Figure 1.-- This studio cabinet card portrait shows a girl with a very short hair cut. The portrait is undated, but looks like the 1870s to us. We might have thought the child was a boy, but the name is written on the back--Celestine Rice. note the centerpart. While that was popular for boys in the early-20th century, it usually identified the child as a girl. Celestine wears a white dress, plaid sash and pantalettes with fancy trim..

Both boys abd girls wire shirt hair, buShort hair is primarily associated with boys. This changed somewhat over time. Boys at mid-19th century has short hair, but not the short-back-and-sides that were worn by the late-19th century. American boys, however did not very commonly wear the cropped styles common in Eyripe. Shoer styles were common in the 20th centyr, alyhough long hair was very popular for a while (1970s-80s). Fashionable hair styles for women during the 19th century were mostly long styles. Many women had very long hair. Women were very proud of gtheir long hair. We see many girls with long styles, but not all. There were a range ofstles fir girls and send had shortish style, but usually covering their ears. This is useful because it hekps identify the gender in period photographs, mist of which do not identufy the individuals. It is, howev, not a perfect indicator, nit only because soje girkls had short hair, but because som boys had long hair. Many bits ar he mid-19th century had hair down to and not commonly over their ears. While short hair for girls was not uncommon, really short styles like the ones worn by boys were much less common. We are not yet sure why girls had such really short hair. We do not think it was fashionable, but perhaps our readers will know more about that. There are other reasons that girls might have really short hair. They could have been sick or perhaos had hair lice. Practicality could have been another factor, but that mighthave been more common with wirking-class families. Short hair becane more common for girls in the 20th cebtury, but styles as short as the ones worn by boys were still not very common.

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Created: 5:59 AM 6/23/2013
Last edited: 5:59 AM 6/23/2013