On May 27, 1818, Amelia Bloomer was born in Homer, NY. She grew up to become an important women’s rights activist in the late 19th century. As the editor of The Lily, the first-ever newspaper for women, she advocated for temperance and women’s suffrage. Although not the inventor of the style, Bloomer popularized a new fashion trend: loose puffed out pants topped by a below-the-knee length skirt. The style liberated women from the restrictive and heavy fashions of the day. The “Bloomer” look became a symbol of the women’s suffrage movement.
Born Amelia Jenks, Bloomer was an advocate for change when very few women had a voice in society. Despite only receiving a few years of formal education, Bloomer became a teacher and private tutor. At 22, she married attorney Dexter Bloomer of Seneca Falls, NY. Her husband was progressive in his views and allowed his wife to write for his newspaper, Seneca Falls County Courier. She wrote articles advocating for temperance and women’s rights. After attending the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, Bloomer was inspired to do even more for the movement.
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Encouraged by her fellow suffragette friends Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Bloomer began publishing The Lily in January 1849. It was the first-ever newspaper devoted to women’s issues. At first, Bloomer mainly focused on temperance, a cause that was most near and dear to her heart. In the first issue of The Lily she wrote, “It is the woman that speaks through The Lily… Intemperance is the great foe to her peace and happiness…” Eventually, Bloomer included other subjects of interest to women including women’s rights, suffrage, child-bearing, and education.
In the early 1850s, Bloomer used The Lily to begin promoting a new outfit for women that began a fashion revolution. In March 1851, Bloomer announced to her readers that she was going to wear a new, more comfortable outfit that she had seen her friend wear. Quickly dubbed “the Bloomer dress,” the style consisted of a loose bodice and a knee length dress worn over full pantaloons. At the time, most women wore whale-bone fitted corsets that pushed one’s internal organs out of place. Furthermore, fashion dictated that woman were to wear 10 pounds worth of starched petticoats, often stiffened with straw, underneath their floor-length dresses. As a result of this restrictive clothing, women suffered from severe health problems. Women around the globe wanted to adopt this new liberating fashion. At the same time, many also ridiculed the Bloomer craze and considered it scandalous.
Bloomer and her husband relocated to Ohio and then Council Bluffs, IA in 1855. She continued to fight for women’s suffrage in her new home state of Iowa until passing away on December 30, 1894.