Figure 1.--Here we se an American girl wearing a small collar with her dress. The girl is unidentified, but we know the CDV portrait was taken in 1865. Click on the image to see the full portrait with her brother.

Both boys and girls wore bow, especially in the late 19th-and early 20th centuries. There were substantial differences in how boys and girls wore boys. Of course the most statling use of bows were the huge collar bows boys wore. This was less common for girls. But girls wore huge hair bows which were much less common for boys. There were mzny other gender difference abd these varied over time. Generally usage was inverse. A factor here is that boys generally did not like dressng like girls. Thus when we see boys with huge cillar bows, we do not see girls with collar bows. Girls did wwear collar bows, but they were less common znd generally snaller. We see gie=rls wearing collar bows, shoulder bows, hair bows, shoe bows and other bows. Overall the bow is more associated with girls, but the huge bows worn by boys makes this general convention less pparent than it normally would be. We note variations in girls' use of bows affected by a range of factors, including age, chronology. country, social class, and other factors.

Created: 6:03 PM 9/14/2008
Last updated: 6:03 PM 9/14/2008