Pants don't make preachers : fashion and gender construction in late-nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century american revivalism [Printed document] / Leah Payne

This article shows how fashion enhanced religious representation and fostered gender construction in the careers of Maria Woodworth-Etter and Aimee Semple Mc Pherson, 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.