Julia Ward Howe was a prudish woman. The famous reformer, women's rights advocate, and author of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" was sixty-eight when she wrote "Dress and Undress," an article in Forum Magazine in l887 that showed how narrow her view of women's rights was when measured by the standards of the 1990s. The object of Mrs. Howe's irritation was the fashion current among young socialites of wearing evening dresses that bared their arms and their chests. Just as shocking, in her view, were what she called tranparencies — dresses that featured sheer fabric, often beeded, around the upper arms and bodice, allowing titillating glimpses of unshielded skin.

Mrs. Howe's argument that such attire was scandalous had four parts. First, she submitted, it was unhealthy. "The female slaves of a Turkish harem are obliged to leave the bosom so much exposed that...