Amelia Bloomer
Getty Images/Wikimedia CommonsAmelia Bloomer
Amelia Bloomer was the first woman to own, operate, and run a newspaper – a news source by and for women – when she founded The Lily in 1849.
Originally, the paper was created to be a temperance journal. At the time, Bloomer was not radically involved in the women’s rights movement. She attended the Seneca Falls Convention (the first women’s rights convention of its kind) but did not sign the resolution produced there. However, the suffragists took a liking to her.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton even said, “I like her immediately and why I did not invite her home to dinner with me I do not know.”
Bloomer started to don a new form of dress that was less restrictive for women: a loose pair of trousers that gathered around the ankles, worn under a skirt. She wrote articles about this fashion reformation in The Lily and began sporting the new clothing herself.
Bloomer’s articles started to gain immense popularity, as did the outfit she was writing about. She did not invent it, but those trousers became known as “bloomers,” after Amelia Bloomer, and the term has stuck even through today.
