The Victorian Era Was Basically Hardcore Mode IRL

It's not a secret anymore, I have a time machine. So I admit, recently I traveled to the Victorian era for a little stroll. It's the period that lasted for the most part of the 19th century during the reign of Queen Victoria. So I ended up in June 1899 and I watched an outing of some ladies bicycle club. There was something that made it unusual, the way they were dressed. Yes, they were all wearing long dresses, hats and some were even wearing corsets. I mean, when I hop on a bicycle, suddenly all the air in the world isn't enough for me to breathe and those ladies were riding perfectly being half squeezed. So I did some digging. Turns out that's what life was like for ladies during the Victorian era and earlier. It's no news that back in the day, women were mostly wearing skirts and dresses. Ladies from richer families who could afford it were changing dresses several times during the day, at least in the late morning and right before dinner. But there were dresses for different occasions and different parts of the day, like morning, afternoon, and evening. There were even dresses for various activities, for walking, visits, and balls. There was also a sports dress. The dresses were super long since it was considered not ladylike to show your ankles or even worse, anything above the ankle. Next, even though they were uncomfortable and even unhealthy due to restricted breathing and damage to internal organs, the corsets were an important part of the outfit. They accentuated the hourglass silhouette, which was an idealized beauty standard back in the day, and were signaling a lady's social status. Hats were primarily used as protection from the sun, but they also demonstrated a lady's social class and authority. No wonder that wearing all that, women weren't much into sports. From a young age, they were taught to stay at home, dance, sing, play musical instruments, paint, and whatsoever. The outdoors were for men, and men were dominating sports. But things started to change. Very few women were participating in national athletic competitions. Still, there was a popular sport among women in the 1870s, pedestrianism, or competitive walking matches. You got it right, women were competing who can walk faster. In 1879, there was a walking match between two women who had to walk 25 miles. A woman named Jessie Anderson won, requiring 5 hours and 22 minutes to finish the distance. And then something happened that made women like sports, lawn tennis. The game was invented by a retired British officer in the 1860s and patented in 1874. At first, no one expected women to show impressive athletic abilities, and women were discouraged to play competitively. Dressed in their everyday long-sleeved gowns that were brushing the ground, they were just gracefully hitting the ball to the opponent. Corsets and hats were being worn too, restricting the movements and limiting sight. A bit later, women started to wear tennis aprons over their everyday dresses to protect the outfit from dirt. The aprons looked fun, with cute embroidering, radiating tennis vibes, and they even had pockets for storing tennis balls. Of course, this couldn't last long. Tossing the ball to one gracefully standing in one place wasn't fun at all, so women started to move and play more competitively. So, they needed better clothes. Finally, in the mid-1880s, women's sportswear started to gain popularity, and magazines printed photos of stylish tennis outerwear. Still dresses, still long, but now several inches above the ground. What a success! In 1887, a teenage tennis sensation, Lottie Dodd, won Wimbledon wearing a freer outfit without a corset. Her older opponents started arguing that the girl had more freedom in movements since she wasn't as restricting in her clothing as everyone else was. This is probably a fair point. I wonder if Serena Williams played the same brilliant games if she was locked up in some corset. So, people started to rethink standard tennis clothing once again. In the 1890s, there were even more adaptations. Now, the dress was simplified without any bows or ribbons, and the hats were also dropped. The color was advised to be plain white, and a typical tennis costume looked like this. Competitive play started to take off too, and the end of the Victorian era saw the first women champions in tennis. Here's a photo of the women's tennis team. Looks very different from what we know today, but it was the beginning. In 1900, Charlotte Cooper participated in the Summer Olympics and won it, becoming the first female individual champion in tennis. There were two more key style moments in women's sports style. In 1920, another tennis fashion revolution happened. A French player, Suzanne Lenglen, played at Wimbledon wearing a calf-length skirt, and she had bare arms. After that, women's tennis style got more relaxed. In the 1940s, women started to wear short shorts for better mobility, and then that was it. Even today, tennis dresses are still a thing, probably partly due to tradition. But now, they're made out different materials and are way shorter, without restricting a player's movements. And now you probably want me to go back to where we started, cycling. As you see, it was another popular sport among women, and in the beginning, they were wearing dresses too. And yes, 1899 was yet the beginning of bicycling. You see, the sport isn't as old as you might think. The first ever bicycle was invented in 1817, but it looked way different than the bike we know today. First, it had no pedals. You were just walking on top of the bike, pushing it with your legs. Second, it had a wooden frame and wooden wheels with leather-covered tires and iron rims. The first bike received only a bit of attention, and then it swiftly fell out of fashion. Forty years later, several French inventors developed other bike prototypes. This time, a bike had pedals, but they were attached to the front wheel. Weird, but it passed. Things got even crazier in the 1870s when inventors introduced a new bike model with an oversized front wheel. It looks like this, and believe it or not, those bikes were insanely successful. In 1884, Thomas Stevens took a journey around the globe on one of those. I'd rather circle the planet on my own too, to be honest, but that guy was reckless. Still, people figured that those bikes weren't quite safe for everyone to ride, so more improvements were coming. In 1885, the design was almost perfected. The wheels were now of equal size, and the chain drive appeared. Shortly after, developments in brakes and tires were made, and here we are. The women I saw were already riding normal bikes. For them, bikes played a bigger role than just being a new and cool kind of transport. Many feminists acknowledged that bikes were an important driver of the suffrage movement. Having transport, they were more independent and could cover longer distances than before. They could now travel without a chaperone, meet each other, and socialize. Women were warned against possible health complications like heart trouble, bowed legs, and varicose veins, but they didn't seem to care. At first, ladies were riding bikes wearing the same outfits we've discussed – long dresses, corsets, and hats. Bicycle models specifically for women were developed. Those had a drop frame that was very convenient for the long dresses they were wearing. There are even safety pins for riding a bike in a skirt. The front and the back of the skirt are pinned together, and voila! Soon enough, women started to take their corsets off and picked more suitable clothing to wear. Victorian dresses were dropped soon after the era ended. Bicyclists started to wear baggy undergarments called bloomers, which were way more comfortable. Bloomers even became a symbol of the suffrage movement, since many activists were wearing them back then. As they were practicing, women were also becoming more athletic. In 1895, just 11 years after Mr. Stevens' bike tour around the globe, Annie Londonderry Kopchovsky became the first woman to do the same, and the journey took her 15 months. That's it for today! So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends! Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!