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Testimonies for the Church Volume 4
sees professed Christians eagerly accepting the fashions that he has
invented. The amount of physical suffering created by unnatural and
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unhealthful dress cannot be estimated. Many have become lifelong
invalids through their compliance with the demands of fashion. Dis-
placements and deformities, cancers and other terrible diseases, are
among the evils resulting from fashionable dress.
Many a style of dress that was inappropriate and even ridiculous
has been generally adopted because it was the fashion. Among these
pernicious fashions were the large hoops, which frequently caused
indecent exposure of the person. In contrast with this was presented a
neat, modest, becoming dress, which would dispense with the hoops
and the trailing skirts, and provide for the proper clothing of the limbs.
But dress reform comprised more than shortening the dress and cloth-
ing the limbs. It included every article of dress upon the person. It
lifted the weights from the hips by suspending the skirts from the
shoulders. It removed the tight corsets, which compress the lungs,
the stomach, and other internal organs, and induce curvature of the
spine and an almost countless train of diseases. Dress reform proper
provided for the protection and development of every part of the body.
To those who consistently adopted the reform dress, appreciating
its advantages and cheerfully taking their position in opposition to
pride and fashion, it proved a blessing. When properly made, it was a
becoming and consistent dress, and recommended itself to persons of
candid mind, even among those not of our faith.
The question may be asked: “Why has this dress been laid aside,
and for what reason has dress reform ceased to be advocated?” The
reason for this change I will here briefly state. While many of our
sisters accepted this reform from principle, others opposed the simple,
healthful style of dress which it advocated. It required much labor to
introduce this reform among our people. It was not enough to present
before our sisters the advantages of such a dress and to convince them
that it would meet the approval of God. Fashion had so strong a hold
upon them that they were slow to break away from its control, even to
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obey the dictates of reason and conscience. And many who professed
to accept the reform made no change in their wrong habits of dress,
except in shortening the skirts and clothing the limbs.
Nor was this all. Some who adopted the reform were not content
to show by example the advantages of the dress, giving, when asked,