Should women wear pants?

Pants on women arose from a social revolution in the twentieth century wherein women were fighting for their “rights” and struggling to be equal to men. Their pants are a feminist and a unisex statement.

The saying, “Who wears the pants in the family” illustrates the fact that pants were traditionally male attire and the woman who wore them assumed a masculine role. The universal symbols distinguishing the male from the female (a stick man in pants and a stick woman in a dress), and still used on the doors of public toilets to this day, arose from the fact that pants were traditionally male attire.

The article “Pants for Women” on the secular web site BookRags.com observes that “pants for women emerged” from “the feminist movement.

William Nicholson, in the book Clothing the Universal Language, observed that in the 1920s “wearing slacks to the office or to a park was still out of the question, and any female who appeared on a formal occasion in a trouser‟s suit was assumed to be a Bohemian eccentric and probably a lesbian.”

It was in the late 1930s prior to World War II that pants on women began to be a fashion statement, and it began in Hollywood, which has always pushed the moral boundaries. Katherine Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich were at the forefront of this.

“When diva film star Marlene Dietrich appeared in slacks with flared bottoms in her United States debut film Morocco in 1930, she signaled the emergence of women‟s pants from sportswear to high fashion. Wearing them both in films and private life, she popularized the pants look” (“Pants for Women,” www.bookrags.com).

Pants still were not commonly accepted among women in society at large, though. That did not happen until after World War II. Women‟s slacks and capris grew slightly in popularity in the 1950s, but it was not until the 1960s that pants on women came into their own through the rock & roll revolution. “[T]he jeans and pants of the 1960‟s and the 1970‟s were serious gestures toward total sexual equality” (Nicholson).

“[Unisex fashions appeared in the 1960s.] Both men and women wore blue jeans, „hipsters‟ and close fitting pants with zip fly fronts. The spirit of this latest association of pants with social and sexual liberation can be seen in Alice Walker‟s novel The Color Purple (1982), in which the social victory of the heroine culminates in her opening of a unisex jeans shop” (“Pants for Women”).

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Costume and Fashion makes the same observation on the history of pants on women:

“The real pants revolution came in the 1960s, with unisex fashions, though even at this time women wearing pants were often refused entry to restaurants and the whole subject was one of heated debate. By the 1970s rules and social attitudeshad relaxed and pants of many lengths and styles had become an acceptable part of female dress for both casual and formal attire.”

This secular book admits that the growth in the popularity of pants on females in Western culture was part and parcel with the sexual revolution and the unisex phenomenon, both of which are an affront to the God of the Bible. Social attitudes had to be changed, and that occurred through the onslaught of the rebellious rock & role culture.

The modern unisex society knows that there is a major difference between the male and female, of course, but it emphasizes only the physical difference and the result is lust and immorality.

One woman wisely observed:

“Oh there will always be a difference in gender, because there HAS to be. But now the emphasis is not on the beauty of a girl‟s femininity (which brings out the masculinity in a man). NOW the emphasis in the difference in BODY PARTS! There is no longer the striking difference between a beautiful woman in feminine attire, long pretty hair, and a masculine man that practices chivalry. (Put a real feminine woman around a man and see how chivalrous he becomes.) Now the difference is emphasized in her physical body difference, which leads to lust and a degradation of womanhood (and manhood too). A feminine woman is in her rightful place of an elevated position. But as soon as she steps down off her pedestal to wear pants and be „equal‟ to a man, it drags everybody down, which is exactly what Satan wants. The devil is still whispering in Eve's ear to destroy mankind” (http://www.momof9splace.com/ modesty.html).

Why would the godly woman want to be identified with a fashion that is so intimately associated with a movement and philosophy that is in rebellion against God‟s created order?

-From Dressing for the Lord by David Cloud

 

Consider some quotes from this secular article on the history of women wearing pants:

"Mormon women chose to wear pants to church in a gesture of solidarity to protest women’s unequal status in the Mormon Church. Nothing says equality more than a nice pair of pants. In the language of clothes, pants equal power. Pants on a woman disrupt the status quo. They certainly aren’t “lady-like.”

"By law and custom, for centuries women have been forbidden from wearing men’s clothes. But women did it anyway, taking the risk of discovery to escape a life of confinement and drudgery."

http://the-toast.net/2014/08/07/wearing-pants-brief-history/