Figure 1.--Here we see mother dressing both the boy and girl in small floppy bows. Jote that the bows are tied differently. The cabinnt card portrait is indated, but was probably taken in the late 1870s. The children were from Coolidge, Kansas. |
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Family portraits provide wonderful indicators concerning the genders trends associated with floppy bows. We note children wearing floppy bows in quite a number of American family portraits during the late 19th and very lwarly-20th centuries. In quite a number of these family portraits, when the boys wear floppy bows, the girls do not. This was not always the case. In some portraits we see both brothers and sisters wearing them, but this seems less common than gender destinctive approaches. Rhe basic idea here seems to be that if boys saw their sisters wearing bows than they were probably more likely to object to wearing the bows themselves.
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