At some point in practically every course I teach, I have to stop and explain that gender is what scholars say when they mean the arbitrary rules that we apply to men and women. To illustrate, I take one of my shoulder bags, and and then my husband's man bag and point out that neither my female shoulders nor my husband's shoulders bar us from using each other's bags, and yet he would not be seen dead carrying my purse, and I think his man bag is pretty boring.
This exhibition in Mumford, New York, runs through 2024 and offers you examples of what 19th Century Americans wore, based on their sex, and how they argued about what a man or a woman could or should wear. As in, who should get to wear the pants?
Click through for more info, including several corset patterns which you can download which have been drawn up from the historical garments in the museum's collection.
