That's interesting, Annie. I seem to recall that back then, boy babies were dressed in rather frilly, feminine looking gowns, hats, etc., so maybe the parents just carried the tradition over into early childhood. I have similar early photos of relatives of English descent that were dressed in what we today would see as girly clothes.

Or, maybe your grandfather had a female gender identity, and expressed a desire to wear the same clothes as his sisters! There's no reason to believe that the instances of cross gender identity were any less frequent a hundred years ago than they are today.

Clara

Clara, I think that your first paragraph is probably correct. It was also often the case that clothes, as grown out of, were handed down to younger siblings regardless of gender provided that they more or less fitted. But my grandfather was the firstborn so that didn't apply in his case.

On the other hand, as a clergyman, he confessed to a liking for ecclesiastical robes, the more splendid the better, and his marriage certainly cannot be seen as a success. There possibly is some reason to believe that gender variance was less frequent then. It has been strongly suggested that firstly widespread administration of DES to pregnant women and subsequently xeno-estrogens in our environment may have produced a substantial increase in defective gender conditioning of the brains of at least genetically male fetuses.

Another reason.

From the mid-16th century until the early 20th century, young boys in the Western world wore gowns or dresses until an age that varied between two and eight.

The main reason for keeping boys in dresses was toilet training, or the lack thereof. The change was probably made once boys had reached the age when they could easily undo the rather complicated fastenings of many Early Modern breeches and trousers. Dresses were also easier to make with room for future growth, in an age when clothes were much more expensive than now for all classes.

http://www.museumofchildhood.org.uk Boy's dress.

From the 1920s onward, it became more normal for young boys to wear trousers. The introduction of new fabrics and detergents meant that trousers were easier to wash and iron and could be laundered more effectively.

Since Annie decided to show herself here I've been trying to nail down exactly whom she reminds me of. I thought at first that she took after my maternal grandmother, but on searching through my collection of family photographs I found that despite close involvement with her throughout my childhood I lacked any even halfway decent photographs. I have been canvassing my family for more, but so far have failed to find any reasonably good photograph more recent than 1908,at which time she was considered a 'real Irish beauty'. She was also strikingly tall for a woman in those days - at least 5' 10". I have now been provided with one that shows her in her early seventies which is of interest because although she looks rather drawn (she was probably then already suffering from heart failure) my mother also appears in the same photograph, and in some of my moher's photographs, including this one and another taken on her own seventieth birthday, I can sometimes see quite a strong resemblance there also.

So for the rest of you here, when you appear in your feminine personas, do you also notice any strong likenesses to female members of your own families?

Funny thing, whenever I see this question asked I have always looked at my mother and older sister, and cousins ect. I don't look anything like any of them. I look more and more like my dad every day. However, I was posting in another thread earlier on, when for the first time I thought of my younger "tomboy" sister, I probably look more like her en-fem. ( besides my dad in drab mode ) than anybody else.