THE ECONOMIC THEORY OF WOMAN'S DRESS. 203 



like make-believe. The realities which it simulates, or rather 

 symbolizes, could not be tolerated. They would be in some cases 

 too crudely expensive, in others inexpensive and more nearly 

 adapted to minister to personal comfort than to visible expense ; 

 and either alternative is obnoxious to the canons of good form. 



But apart from the exhibition of pecuniary strength afforded 

 by an aggressive wasteful expenditure, the same purpose may also 

 be served by conspicuous abstention from useful eflt'oi^. 7he 

 woman is, by virtue of the specialization of social function^, ihe 

 exponent of the economic unit's pecuniary strength, and it cc ise- 

 quently also devolves on her to exhibit the unit's capacity to en- 

 dure this passive form of pecuniary damage. She can do this by 

 putting in evidence the fact (often a fiction) that she leads a use- 

 less life. Dress is her chief means of doing so. The ideal of dress, 

 on this head, is to demonstrate to all observers, and to compel ob- 

 servation of the fact, that the wearer is manifestly incapable of 

 doing anything that is of any use. The modern civilized woman's 

 dress attempts this demonstration of habitual idleness, and suc- 

 ceeds measurably. 



Herein lies the secret of the persistence, in modern dress, of 

 the skirt and of all the cumbrous and otherwise meaningless dra- 

 pery which the skirt typifies. The skirt persists because it is 

 cumbrous. It hampers the movements of the wearer and disables 

 her, in great measure, for any useful occupation. So it serves as 

 an advertisement (often disingenuous) that the wearer is backed 

 by sufficient means to be able to afford the idleness, or impaired 

 efficiency, which the skirt implies. The like is true of the high 

 heel, and in less degree of several other features of modern dress. 



Herein is also to be sought the ground of the persistence (prob- 

 ably not the origin) of the one great mutilation practiced by civ- 

 ilized Occidental womankind the constricted waist, as well as of 

 the analogous practice of the abortive foot among their Chinese 

 sisters. This modern mutilation of woman is perhaps not to be 

 classed strictly under the category of dress ; but it is scarcely pos- 

 sible to draw the line so as to exclude it from the theory, and it is 

 so closely coincident with that category in point of principle that 

 an outline of the theory would be incomplete without reference 

 to it. 



A corollary of some significance follows from this general 

 principle. The fact that voluntarily accepted physical incapacity 

 argues the possession of wealth practically establishes the futility 

 of any attempted reform of woman's dress in the direction of con- 

 venience, comfort, or health. It is of the essence of dress that it 

 should (appear to) hamper, incommode, and injure the wearer, for 

 in so doing it proclaims the wearer's pecuniary ability to endure 

 idleness and physical incapacity. 



