Rose Fights For Women
"I Refuse to Have a Box or a Cage on My Body"
It is quite time that a decisive stroke was struck for the freedom of women, not only as regards to the suffrage question, and, of course, I am keen on that, but on other matters. The first step is to free women from the yoke of modern dress. How can they hope to compete with men when they are boxed up tight in the cloths that are worn today?
- Rose Cecil O'Neill
O'Neill hated the way women were forced to dress. They wore corsets, which O'Neill said practically strangled them. They were restricting them where, unable to move, they could not bend their waists. Like other reformers, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, O'Neill wanted women's clothing to be looser and less restricting so that women participate in things only men could do.
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O'Neill resisted fashion in her own dress. Ralph McCanse wrote, "Rose’s costume is a bit startling
at first, but very effective . . . The whole thing is like a medieval doctor’s
gown without the hood. The Ozark natives call this a “flyin’-squirrel dress”,
for obvious reasons obvious to anybody who has ever seen flying-squirrels in
actions. The robe is always – usually a dark wine-color. In the Summer it is
made of silk, in the Winter of a kind of supple velvet. There is usually a
loose braided belt of girdle of the same material. White leather sandals, no jewellry."
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O'Neill's ideas about how women should dress also made their way into some of her art. She drew pictures of women being active and powerful.