The Gibson Girl's Guide to Glamor

 
When I initially started this project, I knew I wanted to do something with Charles Gibson's, a sketch artist for the New York Times, "Gibson Girl" of the Progressive Era (1890-1920). As I began research, I soon expanded my search to include the evolution women's fashion. My goal was to define how such evolution and the appearance of the Gibson Girl reflected the values and beliefs of society in the Progressive Era. In the first book I browsed through, I found the perfect quote to summarize my goal:

"The instrument of powerful and coquettish women, the fan both conceals and discloses. [Christian] Diors' comparison of the cocktail-party hostess and the eighteenth century woman denotes the relevance of clothing and decoration to the social function of women during these eras. While clearly ornamented differently, these personalities depended on a superficial facade through which to communicate their respective social facility."

- 100 Dresses[1]

A Gibson Girl has brains, beauty, and brawn. She is educated, clever, and can easily converse with men. It is highly possible she is a college graduate from a domestic studies program. She has an effortless beauty, inside and out. Her hair is piled atop her head in luscious curls, her makeup is light, and her outfits and accessories accentuate her figure. Her disposition is cheery, poised, and stately. She cycles, swims, takes walks in the park, attends important dinners, and dances at balls. She even has a specific outfit for each event. This seeming perfection is then spiced up with a more edgy, but still graceful, personality.  She smokes in public (with the men), shoots guns (with the men), and flirts often (with the men). [2] The Gibson Girl takes risks, thereby defying social norms and leading the young girls of the Progressive Era.

Scene with Idealized Gibson Girls

Simply put, the Gibson Girl was the ideal woman of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Women of ages 15-30 strove for her slim waist and lush hair. Charles Gibson had apparently planted the ideal woman in the minds of all Americans. She began to appear not only in the actual women of the Progressive Era, but on everyday items such as broomsticks, plates, parasols, and wallpaper. However, Gibson claims he would not have depicted the Gibson Girl in his drawings if he had "not already seen [her] in the papers." [2] It truly was a change in the minds of the women of this era which brought the changes in fashion and ideals. 

Charles Gibson's Drawings on Plates

Perhaps the Gibson Girl was a compromise between women's and men's views. Other women of the time were not striving to maintain their feminism, but to break past it in order to achieve other goals. This girl was the college girl. The college girl challenged the beliefs established in the Industrial Era such as "men hate intelligent wives" or "the man is the family's breadwinner." Some people even believed that higher education for women would result in women who were "unsexed" biologically, socially, and culturally. [3] Luckily, the women were not unsexed biologically, but they were, however, culturally and socially. Both the president of Harvard and the Theodore Roosevelt claimed that the best of American society would wane and immigrants would take over American society because educated women were not marrying, and/or having as many children, with educated men. The widely publicized Gibson Girl helped to soften this image for the college girl. The Gibson Girls' feminine features were the fan that concealed the acts of women desperately trying to challenge their own stereotype. [3] 

When looking at the fashions of the Gibson Girl and the college girl, there is a noticeable difference which solidifies the idea of the Gibson Girl as a compromise between women's and men's ideals in the Progressive Era. After tracing the minute differences in style year to year from approximately 1850-1920, I noticed several trends towards masculinity, somewhat contradictory to the still voluptuous-looking Gibson Girl. Ornamentation became subdued, the square toe appeared, more chunky heels (like men's army boots in WWI) came into fashion, and dark colors were more popular [4] [5]. These trends were most likely characteristic of the average woman trying to challenge the status quo, not by smoking in public, but by pursuing education in the arts and sciences.

The Gibson Girl style seemed to follow more of the freedom of art nouveau, with her S-shaped silhouette, Athenian inspired chignon, and the smallest waist achieved in the history of fashion. Everything was curvy, yet weightless, complimenting the flirtatious, yet graceful, personality of the idealized Gibson Girl. Essentially, Gibson girl fashion was "unencumbered by bustles and convention." [3] Before her time, women had flat front silhouettes with a bustle-built "table-top" silhouette in the back. Curls had been tight and precisely placed.

For fun, I tried to give myself a Gibson Girl up-do.

In the end, the Gibson Girl was loved by men and women alike in the Progressive Era because she was not too stuck in the past, but neither was she radically futuristic. She had the perfect balance of feminism and the bravery to challenge what was atypical for a woman. Her education gave substance to the entertainment of her beauty and escapades. This focus on outward appearance and need for specific fashions for individual occasions captures the arising materialism of the Progressive Era, while behind her concealing fan, the true Progressive women, the college girls, began their journey towards love (or at least appreciation) from the general populace.

[1] 100 Dresses
[2] This Fabulous Century 1900-1910
[3] The Gibson Girl Goes to College: Popular Culture and Women's Higher Education in the Progressive Era, 1890-1920
[4] Victoria and Albert Museum
[5] Costume and Fashion: A Concise History