Figure 1.-- We note numerous French post cards depicting what we assume would be seen as petits garçons modèles. We see some similar postcards in some other European countries, especially Belgium and the Netherlands, ut nothing on the scale of France. And such cards are completely absent in America. We are not entirely sure how to assess these cards. The fact that there are so many of them suggests to us that they wetre popular. A reder writes, "One thing I noticed was that the younger boy is wearing mismatched shoes. The boy's left shoe has three eyelets with metal grommets and appears to be a plain toe shoe. The fight shoe has four eyelets without metal grommets and looks like it may be a moc toe shoe. This seems odd for a professionally posed post card. I used to be an auditor and used to nit-picking. Just thought I would pass this on for laughs."

Post cards were very popular in thefirst half of the 20th century. They were used both for correspondence, collecting, and scrapbooks. They were done on ak\ll kinds of subjects. One popular topic was children. We note numerous French post cards depicting what we assume would be seen as petits garçons modèles. We see some similar postcards in some other European countries, especially Belgium and the Netherlands, ut nothing on the scale of France. And such cards are completely absent in America. We are not entirely sure how to assess these cards. The fact that there are so many of them suggests to us that they wetre popular. Now we hve no way of knowing who purchased them, but we suspect it was primarily mothers. We think that this is an indicator that the petits garçons modèle was a very popular ideal which appealed to large numbers of French mothers. Not all mothers could raise their son as a petits garçons modèle. This may have been a financial matter or perhaps fathers had differentb ideas. Or perhaps the boy was not very well behaved. But sany nother could afford to buy a postcard. And the large numbers of these cards produced and purchased seems to illustrate a French fashion sensability. The children are commonly pictured in fancy blouses, short pants, rompers, white socks, and strap shoes. Interestigly, berets were not part of the petits garçons modèles.