*** boys hair styles -- curls ages Ameican country trends United States U.S. specific styles








American Curls: Ages

boys curls ages

Figure 1.-- Here we see a family photographic portrait. The boys look to be anout 4-6 years of age. Both boys wear floppy bows and blouses. Curiously the younger boy has short straight hair while his older broither has longer hair done with a fancy top roll curl. The potrait is not dated, but looks like the 1890s to us. The studio is not identified.

The age of boys with curls varried over time. For the most part curls were done for younger, mostly pre-school boys. Of course here we are taling about mothers curling hair, not natural curls. Many mothers let boys' hasir grow when younger. Some would have natural curls, but many mothers also curled it. The age of cutting a younger child's hair varied from family to family as did breeching. But most children wee breeched and had their hair curled by the timethey begn school at about 6 years of age. Here socia; class was involved because more affluent parents could affordhelp to deal with family chore and thus had time for realtive frivolities such as curling a boy's hair. And the well-to-do could afford to educate children at home. Even when help was available, some well to do mothers wanted to do this thems;ves. This also varied from family to family. We do not know much about the first half of the century. This changed with the invention of photography (1839) and the rapid development of the photogrphic industry in America. Within only a few years, there were photographic stdios everywhere. Thus we know a great deal avout curls un the second half of the century. We note quite a few older boys with curls during the Fauntleroy era (1885-1905). Other than that boys rarely had curls after they reached school age, at least if they attended school.. While it was normally the younger boys in a family whose hair was curled. This was not always thd case. We see some instances when older boys had their hair curled. We are not entirely sure why this was. Really young boys might not have ebough hair to comb. Or the texture of the hair could ve another factor. Perhaps readers may have some insights.








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Created: 12:17 AM 9/14/2015
Last edited: 12:17 AM 9/14/2015