The Symbols Of The Modern Women
Red Lipstick:
Suffragists in Britain and the US shared tactics to communicate solidarity and power, from organizing public marches and rallies to marketing their suffrage cause by wearing sashes, pins, and red lipstick. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman wore red lipstick for its ability to shock men and women and as a symbol of liberation and rebellion. Elizabeth Arden, the cosmetics founder was an early supporter of women’s rights and handed out tubes of bright red lipstick to the suffragists marching past her New York salon in 1912.
Bloomers:
In 1851, designer Libby Smith Miller of New York created a new look for the New Woman: a knee-length skirt with long Turkish-style pantaloons underneath. In The Lily, a woman’s newspaper, its publisher Amelia Jenks Bloomer enthusiastically promoted the outfit and urged her readers to shed their heavy, bulky hoop skirts and wear “Bloomers.” The outfit quickly became popular and synonymous with the women’s rights movement while bitterly disparaged by suffrage critics. Susan B. Anthony eventually minimized the importance of the style after seeing that Bloomers were receiving more attention than their suffrage message. In any case, this early fashion statement was a step in the right direction for women to be free to wear what they wished without restrictive corsets.
Colors:
It became fashionable for women to identify with the women’s suffrage movement, even if just wearing a small brooch or Votes for Women button. The suffragists colors were an early triumph for fashion branding; in their newsletter of December 1913, they described the meanings of the colors: “purple is the color for loyalty, constancy to purpose, unswerving steadfastness to a cause. White, the emblem for purity, symbolizes the quality of our purpose; and gold, the color of life and light, is the torch that guides our purpose, pure, and unswerving.”
To counter the anti-suffragists negative portrayal of the suffragists as ugly, old spinsters, and masculine, the suffragists wore dresses in parades, often white dresses to symbolize femininity and purity in their cause, with sashes of purple, white, and gold.
Flowers:
Suffragists and anti-suffragists met in Nashville, Tennessee in 1920 to lobby their State Legislature regarding the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Tennessee was the final battleground state necessary for their majority vote. Both sides wore rose-shaped pins: Suffragists wore yellow roses and anti-suffragists wore red roses.
Sunflower:
Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote for The Lily newspaper out of Senaca Falls, NY under the pseudonym name “Sunflower.” Kansas suffragists adopted the sunflower as the symbol of their campaign.
Jail Cell Door:
Silver pins designed like a jail cell door with a heart-shaped padlock were given out by the National Woman’s Party to each of the Silent Sentinels who had been arrested and jailed. The “Jailed for Freedom” pin was based on pins that British suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst gave to her members of the Woman’s Social and Political Union who had been imprisoned in London.
Stars:
On the US flag, each State is represented by a star. In 1919, Alice Paul began sewing a star on a large purple, white, and gold flag each time a state ratified the 19th Amendment. The National Woman’s Party flag would eventually hold 36 stars to symbolize the final states that voted for the amendment to become law.