A timeline of how the color white has been utilized by the women's rights movement throughout history.
To some, wearing white clothes may be seen as a bad omen for the washing machine or a cause for admonishment after Labor Day. To others, the color white might be utilized to convey an aesthetic of leisure or to keep cool during the summer months. For many women, however, white clothes have a greater emotional and political connotation, as they are rooted in a long history of combating voter suppression and purity culture. From “suffragette white” to the white wedding dress popularized by Queen Victoria, white in fashion has been utilized in the media, literature, and political movements to create a complex narrative within the unassuming color.
It begins with the simple purification of the color. White, created by combining all colors on the visible light spectrum, appears colorless, sterile, and uncomplicated. The natural creation of the color white lends itself to human interpretation, which heavily contributes to purity culture in North America and Europe. This culture, which seeks to sanctify populations of women-- utilizes color and tradition often to convey the necessity of social purification. Femininity is frequently represented in this misogynistic manner, requiring women to uphold social stereotypes of the pure, flawless, virtuous individual. Heteronormative marital traditions play a large part in this, where a woman’s image is cultivated before marriage to ensure a smooth transition from the control of her family to the control of her husband. This symbolic portrayal of an innocent bride makes the transaction more traditionally appealing to the husband, particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Before Queen Victoria’s wedding to Prince Albert, the white wedding dress was not popular in England. Her choice of a white wedding garment was widely criticized, as the simplicity of the color contrasted the elaborate, luxurious dress designs of the time. However, the trend quickly caught on as Queen Victoria’s choice began representing the ideal image of a blushing, innocent bride. Interestingly, Victoria and her bridesmaids’ dresses were decorated entirely out of white Honiton lace, a form of detailed lacework crafted by communities of lower-class families in farming villages in England. As the craft began to die in the middle of the 19th century, Victoria’s dress popularized the art form once more and employed large swaths of impoverished women to create the flounces of lace on her wedding dress. Contradictorily, as Victoria’s wedding choices heavily influenced the aesthetics of female domesticity, they financially supported female lacemakers independently earning their own wages.
Although the white wedding dress was popularized among circles of the elite, the working class did not adopt Victoria’s wedding tradition until after the 1940s. Economic hardship, particularly in the United States, made weddings a small family affair out of necessity. However, the implications of Queen Victoria’s choices were expanded beyond weddings and wedding dresses in the early 1900s. Rebelling against the traditional status of womanhood, the color white began to be utilized in political circles advocating for women’s voting rights.
White women gained the right to vote through the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920 in the United States. This right was achieved, in part, due to the optics of the movement. Suffragettes in the 1900s adopted the color white, later coined “suffragette white,” during their protests and rallies to help purify public opinion of their political work. Women protesting for voter advocacy were seen as indecorous, unfeminine, and improper, so the color white resembling (thanks to Queen Victoria) femininity and purity, helped refine their image and unify the movement. A color that was previously used to encourage female marital dependence on men became a color that validated a national cry for the women’s suffrage movement.
Later, in the 1970s, people advocating for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) adopted the color white as an homage to the suffragettes from half a century ago. As the ERA looked to prevent sex and gender discrimination in the United States, “suffragette white” evolved from representing the purification of women in politics to highlighting the importance of protecting women’s rights. In the modern age, congresswomen have begun to adopt suffragette white during critical legislative moments, such as the State of the Union, to help unify women in politics and broadcast a message of women’s rights advocacy on the national scale.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Kamala Harris, who both ran for president in 2016 and 2024, respectively, adopted the color white to represent the evolution of women’s rights in the American political sphere. Clinton made history as the first female presidential nominee of a major political party, wearing a white suit to promote her candidacy at the Democratic National Convention in 2016. Similarly, as Harris gave her victory speech after successfully becoming the first female vice president in 2020, she wore a white suit and blouse. Harris recently broke through another glass ceiling for women in politics, becoming the first woman of color to be the presidential nominee for the Democratic Party-- occasionally sporting white and champagne-colored outfits on her three-month-long campaign trail. These choices can be traced back to 1984, when Geraldine Ferraro wore white for similar reasons as she accepted her nomination for the Democratic Party’s vice president alongside presidential candidate Walter Mondale.
This intentional choice of color represents how white has evolved over the past few centuries, from traditional domesticity to radical political independence. As women become more involved in American politics, modern usage of the color depicts how the suffragette mantra “votes for women” has become a cry for the American constituency to vote for women in national elections. Furthermore, the political history of the color represents the long struggle for female representation in the political sphere-- and how until women’s rights are more equally advocated for, the images of female politicians must mirror their womanhood first, and political principles second. Although the traditional definition of the color certainly still exists, the political portrayal of white represents a long struggle for women’s rights in the United States. This virtue of resilience, for now, seems never-ending, especially as Vice President Harris lost her bid for president at the beginning of November. But when considering the radical development of the color’s meaning from the domestic marriage market over two centuries ago, one must have hope. For the women of the United States: change is possible, change is ever-present, and change is coming.
Maizie Hirsch is a blog writer for Revolution. This article was edited by Alyssa Guevara.
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