Figure 1.--.

We do not have a lot of information on American rompers during the 1940s. As far as we can tell, attitudes toward romper took a definative gender term. They became seen as a mostly girls garment, except for babies and todlers. We have found some family snapshots. We see school-age girls girls wearing romper outfits as casual summer wear. They were, however, not very common for boys other than babies. Rompers were common for infants and younger toddlers. While rompers were primasrilycsual wear, for infabts and younger todlers we see some being dome as fabcy heirloom outfits. We have found very little evidence of boys wearing rompers beyond the infant or very early toddler stage in the photographic record. We see a few pre-school boys wearing them, but relatively few. Here we see matching brother-sister H-bar rompers in 1941 (figure 1). But for the most part we only see girls wearing rompers and only as casual wear. Here we have a good example in 1942 (figure 1). In this case it looks like only romper pants. We do not see rompers at school. American schools were a good reflection of popular fashion because public schools did not have uniforms. And we do not see rompers. This was primrily because girls still mostly wore dresses and skirts to school. There was one exception for teenagers. High school (secondary school) girls did gym like the boys. And by the 40s, those gym uniforms had transitioned from middly blouses and romper pants. One of the new options for the high school girls was romper suits. Wed are not dure when they first apperared, but they were defintely being worn by the 1940s.