“Mrs. Roosevelt Leads a Reform” from the Asheville Gazette News, reprinted in the Thursday, Aug. 1, 1907,
issue of the Watauga Democrat
If memory serves us well, the actual initiative in the
abolition of the vast bustles that made women look like dromedaries was taken
by Mrs. Cleveland, while she was mistress of the White House. We believe also
that she held in the substitution of the pompadour for the bang, a less
important matter. Even men doubted whether the bustle could be discarded and
women still look like women, but Mrs. Cleveland worked a transformation in
contour, as it were, and men perceived that the objects of their affection were
still substantially the same.
Now, we hear, although we do not pretend that it is an
authoritative statement, that Mrs. Roosevelt has essayed the role of reformer.
It is not the railroads, the corporations, nor the nature fakers that have
fallen under the ban of the first lady of the land. According to an intimate
friend, the President’s wife has decided to discard her corsets. All of the
feminine instruments of torture in her wardrobe will be thrown into the garbage
heap and she will hereafter wage unceasing warfare against them. If Mrs.
Roosevelt is successful in her crusade the corset will be relegated to the
limbo of antiquity, along with the hoop-skirt and the bustle. As a result, the
wasp-like waist bids fair to go out of fashion, and the Venus from, long
admired but seldom emulated, is to have its inning. The opposition of Mrs.
Roosevelt to the corset is based on hygienic facts not unrelated to the subject
of the race subject of race suicide. She believes that the compressing of vital
organs by means of stays has become a positive menace and a crime against
future generations. Such a crusade will not be without its effect in the
financial world, since millions of dollars are invested in corset manufacture
in this country.
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