Figure 1.--We are unsure what to make of this portrait. It is a postcard-back portrait taken about 1910. We are not even sure if the child is a boy or girl. The flower and pigtails/bows suggest a girl to us. The child's gface we think could be either a boy or girl. The garment we ar first thought was a tunic suit, which would suggest a boy. But in studying the image we don't see the tunic. It looks more like a one-piece suit, but photographs because the way fabric falls can be misleading. We don't see one-piece garments like this in the early-20th century. Pants like this which we would call bloomer knickers would be almost exclusively worn by boys. A reader suggests it could be a girl's gym suit. We think the shoes rule that out. In addition, for modesty reasons, girls gym bloomers tended to be much more voluminous.

We have found some images that we just do not understand. This is often the case with unidentified images. Most images can be easily classified, especially in the 20th century with the prevalence of ready made clothing. When clothes were hand made in the 19th century, there was more variability. Some images are hard to identify because the image is not well exposed. But we find well exposed images that provide conflicting signals, some times because we can't tell mif the child is a boy or girl. We post these images that we have had a difficult time assessing in the hope that readers will have some insights to offer.

Image 1

We are unsure what to make of this portrait (figure 1). It is a postcard-back portrait taken about 1910. We are not even sure if the child is a boy or girl. The flower and pigtails/bows suggest a girl to us. The child's gface we think could be either a boy or girl. The garment we ar first thought was a tunic suit, which would suggest a boy. But in studying the image we don't see the tunic. It looks more like a one-piece suit, but photographs because the way fabric falls can be misleading. We don't see one-piece garments like this in the early-20th century. Pants like this which we would call bloomer knickers would be almost exclusively worn by boys. A reader suggests it could be a girl's gym suit. We think the heavy shoes rule that out. In addition, for modesty reasons, girls gym bloomers tended to be much more voluminous. A reader writes, "I remember seeing Indian braves having their hair braided like this in some movies. Of course the child here is obviously not an Indian." Schools sometimes had pagents, but boys did not grow their hair long for these presentations.

Created: 5:45 AM 3/28/2011
Last updated: 5:45 AM 3/28/2011