Figure 1.--This American brother and sister are dressed in similar, but not identical dresses and pantalettes. the painting is dated 1843, although we do not know the painter. Notice that while they are dressed similarly, they have very different hair syles. The girl has long ringlers, while her little brother has a short hair cut. Click on the image for a more detailed assessment of the portrait.

Mothers who decided on ringlet curls for their sons then had to decide on how to do their daughter's hair. HBC believes that in most cases, the sisters of boys one up in ringlets often had their hair done differently. There are chronological and country variations here. We note that in mid-19th century America, when ringlets were very popular for girls, even younger brothers still in dresses rarely had ringlerts. There were several options in fact. The sister's hair could be done identically or simarly. Or it could be done differently. Here the mother could chose a different style or different length or both. The possible variations give rise to quite a few possibilities. HBC does not fully understand the different approaches of mothers, but we plan to pursue this topic in more detail. We note several different options.

Sister Ringlets/Brother Other Styles

We note images in the early 19th century of sisters wearing ringlets curls and brothers mostly wearing short hair styles. This was the most common alternative during the first half of the 19th century. Here the number of available is images is realtively limited because photography only became an important medium in the 1840s and significant numbers of images do not appear until the 1850s. A good example here is the image seen on this page painted in 1843 (figure 1).

Sister and Brother Ringlets

This appear to be the least commom alternative. We note very few family portraits where brothers and sisters wore the same style of ringlet curls.

Brother Ringlets/Sister Other Styles

Very significant numbers of photographic images appear in the 1860s. We begin to note increasing numbers of boys with ringlet curls, especially in the 1880s after the publication of Little Lord Fauntleroy. Thisid not mean that girls no longer wore ringlets. We do note, however, that in families where boys wore tight, defined ringlets, their sisters no longer did. We are not yet positive how girls in families without brothers had their hair done. We believe that here ringlets were more common, but this needs to be confirmed. Ringlers clearly from 1880-1900 became a style that could be worn by both boys anf girls. We do not believe, however, that it ever was a styule that girls could not wear.

Created: November 26, 2001
Last edited: 3:09 AM 2/25/2008