Abstract
In the spring and summer of 2008, the American media was full of a controversy involving the families of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the state of Texas, USA (New York Times 2011). The almost iconic representation of the FLDS became the women of the group in their distinctive dresses and hairstyles. These women wore “prairie” style dresses with below the knee skirts, identical except for their pastel colors, and their long hair in nearly identical braided styles. Some small differentiation based on age and status—married/unmarried and adult/child—existed.
Strive as you will to elevate woman, nevertheless the disabilities and degradation of her dress, together with that large group of false views of the uses of her being and of her relations to man, symbolized and perpetuated by her dress, will make your striving vain.
Gerrit Smith
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Nickolai, C.A. (2013). Decently Dressed: Women’s Fashion and Dress Reform in the Nineteenth Century United States. In: Spencer-Wood, S. (eds) Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on Gender Transformations. Contributions To Global Historical Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4863-1_10
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