herefore the more expensive and the
more obviously unproductive the women of the household are, the more
creditable and more effective for the purpose of reputability of the
household or its head will their life be. So much so that the women have
been required not only to afford evidence of a life of leisure, but even
to disable themselves for useful activity.

It is at this point that the dress of men falls short of that of women,
and for sufficient reason. Conspicuous waste and conspicuous leisure
are reputable because they are evidence of pecuniary strength; pecuniary
strength is reputable or honorific because, in the last analysis, it
argues success and superior force; therefore the evidence of waste
and leisure put forth by any individual in his own behalf cannot
consistently take such a form or be carried to such a pitch as to argue
incapacity or marked discomfort on his part; as the exhibition would in
that case show not superior force, but inferiority, and so defeat its
own purpose. So, then, wherever wasteful expenditure and the show of
abstention from effort is normally, or on an average, carried to the
extent of showing obvious discomfort or voluntarily induced physical
disability. There the immediate inference is that the individual in
question does not perform this wasteful expenditure and undergo this
disability for her own personal gain in pecuniary repute, but in
behalf of some one else to whom she stands in a relation of economic
dependence; a relation which in the last analysis must, in economic
theory, reduce itself to a relation of servitude.

To apply this generalization to women's dress, and put the matter in
concrete terms: the high heel, the skirt, the impracticable bonnet, the
corset, and the general disregard of the wearer's comfort which is an
obvious feature of all civilized women's apparel, are so many items of
evidence to the effect that in the modern civilized scheme of life the
woman is still, in theory, the economic dependent of the man--that,
perhaps in a highly idealized sense, she still is the man's chattel. The
homely reason for all this conspicuous leisure and attire on the part
of women lies in the fact that they are servants to whom, in the
differentiation of economic functions, has been delegated the office
of putting in evidence their master's ability to pay. There is a marked
similarity in these respects between the apparel of women and that of
domestic servants, especially li