The Man‐Made World
A further proof, if more were needed, is shown in this; that in exact proportion as women grow independent, educated, wise and free, do they become less submissive to men‐made fashions. Was this improvement hailed with sympathy and admiration—crowned with
masculine favor?
The attitude of men toward those women who have so far presumed
to “unsex themselves” is known to all. They like women to be foolish, changeable, always newly attractive; and while women must
“attract” for a living—why they do, that‘s all.
It is a pity. It is humiliating to any far‐seeing woman to have to recognize this glaring proof of the dependent, degraded position of her sex; and it ought to be humiliating to men to see the results of their mastery. These crazily decorated little creatures do not represent womanhood.
When the artist uses the woman as the type of every highest ideal; as Justice, Liberty, Charity, Truth—he does not represent her trimmed.
In any part of the world where women are even in part economically
independent there we find less of the absurdities of fashion. Women who work cannot be utterly absurd.
But the idle woman, the Queen of Society, who must please men within their prescribed bounds; and those of the half‐world, who must please them at any cost—these are the vehicles of fashion.