Strap Shoes: Back Strap--Gender


Figure 1.--Notice that these two chikldren in the 1920s wear two different styles of strap shoes. Here the boy wears the back strap style. In other images during this period the boy wears the instep strap style. This boy looks to be about 7 years old. I'm not sure about the nationality, but it may be American.

The same style of back strap strap shoes were worn by both boys and girls. Girls wore them to an older age, but the styles were identical. Girls also continued wearing them after the mid-1920s when boys rarely worn them. We notice that in many photographs the boy wears one style of strap shoe and the girl another style. We can detect no consistency, however, as to who wears which style. Both boys and girl wear back strap shoes. Often mothers liked to diferentiate, but as far as we can determine, there was no well accecpted convention. I do not yet have sufficient information as to whether these conventuiins changed over time or from country to country. We still see boys and girls commonly wearing strap shoes in the 1930s. A good example is Polish children in 1939. Afterwards they beca,e much less coom for boys.








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Created: June 12, 2000
Last updated: 2:50 AM 12/26/2005