Figure 1.--This is a gender ambiguous portrait. The child is unidentified, but we believe is Anmerican. There is no hair parting to go on with the bangs cut, but the exposed eears suggest a boy. It is not clear if the child is wearing a dress or a tunic suit. The black long stockings were worn by both boys and girls. The garment is front buttoning and the bow looks like the ones boys wore. The child has crossed his legs at the ankle. We think he is probably boy, but are niot positive. The whicker suggests that the portrait was taken about 1900-05.

The other basic posture here is sitting down. Often the children simply have their legs hanging down. This seems to be the most common sitting posture. There as far as we can tell no gender connotation here. The children also often crossed their legs, while this was not the most common posture, given the number of photographic portraits, we have found large numbers of such images. This may have been more common for boys, but we can not yet confirm that. We think that there were basically three alternatives here: crossing the legs at 1) the ankles with calves apart, 2) crossing at the ankles with the the calves toether, and 3) crossing at the knees. Logically you might think an alternative is criossing art the calves, but phyically this is not a natural alternative as it requires mussle tension to hold them there. We are not sure how common crossing legs at the ankles with calves apart was. We suspect this was mostly a boysish posture. We note many girls with their legs crossed at the ankles with the calves together. In fact, we think that girls were often taught to cross their legs demurely at the ankles when sitting down. A reader tells us, "I think you are correct here. Boys were much more likely to cross their legs. Girls were taught from an early age not to cross their legs beyond what you mention as crossing the ankles. It was seen as unladylike!" I am not sure just at what age girls began to be instructed about this. That does not mean that all children that crossed their ankles were girls. See for example an American boy, Richard Crown. Another example is John Seagrum, we think in the 1870s. We believe that more agressive crossing of the legs, especially at the knee, suggests that the child may be a boy. A good example of this is an unidentified American child wearing a dress. We are still assessing this indicator and welcome reader comments. It does seem to indicate that children who crossed their legs an the knee were mostly boys. There are various ways of cropssing the legs at the knee, both over abd under as well as left and right. We believe that here there were no gender connotations, all were most likely to be done by boys.

Legs Hanging Down

The other basic posture here is sitting down. Often the children simply have their legs hanging down. This seems to be the most common sitting posture. We note countless examples in the photograophic record. There as far as we can tell no gender connotation here.

Crossed Legs

The children also often crossed their legs, while this was not the most common posture, given the number of photographic portraits, we have found large numbers of such images. This may have been more common for boys, but we can not yet confirm that. We think that there were basically three alternatives here: crossing the legs at 1) the ankles with calves apart, 2) crossing at the ankles with the the calves toether, and 3) crossing at the knees. Logically you might think an alternative is criossing art the calves, but phyically this is not a natural alternative as it requires mussle tension to hold them there. We are not sure how common crossing legs at the ankles with calves apart was. We suspect this was mostly a boysish posture. We note many girls with their legs crossed at the ankles with the calves together. In fact, we think that girls were often taught to cross their legs demurely at the ankles when sitting down. A reader tells us, "I think you are correct here. Boys were much more likely to cross their legs. Girls were taught from an early age not to cross their legs beyond what you mention as crossing the ankles. It was seen as unladylike!" I am not sure just at what age girls began to be instructed about this. That does not mean that all children that crossed their ankles were girls. See for example an American boy, Richard Crown. Another example is John Seagrum, we think in the 1870s. We believe that more agressive crossing of the legs, especially at the knee, suggests that the child may be a boy. A good example of this is an unidentified American child wearing a dress. Another example is an unidentified German boy. We are still assessing this indicator and welcome reader comments. It does seem to indicate that children who crossed their legs an the knee were mostly boys. There are various ways of cropssing the legs at the knee, both over abd under as well as left and right. We believe that here there were no gender connotations, all were most likely to be done by boys. And we note boys posed like this both before and after breeching. An example of a boy And tucking his leg under his skirt is English boy Oliver Strachey.

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Created: 4:38 AM 7/27/2011
Last updated: 3:01 AM 7/29/2011