Figure 1.-- Here we see a boy wearing a blouse and a tartan skirt, It is a detaoil from a clorized gamily portrsit. It looks to be a portrait from a rural family of modest means. The portrait is undated, but kooks like it may have been taken in the earlly 1900s. Click on the image to see the familyh portait. Unfortunaltely we do not have a very good scan.

We see boys wearing dresses in both urban and rural areas during the 19th century. Of course, photographic studios were located in the town, but we many studio portaits of boys wearing skirted garments in small towns througout the country and not just in the fashionabl northeastern cities. This suggest that the convenion was prevalent in both urbn and rural areas. We note boys in both urban and rural areas wearing skirted garments. We have not yet been able to fully assess demographuc trends, We believe that the convengion of younger boys wearing skirted garmenhts persisted longer in rural areas than in urban areas, at least for very young boys. This is, however, only a prelininry assessment. We see photographa of boys wearing dresses into the 1910s, mostly in rural areas. This was much less common in at the time in urban areas.

Created: 8:47 PM 11/13/2014
Last updated: 8:47 PM 11/13/2014