporadic during the Utah War. 20 Thus the women of Utah were not receiving many fashion magazines that would have helped them dress as depicted in the newspapers. It was not until the firm encampment of the army and the return of non-Mormon merchants in 1858 that the stage was set for eastern goods to flood into Utah. 21
Although women in Utah probably knew of the hoopskirt from eastern newspapers and women’s magazines, fashion in Utah was still a bit behind the times in the mid-1850s. References to hoopskirts in Utah were rare before the arrival of the Utah Expedition, while many references to hoops and “hoop mania” appeared shortly thereafter and in the following years. Albert Sidney Johnston’s army brought with it officers’ wives and the new governor’s wife, Elizabeth Cumming, who were apparently well versed in the latest styles. Account books from the sutlers of Camp Floyd record purchases of fabric, ribbon, whalebone, and hoops, confirming that the officers’ wives and women of the camp continued to dress in their eastern fashions (fig. 3). 22 The appearance of more and more outsiders during and after the arrival of the army seems to have accelerated the desire for current fashion amongst the women of Utah. With the expedition came merchants who provided hoops to the army women. The establishment of these merchants may have assisted in creating a market for the product outside of newly arrived women.
With the army now based at Camp Floyd, the accounts of hoops began in earnest in the newspapers. The first written account mentioning hoops that is not an excerpt from an eastern newspaper comes from a poem written by W. W. Phelps about the twin sisters of wealth and poverty in the May 11, 1859, issue of the Deseret News. Wealth of course was the sister bedecked in hoops. As a prominent Mormon, Phelps’s poem probably held more sway with the women then previous articles found in the Deseret News.
The next reference to hoops comes from Utah’s second-oldest and generally anti-Mormon newspaper, the Valley Tan. This article documents the introduction of hoops into the satirical arsenal used by the editors of the Valley Tan in their tense battle of words with the prevailing Mormon culture. In late August 1859, the Valley Tan abstracted a sermon given by Elder Heber C. Kimball and embellished Kimball’s actual remarks by including a humorous section on hoopskirts that appeared nowhere in his original address. Kimball reportedly said, “I don’t know what to think of those hoops:—the darn things swell so. I’ve a notion to try ’em myself. I don’t believe they’d keep me from bursting. Now I’ll bet there’ll be five women wearing hoops to where there wasn’t one before.” 23 The Journal of Discourses records no such remarks. It does, however, note a diatribe against the army in which Kimball stated, “There were never such things known in these valleys before the army came. I never knew of such drunkenness, whoring or murder, until then.” 24 Church leaders were fearful of the negative influence the army would have on Mormon women. As Kimball had cautioned the Latter-day Saints on an earlier occasion, “I understand those officers out yonder have got a good many women with them and I do not believe there are twenty in the whole camp but that are whores, and they designed to come here to set you a pattern and to moralize this community.” 25
Figure 3. Detail of a page from an 1859 Camp Floyd account book, with a line reading “1 Set Brass Hoops for a Lady.” —
Courtesy Utah State Archives
Days later, the Valley Tan chronicled the “Progress of Hoop Mania” with an account—most likely satirized—of a young woman coming to the newspaper’s print shop. She was looking for raw hide hoops for her dress because someone had told her this was a tan shop. The printers gave her instead a copy of their last issue recounting Heber C. Kimball’s rant against hoops and pointed her out the door. She promptly went on her way to find a real tan shop, not deterred in her quest for some hoops. 26 The Hoop Mania recorded in 1859 in Utah reflects the Crinoline Mania recorded in the July 18, 1857, issue of Punch. The dates of these two articles demonstrates how the mania for fashion in Utah was at least a full two years behind that of Europe. Despite its satirical slant, the belief expressed in the Valley Tan that leaders of the Mormon church were against hoops was not untrue. Multiple sermons given by Young, Kimball, and other LDS leaders from as early as the 1850s chastised women for their unrighteous and often financially burdening desires for the latest fashion. Mormon leaders and non-Mormons alike also equated consumption of goods, especially fashion, with a woman’s level of spirituality or morality. The Deseret News reflected an obsession with female extravagance throughout the latter half of the 1850s. 27 Conversely, Young believed Mormon women should set the moral example: “We have the words of life; we are the head; and we should lead in fashions and in everything that is right and proper; and not be led by the world.” 28
Advertisements for imported hoopskirts appeared in Utah for the first time in September 1859 in the Deseret News with a notice from Rogers, Shropshire, and Ross for crinoline and other fine ladies’ fashions. Such advertisements continued until 1871, as the fashion changed in 1868 from hoops to bustles. 29 Brigham Young initially vehemently opposed imported goods because he feared dependency on the national economy, thus setting the stage for non-Mormon merchants to set up shop. Eventually so many non-Mormon merchants were selling imported goods that Young began advocating cooperatives stores run by Mormons so they could regain some control of trade in the territory. 30
Although shopkeepers advertised hoopskirts as early as 1859, the fashion did not seem to catch on more widely for a few more years, either because of a lack of money or a lack of fashion sense by the women of Utah Territory. Either way, visitors to the territory remarked on the decided lack of hoops amongst the Mormon women. Clara E. Downes, an immigrant passing through Utah in 1860, visited a Mormon worship service and recorded, “There were about 1,000 present the people were dressed very plain fashion there was none. Some had hoops and some were hoopless.” 31 Other accounts indicate that it took years for hoops to catch on. The American Traveller reported upon a visit to Provo in 1858 that “crinoline is unknown in the valleys of the mountains.” 32 A little over a year later a Boston paper wrote—perhaps with exaggeration—that “when the army entered Utah, the women were barefooted and ragged, and now are comfortably clad, and even hooped. Crinoline has become fashionable in Utah.” 33 However, in 1860 the famous English explorer Richard Burton visited Utah and described the clothing as made of plain cloth, occasionally silk, and sometimes faded finery such as you would see in “an Old-Country Village.” 34 As late as 1863, the adoption of the style was still spotty, but by 1865 it had become common, although Utah remained years behind the fashion centers of the eastern United States. 35 Many of these reports should be read with caution because they often contradict each other and many of them seem to be sensationalized. Reading between the lines, however, reveals that contemporary fashion was slowly making its way into Utah, mirroring the breakup of isolation, an increased desire for outside commercial goods, and a decrease in the LDS church’s ability to so tightly dictate its members’ indulgence in worldly dress and behavior.
Figure 4. Eliza R. Snow, as photographed by Marsena Cannon in the early to mid-1850s. Here, Snow wears a dress with the Y-shaped bodice and straight sleeves of the 1840s, as well as the long corset style, popular until 1853, that flattened women’s chests. The date for this photograph is based on the 1846 Mormon exit from Nauvoo; it seems there was no cameraman among them until Cannon arrived, as evidenced in his advertisement for daguerreotypes in the December 1850 Deseret News.
Courtesy of the LDS Church History Library
Figure 5. Eliza R. Snow, 1866, photographed by Savage and Ottinger. Snow’s dress here is typical of the 1860s and has the typical bell shape created by a hoop.
Courtesy of the LDS Church History Library
Photographs and material evidence support the timeline established by written accounts for the adoption of hoops, with the first photographic evidence of women in Utah who might be wearing hoops dating from around 1860 to 1863. 36 Images of prominent women show the shift in fashion amongst Mormon women from the 1850s to the 1860s. One photograph of Eliza R. Snow, probably from the early to mid-1850s, shows her in late 1840s fashion (fig. 4). 37 In an 1866 photograph Snow wears a dress in an 1860s style (fig. 5) that would require a hoop, demonstrating that even the most prominent Mormon women had adopted the hoopskirt at least by this late date. A photograph of Sarah Carmichael from 1862 definitively shows that she is wearing a hoop, since the chair next to her has flattened the front of her hoop and pushed it out in the back (fig. 6). The establishment of Camp Douglas in 1862 may have furthered the hoop craze since the wives of officers appear to have worn hoops as well, as seen in an undated photograph from Camp Douglas. The presence of crinoline at Camp Douglas can be further corroborated by the many advertisements for crinoline in the Union Vedette newspaper, which was published at the camp, from 1863 to 1865. 38 Many other photographs of women support these findings, 39 and two surviving wire hoops—likely from the late 1860s—document the use of hoops in Utah (figs. 7 and 8). 40
Figure 6. Sarah Elizabeth Carmichael, circa 1862, photographed by Savage and Ottinger. Notice how the chair presses on Carmichael’s dress and pushes the hoop back.
Courtesy, Harold B. Lee Library, BYU
Figure 7. A wire hoop owned by Pamela Barlow Thompson, who was born in 1844. Although a handwritten note dates this item to 1855, it is highly unlikely that Thompson would have worn a hoopskirt at age eleven. In addition, steel wire hoops were not invented until 1855. This hoop might have been manufactured in 1855 but it is not likely that is was being used in Utah by Thompson in 1855.
Utah Pioneer Costume and Manners Project, item 238. University of Utah
Other photographs illustrate that even Brigham Young’s family was not immune to the fashion changes. Images of his wives, for instance, show the change over time toward the adoption of hoops. In a photograph from the late 1850s, Margaret Pierce Young wears a pointed bodice in the style of the late 1840s to early 1850s, demonstrating that some women had at least one fancy dress and that the fashion was still somewhat behind. 41 A photograph of Brigham with Amelia Folsom Young, likely taken in 1863, shows Amelia in a dress consistent with eastern fashions, although decidedly subdued in color and decoration. The full skirts seem to match those of other women in hoops. Finally, in a group portrait from circa 1862, Young’s ten oldest daughters wear clothing appropriate for young women of the 1860s, off-the-shoulder dresses with wide skirts similar to those seen in pictures from the East (fig. 9). 42
By the 1860s many prominent people, including Brigham Young’s wives and daughters, wore current fashions that reflected their status and relative wealth. 43 Yet these fashions seemed to contradict sermons given from Young’s own mouth, as well as from Heber C. Kimball and other church leaders. In 1852 Young had instructed men and women to provide for their families with homemade products. Ten years later he still implored, “I have seen the handsomest homemade plaid in this city that I ever saw in any country. I would like to see them wear it when they go to parties, instead of donning silks and satins.” 44 Mormon beliefs about worldliness came from the general Puritan leanings of many religious groups in America, which emphasized that a plain and simple but clean appearance was best suited to a religious person. 45 The LDS Doctrine and Covenants commands “let all thy garments be plain, and their beauty the beauty of the work of thine own hands.” 46
Figure 8. A wire hoop owned by one of the plural wives of John B. Maiben, Elizabeth and Phoebe, who were also sisters. Records do not state which wife owned this hoop. A handwritten note dates this piece to 1853, which is unlikely since wire hoops were not invented until 1855.
Utah Pioneer Costume and Manners Project, item 574. University of Utah
Latter-day Saints struggled between the religious injunction to be humble and at the same time a zeal to excel and bring Mormon culture to a higher standard. 47 In one sermon, Brigham Young lauded home manufacture that was plain and useful and in another sermon urged the Saints to create “silks and satins of the finest quality and patterns from the looms of Deseret, onward and upward until the whole earth in filled with the glory of God.” 48
Mormon leaders were not the first to champion home manufacture for self-sufficiency and as a guard against worldliness. Home manufacture became a leading symbol of American virtue in the years leading up to and following the American Revolution; imported clothing was, in turn, a symbol of dependency on, and thus subjugation to, a foreign entity. 49 The same desire for independence from any foreign group, which the Mormons considered the United States to be, was a consistent theme of their sermons. 50 Despite railing against imported clothing, these sermons were not about punishing the Saints with ugly homemade clothes but rather were more of an attempt to support an independent economy that did not rise and fall with the economy of their perceived persecutors. The beginning of the Civil War provided proof to Mormons that the policy of self-sufficiency had been a good one. 51
Hoops were first specifically singled out as an object of ridicule by church leaders in a June 7, 1863, sermon by Brigham Young, who was again urging homemade items over imported fashions:
Figure 9. The ten oldest daughters of Brigham Young and his plural wives; these young women were all born in 1849 and 1850. This photograph was likely taken in 1862 but probably not before 1860, because the girls look about thirteen or fourteen years old.
Utah State Historical Society
Young and other leaders set themselves up as examples to the church members in their sermons. He declared, “I am perfectly able to send to the East and buy what I and my family need, but there is a mighty influence in a good example, and what would my precept be worth without my example.” 53 Heber C. Kimball was the most adamant of the church leaders advocating for home manufacture and against worldly fashions. In a December 1857 sermon Kimball boldly stated, “I am opposed to your nasty fashions and everything you wear for the sake of fashion,” continuing, “You may take all such dresses and new fashions, and inquire into their origin, and you will find, as a general thing, they are produced by the whores of the great cities of the world.” 54 Kimball promised, “I am going to work to put into the earth every kind of seed, and I want my wives to take an interest in these things, in raising the flax and making the cloth.” 55 Earlier, Kimball had stated that one of his wives was a spinner of wool who never wore calico, which apparently elicited a response of laughter from the crowd, since he responded “You may laugh at it.” 56 It seems. Kimball often promised women in his household would get their act together, since he was still promising it in 1862. 57
Even though Kimball and Young preached against elaborate fashions, their wives and daughters apparently had other ideas. Both men often revealed a lack of control over their families’ actions. In 1857, speaking generally, Kimball stated “I have one or two women that I cannot control, and never did; and I would as soon try to control a rebellious mule as to control them.” 58 In sermons from the 1870s, many years after hoops had gone out of fashion, Young disclosed he was still trying to get his wives and daughters to give up their apparently unceasing appetite for fashion. He remarked in 1870:
In another instance, Young set himself and his family up as paragons of virtue by noting that “My wives dress very plainly” but then qualified that statement: “I sometimes ask them the utility of some of the stripes and puffs which I see on their dresses.” 60 After so many deprivations in isolation, the small rebellions of the women of Kimball and Young’s families demonstrate a larger struggle for Mormon women searching for autonomy. Hoopskirts and other styles might well have represented a form of self-expression to these women, one they were unwilling to give up.
Many later sermons continued to exhort women to plainness as new fashion trends passed through Utah, demonstrating that LDS leaders could not control the women in their own families or the women of the church in general. 61 An anecdote about Mary Hafen, a pioneer of Washington County, further reinforces the idea that Brigham Young’s wives did not practice what they preached as they traveled around the territory advocating simplicity of dress:
Although few indications exist of how women themselves felt about the rebukes from their male leaders, this brief exchange reveals frustration with the constant harping from Salt Lake City on the subject of dress. Likewise, Susa Young Gates, writing about the retrenchment efforts, reported that “the sacrifice was big to them; small wonder there was shrinking and doubt.” 63
Brigham Young was not the first religious or social leader to preach against fashions like the hoopskirt nor was he the last. Since the 1600s, many predecessors of the hoopskirt had been maligned by pastors and priests who feared that these fashions gave women more freedom from the heavy skirts of earlier times and represented foreign influences from places such as France. 64 Likewise, periodicals in the nineteenth century regularly reported on reverends and pastors questioning the morality of fashionable clothing and going so far as to say wearing hoops was unchristian and indecent, a message surprisingly similar to Young’s. 65
There was more to the question of hoopskirts than morality, however, as the story of Mary Hafen’s bread and molasses demonstrates: it was also an issue of class, something Mormons felt keenly. While LDS church leaders frowned upon class distinctions, some people in Utah managed to be more prosperous than others. More importantly, Mormons wanted to aspire to the levels of civility they had enjoyed before they joined the church and left their comforts behind; they wanted to show that they had achieved a level of refinement comparable to their non-Mormon counterparts. 66 After years of hard living on the plains and no matter the exhortations against fashion by their leaders, many Mormon women wanted to be like other Victorian women.
Generally, in the nineteenth century—an age of increasing democratization of fashion due to factory-made clothing and a rising middle class—the lower classes tried to emulate the fashions that had begun with the wealthy. 67 Fashion was a place where people could demonstrate aspirations to higher social classes, and “consumption became almost a symbol of what it was to be middle-class.” 68 Fashion was a sign of leisure, and leisure was a sign of wealth. 69 However, there was a fine line that women had to walk to not be overly ostentatious or else they risked crossing over into vulgarity. Dress was thus an indication of the wearer’s level of morality. 70 Extravagance could also be a sign of immoral women who worshipped fashion and bankrupted their husbands to buy yards of fabric, something often mocked in the leading magazines of the day. 71 Mormon culture also equated loose women and excesses of dress. 72
Just so, the silliness of the hoopskirt was a favorite topic in the contemporary press. An 1857 issue of Punch, for instance, illustrated the impracticality of sitting in hoops with a drawing of a young woman encased by her hoops. 73 Although this embarrassing faux-pas was possible, the spring-like quality of the steel or whalebone actually caused the hoops to collapse upon sitting and most women would have known how to sit properly in their skirts before going out in public. Punch might have known that was the case, but it was underscoring the absurdity of a fashion that men did not like and did not see as practical. Story after farcical story exists of women being unable to fit in carriages, having their skirts flipped over, knocking down plants and children, and even being lifted in and out of crinolines with a crane. 74
The conflict over women’s fashions in the nineteenth century reflects the larger struggle of women’s control over their clothing and bodies, and society’s reaction to changing female roles. Accordingly, contemporaries and scholars alike have offered a host of interpretations of hoopskirts. The Victorian period was the heyday of the so-called cult of true womanhood, when both men and women advocated a return to traditional domestic roles for women. The popularity of this movement was a reaction against trends seen in society that were threatening the stability of traditional gender roles and sexuality. 75 Proponents of true womanhood elevated women as keepers of civility and portrayed them as passionless figures who helped control men’s lust. 76 Pride in the woman’s sphere was a hallmark of the philosophy of true womanhood and can be seen in the satisfaction Mormon women took in their domestic production and female associations. 77 Meanwhile, many female defenders of polygamy used the philosophies of true womanhood to explain how polygamy was the perfect system for corralling men’s appetites. 78 In one interpretation, the cult of true womanhood and its interest in elevating women went hand-in-hand with the choice of women to wear hoops, because “women willingly adopted the hoop as a means of protecting, controlling, and, ultimately, liberating female sexuality.” 79 Hoops could represent the protection of women, as they kept men at a distance, and a mimicry of pregnancy, reaffirming the purpose of the anatomy of women. 80
If hoops have been portrayed as a barrier to sexuality, they have also been seen as a sign of eroticism and immorality. Some historians have offered a feminist reading of Victorian women’s clothing, remarking on its physical and social restrictiveness as well as the coinciding objectification of women by men. Notably Helene E. Roberts called Victorian women “exquisite slaves,” suggesting “an underlying masochism.” 81 In this case, the restrictive clothing did the abusing, caging the wearer and inflicting physical pain upon her for the gaze of the man. 82 The hoopskirt also had erotic elements, which were noted by some contemporary men. The swinging crinoline allowed for glimpses of ankles and legs, and the possibility of the hoop overturning and revealing undergarments was titillating. 83 And according to nineteenth-century feminist dress reformers, women’s fashions were a tool of men to rule women and incite lust. 84
Other historians question this interpretation because of the amount of vitriol leveled against the hoopskirt in the male-dominated media of the nineteenth century: men mocked the fashion at every opportunity. Lynda Nead posits that men hated the hoopskirt so much because it posed a safety risk and because its physical size symbolically showed the expansion of women beyond their place in society, literally and figuratively crowding men out. 85 Newspapers and magazines of the day record the struggle men had with the hoopskirt; as one scholar puts it, “the hoop represented a female-dominated sexual and social space, which they could neither share nor control. Their only weapon against this female fortress was satire, and it proved ineffectual.” 86
Teachings from the leaders of the church suggest that Mormon men also hated contemporary fashions and were concerned about gender roles but not as much about eroticism of women’s clothing. Louis Kern, in his study of sexuality in religious utopias, briefly discusses fashion and sexuality in Mormon culture. He states emphatically, “Mormons, although concerned about economy, were more concerned with the seductive and contraceptive aspects of female fashion than anything else.” 87 Little evidence exists to support this assertion; in fact the opposite is more correct. 88 Church leaders condemned fashion in an attempt to stem the tide of worldliness in consumption and excess. 89 Young called for modesty for both men and women but rarely in reference to clothing. LDS authorities preached warning sermons encouraging the women not to become like women of the world rather than chastisements for inciting a mass hysteria of lust among the men. Young and Kimball were much more concerned with the economic impact of worldly fashions and the encouragement of home manufacture.
Contemporaries also often ridiculed hoopskirts for distorting women’s natural shape and way of walking. 90 Both male doctors and female dress and health reformers saw the fashion as artificial and therefore immoral. Men advocated that women return to a natural shape so they could get back to their natural role of procreation. 91 Feminist dress reformers wanted a return to a natural shape for opposite reasons. They felt that if women could show their natural form then they would be freed from social constraints and allowed all rights that men had. 92 However, the general complaint for most women’s fashions, especially crinoline, was simply that they were ridiculous—as were their wearers. 93
All told, the sheer volume of anti-crinoline sentiment in the media demonstrates that men were not in favor of many of women’s fashions, which contradicts many of the arguments of both nineteenth- and twentieth-century feminists. Accordingly, other historians have interpreted Victorian fashion in ways that relate to female agency rather than male pleasure. David Kunzle argues that Victorian women wore fashionable clothing not as “exquisite slaves” but rather in subversion of social norms—including those from medical and religious leaders—in an attempt to assert their own identity and because they liked it. 94 In this interpretation, the woman who wore hoops was not a “sexually and creatively inhibited Victorian woman” but rather a deliberately sexual and creative Victorian woman. 95 Fashion, especially in the rising consumer culture of the nineteenth century, was a tool used by both men and women to indicate social status, morality, and gender. For women, fashion was a place not dominated by men where they could take control of their sexuality, construct an identity, and be daring and creative. 96 This was true for Mormon women, as evidenced by the “passive rebellion” of the women in the families of the leaders of the church, not to mention the women of the entire church. 97
Nineteenth-century Mormons were an interesting mixture of traditional values and revolutionary views on relationships and roles for men and women and society. Noted religion scholar Lawrence Foster has remarked that the Mormons were “more Victorian than . . . Victorians,” especially in their views of male authority and patriarchy. 98 In fashion, however, women had an aspect of their lives they controlled because they were the sole creators of clothing. Rather than signifying sin or corruption to women, the desire to add ribbons and frills to their dresses was an act of reclaiming some of the civility they had left behind and expressing themselves individually. It is not surprising that women put much of their self-expression and pride of creation into production of silk, cotton, and wool and the making of clothing.
In some ways, many Mormons were actually more progressive in gender roles than the rest of Victorian society, as seen by their promotion of women’s education and voting rights, as well as their participation in dress reform. 99 Mormon women were interested early in clothing reform, which often went hand in hand with female liberation and suffrage, forming a Female Council of Health in 1851 to discuss alternatives to the long skirts and heavy petticoats of the day. 100 As frontier women they needed clothing that allowed them to work with more ease of movement. Eventually the “Deseret Costume,” a variation on the Bloomer costume (fig. 10), was created; even Brigham Young promoted it. 101 In reality most Mormon women did not wear the bloomer or Deseret Costume and, like Amelia Bloomer herself, they may have found hoopskirts convenient enough that the bloomer was not needed. 102
Figure 10. The famous bloomer costume, named after the suffragist Amelia Bloomer. Dress reform for women represented freedom from the heavy petticoats of the 1820s to 1840s, and women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Bloomer advocated for it. When the crinoline was invented, Bloomer relinquished the bloomer costume, stating that the crinoline was freeing enough to allow her to return to dresses.
Library of Congress
Other changes in fashion during this period included the adoption of women’s bifurcated underpants, called drawers or pantaloons. Bifurcated undergarments protected women from accidently exposing too much leg because of the swaying of their hoopskirts. The drawers also protected their modesty if, heaven forbid, the wind caught their dress or they sat awkwardly and the hoop lifted up. However, the widespread adoption of drawers was uniformly ridiculed because bifurcated garments were seen as masculine and dangerously too close in style to trousers. Men considered trousers as solely the prerogative of men. 103 For men, these liberations in clothing represented a loosening of morals and sexuality and a movement to be more socially free as men were. Most of the objections to the bloomer and the hoop voiced in the media focused less on morality and more on the blurring of traditional gender roles. A fear that women would become more like men was a major point the detractors of dress reform made. 104
Church leaders’ views did echo general fears across the country that women were getting out of their spheres and “endeavoring to be a man,” as the Deseret News put it in 1862. 105 Likewise, Kimball warned against women who wore unmentionables (meaning trousers or drawers) and did men’s work. 106 It is important to note that the theme of women becoming like men, which runs through the discourse of Victorian society, was also being dealt with in Utah. Concerns about extravagant dress and dress reform were just one side of the ever-evolving debate over the place of women in society.
In 1867, Mormon leaders took an important step in addressing changing roles for women by reestablishing a church-wide Relief Society. As Kami Wilson puts it, “the Relief Society became the answer to the woman question in Utah. The society provided a structure within which women could improve themselves, function outside of the home in building the kingdom of God, and stretch the borders of their sphere in an acceptable and appropriate manner.” 107
The 1860s signaled a decade of increased adherence to the ideals of retrenchment and home manufacture as outside forces threatened the isolation of Utah and the arrival of the Transcontinental Railroad finally blew it apart. However, it was these very outside forces—including occupying forces, the Overland Mail, and the trade with new mines—that bolstered the economy in Utah enough to fund the Mormons’ experiments in self sufficiency. 108 The coming of the train prompted one last call for the Mormon women to band together against the forces of Babylon. The reformation of Relief Societies from 1867 to 1868 served to help women avoid the temptations the railroad would bring. Additionally “Retrenchment Societies” of young women, encouraged plain dress and homemade clothing. Later, in the 1870s and 1880s, the LDS church addressed problems with buying from non-Mormon merchants by creating cooperative stores, but these cooperatives were created after the heyday of the hoopskirt. 109 By the time the train arrived, hoops had begun to go out of fashion so the preaching of the leaders turned away from the evils of hoopskirts; however, there was no shortage of worldly women’s fashions for to focus on.
Brigham Young was one of many people in the increasingly industrialized society of the mid-nineteenth century who looked back to as previous age and saw its home manufacture as more simple, ideal, and pure. 110 Mormon leaders continued to support home manufacture for many years after the fashion for hoops had changed and with the arrival of the train the warnings grew in force. Then, eventually, as it did during the American Revolution, rough homespun gave way to readymade. Mormons let go of the virtues of clothing made by hand and turned instead to store-bought clothing as a symbol the success and refinement of God’s chosen people. 111
For a brief time, hoop mania captivated the women of Utah. The timing of this trend coincided with a breakdown of isolation. The historical evidence of hoopskirt advertisements, diaries, letters, and photographs demonstrate that hoops were being worn by some in Utah at least by 1860. The fashion was probably not widespread until 1863 at the earliest and then only among the relatively wealthy and prominent and those of middle class who aspired to follow them. Despite their isolation, the Mormons struggle with hoop mania mirrored larger issues of sexuality, gender, class, and morality being debated throughout the United States. In addition, hoop mania was a symptom of a larger dispute over the roles of women in Mormon society. The fears of the Mormon leaders were justified in that the fashions and women of the outside world did set a pattern, and the women of Utah followed suit, at least with hoops.
—Notes
1 Nauvoo Neighbor, October 29, 1845. This is a list of recommended provisions and weights for the journey. See also Polly Aird, “Bound for Zion: The Ten- and Thirteen-Pound Emigrating Companies, 1853–54,” Utah Historical Quarterly 70, no. 4 (2002): 318; Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, ed., Personal Writings of Eliza Roxcy Snow (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2000), 19.
2 Ruth Vickers Clayton, “Clothing and the Temporal Kingdom: Mormon Clothing Practices, 1847 to 1887” (PhD diss., Purdue University, 1987), 41.
3 Fairfax Proudfit Walkup, “The Sunbonnet Woman: Fashions in Utah Pioneer Costume,” Utah Humanities Review 1, no. 3 (July 1947): 219.
4 Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, “Women’s Work on the Mormon Frontier,” Utah Historical Quarterly 49, no. 3 (1981): 284.
5 U.S. Department of the Interior, Census Office, Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C., 1901), 2–3.
6 Brigham Young to Franklin D. Richards (September 30, 1855), Millennial Star, December 22, 1855. See also Young to Orson Pratt, January 31, 1857.
7 Walkup, “Sunbonnet Woman” 204.
8 Deseret News, May 14, 1856.
9 Deseret News, January 25, 1851, February 21, 1852, February 1, 1855, October 3, 1855.
10 Perry E. Brocchus, “A Grave in the Wilderness,” Godey’s Lady’s Book, August 1853, 546; “Godey’s Arm Chair,” Godey’s Lady’s Book, July 1859, 90.
11 A. R. Mortensen, “A Pioneer Paper Mirrors the Breakup of Isolation in the Great Basin,” Utah Historical Quarterly 20 (1952): 85.
12 Walkup, “Sunbonnet Woman,” 205.
13 Norah Waugh, Corsets and Crinolines (London: B. T. Batsford, 1954), 93; David Hough Jr., Hoop skirt, U.S. Patent 4584, June 16, 1846.
14 Clothide Amet and R. C. Milliet, British Patent 1729, July 22, 1856.
15 Sarah Levitt, Victorians Unbuttoned: Registered Designs for Clothing, Their Makers and Wearers, 1839–1900 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1986), 36.
16 Harper’s Weekly, October 10, 1857, November 28, 1857, and May 22, 1858; Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, December 19, 1857; Nick Nax, June 1858.
17 Punch’s Almanack for 1858.
18 Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830–1900 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), 188, 192.
19 Beecher, “Women’s Work,” 278.
20 Deseret News, August 5, 1857, November 4, 1857, February 10, 1858, and March 10, 1858.
21 Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, 192. Reports in the Deseret News corroborate the lack of hoopskirts in Utah before the arrival of the Utah Expedition. The earliest mention of hoops appears in February 1856. Additional articles from May 1857 and February, April, and September 1858 reprint information about hoops from eastern periodicals. The local newspaper coverage of hoops indicates that before and directly after the army arrived, mention of hoops only appears in reprints; further, hoops were not yet advertised by local merchants.
22 Account Book, Camp Floyd, 1859–1860 (Radford, Cabot, and Co.), January–June 1859, MIC A 256, Utah State Archives and Record Service, Salt Lake City, Utah.
23 Valley Tan, August 31, 1859. The Valley Tan reported that Kimball’s speech occurred on August 21, 1859, in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, while in the Journal of Discourses it is recorded as being given on August 28.
24 Heber C. Kimball, August 28, 1859, in Journal of Discourses, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (London and Liverpool: Latter-day Saints’ Book Depot, 1854–1886; reprint, Salt Lake City, 1967), 7:235.
25 Heber C. Kimball, December 27, 1857, Journal of Discourses, 6:192.
26 The phrase “valley tan” came to mean anything manufactured in Utah Territory, essentially home manufacture, so it was ironic that an article about a woman trying to keep up with the latest fashions was published in the Valley Tan.
27 Kami Wilson, “Substance versus Superficiality: Women’s Prescribed Roles in Early Territorial Utah, 1850– 70,” Journal of Mormon History 32, no. 2 (2006): 155. The Deseret News excerpted many eastern periodicals regarding female extravagance, demonstrating that moral authorities elsewhere in the nation considered it a problem.
28 Brigham Young, May 17, 1868, Journal of Discourses, 12:220.
29 Deseret News, September 28, 1859; Casey Finch, “‘Hooked and Buttoned Together’: Victorian Underwear and Representations of the Female Body,” Victorian Studies 34, no. 3 (Spring 1991): 346.
30 Eileen V. Wallis, “The Women’s Cooperative Movement in Utah, 1869–1915,” Utah Historical Quarterly 71, no. 4 (Fall 2003): 316.
31 Fred E. Woods, “Surely This City is Bound to Shine: Description of Salt Lake City by Western-Bound Emigrants, 1849–1868,” Utah Historical Quarterly 74, no. 4 (2006): 347. This is the earliest eyewitness account outside a newspaper indicating that some women had in fact adopted the fashion and some had not. Other evidence about the spotty adoption of hoops before 1857 comes from a humorous account in diary of a woman traveling the California Trail on June 19, 1857. She records that a wedding took place where the bride wore hoops, “We have read of hoops being worn, but they had not reached Kansas before we left so these are the first we’ve seen and would not recommend them for this mode of travelling.” If hoops had not reached Kansas by 1857 they were most likely not in more isolated Utah either. Sandra Myers, Ho! For California: Women’s Overland Diaries from the Huntington Library (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1980), 111.
32 American Traveller, August 7, 1858.
33 Boston Semi-Weekly Advertiser, November 19, 1859.
34 Richard Burton, City of the Saints (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1862), 259.
35 Dennis R. Defa, ed., “The Utah Letters of Alexander C. Badger, Jr.,” Utah Historical Quarterly 58, no. 1 (1990): 75; Union Vedette, August 17, 1865.
36 One way to determine if hoops may have been worn under the dress is if it is consistent with the styles of the late 1850s and early 1860s that necessitated hoops. Most photographs of such dresses that can be dated are no earlier than 1860. Hoops might have been adopted earlier in Utah, but this is not documented in photographs.
37 Joan L. Severa, Dressed for the Photographer: Ordinary Americans and Fashion, 1840–1900 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1995), 15–16, 98; Nelson Wadsworth, “Zion’s Cameramen: Early Photographers of Utah and the Mormons,” Utah Historical Quarterly 40, no. 1 (1972): 33.
38 Crinoline advertisements in the Union Vedette start November 27, 1863, and continue through 1865.
39 Two photos dated to circa 1860, one of Wilford Woodruff and his wife Sarah Brown and their three children and another of an unidentified couple, may show more current fashions, but without firmer dates, it is hard to know for sure when women in Utah started wearing hoops. A Savage and Ottinger photograph of Sarah Kahn, a prominent businessman’s wife, was taken in at least 1862 (but more likely in about 1866) shows hoops. Two full-length photographs by Savage and Ottinger, one of Mrs. H. S. Eldridge and the other of Sarah Elizabeth Carmichael, help confirm what is difficult to ascertain in seated photos: that hoops were worn in Utah at least by around 1862.
40 Fairfax Proudfit Walkup, Utah Pioneer Costume and Manners Project, 1944–1947, University of Utah Research Committee, Utah Humanities Research Foundation, Item 574.
41 Nelson B. Wadsworth. Set in Stone, Fixed in Glass: The Great Mormon Temple and Its Photographers (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992). The pointed bodices of the late 1840s and early 1850s appear in photographs tentatively dated about five to ten years later than these fashions. This is corroborated by actual articles of clothing that have survived until today that demonstrate the Y-shape bodice was used throughout the 1850s.Walkup, Utah Pioneer Costume and Manners Project, Item 572.
42 Severa, Dressed for the Photographer, 108–109.
43 Wilson, “Substance versus Superficiality,” 154.
44 Brigham Young, January 26, 1862, Journal of Discourses, 9:173.
45 Richard Lyman Bushman, “Was Joseph Smith a Gentleman? The Standard for Refinement in Utah,” in Nearly Everything Imaginable: The Everyday Life of Utah’s Mormon Pioneers, eds. Ronald W. Walker and Doris R. Dant (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1999), 32; Patricia A. Cunningham, Reforming Women’s Fashion, 1850–1920: Politics, Health, and Art (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2003), 24.
46 The Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (1981), 42:40.
47 Bushman, “Was Joseph Smith a Gentleman?” 35.
48 Brigham Young, September 28, 1862, Journal of Discourses, 10:6.
49 Michael Zakim, “Sartorial Ideologies: From Homespun to Ready-Made,” American Historical Review 106, no. 5 (December 2001): 1555–56.
50 Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, 112, 195–96.
51 Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, 195.
52 Brigham Young, June 7, 1863, Journal of Discourses, 10:204.
53 Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 10:203. Young made this remark at a time when most of the Saints were not in as enviable a financial position as he was.
54 Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses, 6:191.
55 Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses, 6:191.
56 Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses, 6:132.
57 Beecher, “Women’s Work,” 285.
58 Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses, 5:277.
59 Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 14:19.
60 Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 18:74; see also Young, Journal of Discourses, 15:39.
61 Young continued to rail against the women of the church up until the month before his death. Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 19:75.
62 Juanita Brooks, Quicksand and Cactus: A Memoir of the Southern Mormon Frontier (Salt Lake City: Howe Brothers, 1982), 112; see also, Gary Topping, “Another Look at Silver Reef,” Utah Historical Quarterly 79, no. 4 (Fall 2011): 301.
63 Susa Young Gates, History of the Young Ladies’ Mutual Improvement Association (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1911), 10.
64 Shaun Horton, “Of Pastors and Petticoats: Humor and Authority in Puritan New England,” New England Quarterly 82, no. 4 (December 2009): 617, 629; Kimberly Chrisman, “Unhoop the Fair Sex: The Campaign against the Hoop Petticoat in Eighteenth-Century England,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 30, no. 1 (Fall 1996): 10.
65 New York Times, September 15, 1858; W. N. Pendleton, “The Philosophy of Dress,” Southern Literary Messenger, March 1856, 199.
66 Foster, “Frontier Activism,” 13; Clayton, Clothing and the Temporal Kingdom, 152; Wallis, “Women’s Cooperative.” 331.
67 Victoria Steele, Fashion and Eroticism: Ideals of Feminine Beauty from the Victorian Era to the Jazz Age, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 71, 75; Chrisman, “Unhoop the Fair Sex,” 16–17.
68 Kay Boardman, “‘A Material Girl in a Material World’: The Fashionable Female Body in Victorian Women’s Magazines,” Journal of Victorian Culture 3, no. 1 (1998): 107.
69 Boardman, “Material Girl,” 97, 106; Patricia A. Cunningham, Reforming Women’s Fashion, 1850–1920: Politics, Health, and Art (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2003), 11.
70 Boardman, “Material Girl,” 99, 106; Steele, Fashion and Eroticism, 75.
71 Cunningham, Reforming Women’s Fashion, 24; Lynda Nead, “The Layering of Pleasure: Women, Fashionable Dress and Visual Culture in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” Nineteenth-Century Contexts: An Interdisciplinary Journal 45, no. 5 (2013): 499; Punch May 2, 1857; Harper’s Weekly, October 31, 1857, 689–90.
72 Orson Hyde, October 6, 1854, Journal of Discourses, 2:87; Jedediah M. Grant, March 2, 1856, Journal of Discourses, 3:234; Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses, 6:191.
73 Punch, September 18, 1858.
74 Punch, September 20, 1856, and February 6, 1858. True reports exist of women whose skirts caught on fire, which underscored, for opponents of hoopskirts, how foolish the fashion really was. New York Times, July 27, 1857, and March 16, 1858; Times, February 13, 1863, November 14, 1863, and January 23, 1867; Guardian, October 16, 1861; Steele, Fashion and Eroticism, 75. Courtaulds textiles mill banned its workers from wearing hoops in 1860.
75 B. Carmon Hardy, “Lords of Creation: Polygamy, the Abrahamic Household, and Mormon Patriarchy” Journal of Mormon History 20, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 122, 124; Lawrence Foster, “From Frontier Activism to Neo-Victorian Domesticity: Mormon Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries” Journal of Mormon History 6 (1979): 8.
76 Julie Dunfey, “‘Living the Principle’ of Plural Marriage: Mormon Women, Utopia, and Female Sexuality in the Nineteenth Century,” Feminist Studies 10, no. 3 (1984): 524, 529, 532.
77 Jill Mulvay Derr, “‘Strength in Our Union’: The Making of Mormon Sisterhood,” in Sisters in Spirit: Mormon Women in Historical and Cultural Perspective, eds. Maureen Ursenbach Beecher and Lavina Fielding Anderson (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 169–70.
78 Karen M. Morin and Jeanne Kay Guelke, “Strategies of Representation, Relationship, and Resistance: British Women Travelers and Mormon Plural Wives, ca. 1870–1890,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88, no. 3 (September 1998): 454–55.
79 Chrisman, “Unhoop the Fair Sex,” 7.
80 Horton, “Pastors and Petticoats,” 7; Chrisman, “Unhoop the Fair Sex,” 19–21.
81 Helene E. Roberts, “The Exquisite Slave: The Role of Clothes in the Making of the Victorian Woman” Signs 2, no. 3 (Spring 1977): 556
82 Roberts, “Exquisite Slave,” 557.
83 Steele, Fashion and Eroticism, 59, 114; Cunningham, Reforming Women’s Fashion, 22–23.
84 Steele, Fashion and Eroticism, 146–47.
85 Nead, “Layering of Pleasure,” 497–500.
86 Chrisman, “Unhoop the Fair Sex,” 22.
87 Kern, Louis J., An Ordered Love: Sex Roles and Sexuality in Victorian Utopias—The Shakers, the Mormons and the Oneida Community (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 201.
88 Kern, An Ordered Love, 200-203. Kern uses many sources that are from non-Mormons and have anti-Mormon bias as well as recollections of people whose accounts differ from the Journal of Discourses and are not corroborated by other sources. Kern also makes conclusions about Mormon leaders that are not supported by any sources and wrongly attributes things that Heber C. Kimball said to Brigham Young,
89 Kern, An Ordered Love, 201. Kern portrays Brigham Young as a man who was “greatly allured by feminine dress and whose utterances exude an impotent rage at the teasing titillation of women beyond his power to control.” This implies, incorrectly, that Young was solely concerned about the sexual aspect of women’s clothing. Fashions and loose women were sometimes equated but there is no evidence of Young or any of the leaders expressing rage at being titillated by the women of the church. Kern also discusses a supposed quote from Heber C. Kimball wherein he states that women’s fashions were destroying their ability to procreate and thus put off their sole duty to be “breeders,” as Kern calls them. The quote, as found in the Journal of Discourses, which actually refers to men’s pantaloons, reads “Our boys are weakening their backs and their kidneys by girting themselves up as they do; they are destroying the strength of their loins and taking a course to injure their posterity.” Kern, An Ordered Love, 203; Heber C. Kimball, Journal of Discourses, 6:191.
90 Nead, “Layering of Pleasure,” 496, 500.
91 Chrisman, “Unhoop the Fair Sex,” 16.
92 Steele, Fashion and Eroticism, 146–47; Gayle V. Fischer, Pantaloons and Power: Nineteenth-Century Dress Reform in the United States (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2001), 83.
93 Steele, Fashion and Eroticism, 147.
94 David Kunzle, “Dress Reform as Anti-Feminism, a Response to Helene E. Roberts’s ‘The Exquisite Slave: The Role of Clothes in the Making of the Victorian Woman,’” Signs 2, no. 3 (Spring 1977): 570–79; see also Nead, “Layering of Pleasure,” 502.
95 Boardman, “Material Girl,” 104.
96 Nead, “Layering of Pleasure,” 492, 507; Boardman, “Material Girl,”
97; Steele, Fashion and Eroticism, 61; Chrisman, “Unhoop the Fair Sex,” 22; Dunfey, “Living the Principle,” 524. 97 Beecher, “Women’s Work,” 284.
98 Lawrence Foster, Religion and Sexuality: The Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981), 239.
99 Foster, “Frontier Activism,” 3, 9; Wilson, “Substance versus Superficiality,” 160; Hardy, “Lords of Creation,” 145. Mormon women attended one of the first coeducational colleges in the United States, established in 1850, and were allowed to vote by 1870. Brigham Young adamantly supported education for women in practical skills rather than things like learning French and needlework. Frontier life generally did a lot to even the playing field for both men and women, as women’s labor and talents could not be ignored when people were fighting for survival. Mormon women were able to do work that, under normal circumstances, was considered man’s work. This is true of frontier lifestyle in general, though, and was not specific to the Mormons. What was specific to the Mormons was polygamy, which could promote autonomy for women. Since their husbands were often gone on missions or occupied with church leadership roles, these women ran businesses and farms in their absence.
100 Richard L. Jensen, “Forgotten Relief Societies, 1844– 67,” Dialogue 16, no. 1 (Spring 1983): 107.
101 Fischer, Pantaloons and Power, 98, 101; Dexter C. Bloomer, Life and Writings of Amelia Bloomer (Boston: Arena, 1895), 72; Anita A. Stamper and Jill Condra, Clothing through American History: The Civil War through the Gilded Age, 1861–1899 (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2011), 111, Foster, “Frontier Activism,” 13; Wilson, “Substance versus Superficiality,” 150. Harper’s Weekly reveled in the connection between Mormons and the bloomer. One cartoon depicts an “American Harem” with Brigham Young and his wives in which some of the Mormon women wear bloomers. Detractors wanted to show the bloomer as something that strange, fringe people wore, thus devaluing the costume and the feminists who supported it. Harper’s Weekly, October 10, 1857; Fischer, Pantaloons and Power, 74.
102 Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 10:204.
103 Fischer, Pantaloons and Power, 21; Steele, Fashion and Eroticism, 198.
104 Stamper and Condra, Clothing through American History, 109–110, 132; Fischer, Pantaloons and Power, 83, 98–100; Cunningham, Reforming Women’s Fashion, 43.
105 Deseret News, September 3, 1862.
106 Heber C. Kimball, April 2, 1854, Journal of Discourses, 2:154. Women were to be led and not to lead their husbands; a natural order, which if reversed, would lead to the downfall of nations. Hardy, “Lords of Creation,” 119–152. In 1868 views on female enfranchisement changed and the Deseret News proudly proclaimed, “Women can be enfranchised without running wild or becoming unsexed.” Deseret News, March 20, 1869.
107 Wilson, “Substance versus Superficiality,” 168.
108 Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, 196.
109 Wallis, “Women’s Cooperative,” 316; Waugh, Corsets and Crinoline, 93; Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, 252–53.
110 Zakim, “Sartorial Ideologies,” 1584.
111 Zakim, “Sartorial Ideologies,” 1578; Wilson “Substance versus Superficiality,” 151; Clayton, Clothing and the Temporal Kingdom, 152; Fischer, Pantaloons and Power, 75.
