Figure 1.-- This cabinet card portrait shows a young child. In his case he or she is identified, although it is difficult to read the writing. It is something like [Niermy?] Clinton Mintie. Click on the image if you want to have a crack at dechiphering the writing. We can maje out that the child is 6 years old and the photograpoh was taken October 2, 1893. The child looks like a boy, but girls at the time could have short hair cuts--side parts were less common for girls. Most of the dresses boys wore in the 1890s were plain. This one was rather stylish. He wears a dark dress with shoulder ruffles and a locket. The portrait was sent to Granbdmother Mintie. The studio was Hamilton in Bozeman, Montana.

Our assessment of boys wearing dresses is complicated by the fact that the children in old photographas are often not named. Now we can often date the images to the correct decade, but identifying the gender of the younger children can often be more difficult. This is because when we are discussing dresses, at least for boys, we are talking about younger children. And younger children do not exhibit the gender appearance differences we begin to see with older children. Thus the number of images that can be used to develop this topic is limited which impairs our ability to assess the developing trends. To our modern mind just the fact a child is wearing a dress leaves a suggestion that he or she is a girl. So it is complicated using facial characteristics to assess gender. And whatever the clues and their assessment, unless the child is identified on the back of the photograph, we can basically only guess. The clues here are confusing (figure 1). The child has a boyish hair cut, bith short, a boyish front, and a side part. Unlike many dresses we see boys wearing, this dreess is t=rather tylis. Most boys wearing dress had rather plasin styles.

Created: 12:12 PM 5/23/2018
Last updated: 9:43 PM 4/27/2023