Les Femmes De I’avenir, 1900-1902

Les Femmes de I’Avenir, 1900-1902

Object Lessons

They were the women of the future: the lawyers, doctors, and police officers. But, in these satirical postcards, produced in France at the turn of the twentieth century, their professions are solely masculine. At the time, the French language itself, which considers nouns to be either feminine or masculine, couldn’t conceive of a female mayor or second lieutenant, or any job in the public interest. (To this day, there is no feminine word for judge—or plumber.) And while these women might be emancipated through their imaginary métiers, their fashions tell a different story. If they’re not sexualized with bare arms and tight uniforms, they’re hutched up, neutralized, and swathed in big coats and top hats.

When such cards were in circulation, French feminists and antifeminists were embattled. Accusing working women of becoming “virile,” antifeminists portrayed the desire for equality as a threat to the social order, and a danger to the family. In the United States, women seeking the vote were envisioned as emasculating. “My wife’s joined the

Suffrage Movement, (I’ve suffered ever since!)” declared one colorful American postcard illustrating a “feminized” man cleaning the floor in a striped apron. Others imagined men cooking, surely an exotic sight, or resentfully looking after a baby.

The most radical women have always dared to break with convention, in language or comportment. Madeleine Pelletier, a French psychiatrist and social advocate in the early twentieth century, had no time for fancy dresses. Secretary of the organization Women’s Solidarity and the subject of photographic portraits in the 1910s, she wrote about feminist education, promoted genderless names for girls and boys, and kept her hair short. Pelletier refused clothes that objectified a woman’s body. “I do not understand why these ladies don’t see the vile servitude that lies in displaying their breasts,” she said. “I will show off mine when men adopt a special sort of trouser showing off their—.” Madeleine Pelletier wasn’t a femme de Favenir. She was ahead of her time.

The Editors