“Pants Don't Make Preachers”: Fashion and Gender Construction in Late-Nineteenth-and Early-Twentieth-Century American Revivalism

Abstract

This article shows how fashion enhanced religious representation and fostered gender construction in the careers of Maria Woodworth-Etter and Aimee Semple McPherson, two late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century female American revivalist ministers. The ministry is an office that, from its inception and with few exceptions, has been gendered male. Thus, a woman minister was, for most, a contradiction in terms. With their mega-church revivalist services and national audiences, Indianapolis-based Maria Woodworth-Etter (1844–1924) and Los Angelino Aimee Semple McPherson (1890–1944) were members of a longstanding American institution: celebrity revivalists. They had highly visible careers; they drew large crowds, promoted their ministries vigorously in print and eventually film, had admirers and detractors across the country, and had profitable, controversial lifestyles. I argue that one reason for Woodworth-Etter and McPherson's success—in spite of historic obstacles to female ministers—was sartorial. The women strategically manipulated their personal appearances to create coherent representations of two seemingly contradictory identities: woman and minister.

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