Boys' Hair Styles: Parts with Various Styles--Ringlet Curls


Figure 1.--This English child appeared in postcards after the turn of the 20th century. He wears his ringlet curls with a right part. Image courtesy of the MD collection.

There were many varied hair styles associated with ringlet curls. These styles had a wide variety of part patterns, including left, right, and center. Some styles had left and right pars forming a "U". Some were even more complicated. Because of the usr of front bangs ith some ringlet curl hair styles, the part pattern is no always apparent in frontal photographic portraits. The use of the part may have had some gender connotations with some of these hair styles, but we are still developing information on this. We believe, for example, that boys with ringlet curls often had side parts, but girls often had center parts. Here we are still assessing how common this convention was. For some boys, the part may have been done at random rather than reflecting gender conventions. This appaears to have been more true of left or right parts. Center parts appear to have had at times strong gender conventions. It is one of the most relable of differentiating boys and girls in old photographs. Girls had center parts nd boys side parts. This was not absolute, but it was a very strong indicator. The interesting aspect concerning ringlets is that a center part is the obvious part that should be used to do einglet curls. This wa because it evenly parted th hair to produce ringlets of equal length on both sides. We are not sure how mothers managed this with s single side parts. But mothers worked their magic. A good example is an Ennglish boy, Edwin Crawshay in 1864..







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Created: January 21, 2003
Last updated: 1:05 AM 12/8/2017