May Poems - A Boy's First Long Pants: A Lost Rite of Passage

 

A 1914 advertisement from the Belvidere, Illinois newspaper for a boy's first long pants.

There is a rite of passage that has disappeared in just the last few generations. For a boy, getting his first long pants meant he had entered puberty, that he was joining the world of men. It was a time to be celebrated, a time for a little teasing, perhaps some hazing from peers. But it was looked forward to, and later remembered fondly.

Mack and Jack Patchett, two of my grandmother's cousins, in about 1907. Note the bows on Jack's shoes and his "Little Lord Fauntleroy" curls. Mack is just a few years away from his first long pants.

Baby Clothing

It’s a fairly recent trend to have gendered baby clothing, and a very recent trend in which babies and small children are dressed the same as adults. Look at photos prior to the 1920s and you’ll see boys and girls up to age three or four dressed in, well, dresses. Both were typically wearing long white gowns similar to christening gowns until they could walk. Then they were in shorter dresses that mimicked women’s fashions. 

     The reason most often given for this practice is that it was simply easier to change a diaper under a dress, and to potty train without fumbling with fastenings and pulling down pants. This seems reasonable, but babies were typically potty trained at much earlier ages, as young as nine months. So why did mothers persist for decades in dressing boys in dresses long after potty training?    

     Different scholars offer different explanations. One is that it was a symbol of the little boy’s dependence on his mother. When he graduated to short pants – and it was short pants – his father assumed more of a role in his life. 

     Another reason is that boys and girls were seen as alike until they got older. That is to say, they were both pure and innocent – sexless and without gender characteristics.“Dressing boys like little men would have been considered risque as it insinuated manliness that was reserved for adult men,” an article on a Maryland Historical site explains. As late as 1910 feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilmore, a niece of famed author Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote adamantly that no differentiation should be made in children’s clothing until children entered school. “The most conspicuous evil here is in the premature and unnatural differentiation in sex in the dress of little children….a little child should never be forced to think of this distinction. It does not exist in the child’s consciousness. It is in no way called for in natural activities, but is forced into vivid prominence by our attitudes.” 

     Jo B. Paoletti, a scholar who spent over forty years studying gender differences in clothing, says part of the explanation is that it was not considered important to differentiate boys and girls at an early age, but it seems very important to distinguish between children and adults. This was especially pronounced for boys. “Boys became men through a transition from dependency to mastery, while girls were said to “wear forever the baby petticoat with all its royal power and privileges,” she said, with the latter quote from a Harper’s Magazine from 1876.

Gender-Distinct Clothing

This is from an 1892 ad in the (Chicago) Inter Ocean. Note that an only son, an "only pet boy" might have to wait till he's 16 to get his first long pants.

     Boys acquired gender-distinct clothing in two stages: The first was breaching when the boy switched from dresses to short pants. This was typically between the ages of five to seven prior to 1890. Breaching after that began earlier, around ages three to four. This was portrayed in popular literature as difficult for Mother especially, but sometimes also for the little boy.    

     The second stage was getting one’s first pair of long pants around ages 12 to 14. This was a joyful occasion, much anticipated by the boy, and marked a transition from childhood to the beginning of manhood. It should be noted that newspaper advertisements suggested older ages, up to 16. An 1893 ad in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch  suggested a time: “The boy whose voice is changing and growing like a weed…” The voice change, of course, coincided with puberty. 

     From breaching to long pants, boys wore distinctive styles completely unlike those worn by men. These included sailor suits, little military costumes from past eras, the velvet-and lace Little Lord Fauntleroy clothing and the “Buster Brown” suit. Girls simply had a gradual lengthening of the skirt and began wearing women’s hairstyles at puberty. 

The "junior suit," as shown in this 1893 ad in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, looked nothing like menswear. Below is another example from a decade earlier. It appeared in the Fort Wayne Daily News in October1882.

    Pink and blue began to be “assigned” as feminine and masculine colors only in the 1920s, and not until World War II was there a sharp emphasis on distinctions between masculinity and femininity in clothing. Even in 1943, in a syndicated advice column called “The Chaperon,” a woman wrote in asking if pink was for girls and blue for boys – because her mother said it was the opposite. “Even baby styles change,” the nameless Chaperon replied. “The present color ruling is, pink is for girls and blue for boys.” In a 1941 query, the “Chaperon” said this new “rule” was a reversal of previous custom. 

     This month’s poetry celebrates the rite of passage boys like my grandfathers had when they got their first long pants.

  

McGeehan, W.O. “My First Long Pants,” San Francisco Examiner, 19 June 1898, p. 11. 

The brightest day of all my life

In this dull world of care

(There were some bright spots in my life,

Tough dark ones had their share),

Was in the summer long ago

When I cast a rapturous glance

Of boyish love and boyish pride

When I got my first long pants. 

How carefully I brace them up!

I did not sneer or frown

Because they once were Brother Jim’s

And recently cut down.

I grabbed my hat and sauntered out

In a kind of happy trance

Of course I thought the world was out

To see my first long pants.

And little Tommy Hilderbrand

With envy was struck dumb

He wouldn’t get his first long pants

For many years to come.

The boys from round the neighborhood

Began to sing and dance

And shout, “Say boys! Three cheers for Bill!

He’s got his first long pants!”

And when night drew her curtain dark

And I lay down to rest,

I held those pants tight in my arms

And hugged them to my breast.

I dreamt I walked the streets of gold

By some mysterious chance,

And angels thickly crowded round

To see my first long pants. 

 

    William O. McGeehan was better known for his sports writing, not his poetry. Born in 1879, he was also editor of the New York Herald Tribune. 

“Those First Long Pants of Mine,” The Boston Globe, 16 Feb 1900, p. 14. 

     Below are two of six stanzas celebrating the joy of this rite of passage. 

As one who pours at evening through an album

All alone,

And lingers o’er the faces of the friends that

He has known,

So I turn the leaves of fancy, till in wonderful design,

I hit upon the outlines of those first long pants

Of mine. 

And yes, the first suspenders! They were

Father’s too, I think;

But the combination filled my cup of joy up to

The brink. 

And there never was a boy on earth who could

Feel half so fine

As I did when I lost myself in those first long pants

Of mine. 

 

Armstrong, Phil H. “The First Long Pants,” Montgomery Advertiser (Montgomery, Alabama), 24 Dec 1905, p. 4. 

There are times within the life of a man

He feels his bosom swell;

Some times more than others –

On all we shall not dwell;

When elected to an office

That he’s worked hard to attain

Is one. Another is when he’s got

The girl he loved in vain.

But memory takes a backward turn

To when you were a boy

And on one occasion

When your heart leaped for joy.

Twas when you proudly went to show

Your grandmother or aunts –

I mean the day on which you donned

     Your

              First

                     Long

                            Pants!

And when you walked around it felt

As though you’d blankets ‘round your legs

You made your way as daintily 

As if you walked on eggs

You longed yet feared to wear the pants to

The old school house next day

You longed to have the girls see you

But feared the boys’ rough play.

Though finally you did and took

Your hazing like a man.

Knowing this was how so many

Great men’s lives began.

But looking back, how many gray-haired men

Would grab the chance 

To be a tow-haired boy again and

Wear

       Their

               First

                     Long

                            Pants.

“His First Long Pants,” Altoona Times (Altoona, Pennsylvania), 25 March 1905, p. 3.

     The previous poem referred to a sort of hazing when first appearing in public in long pants. Such a big change, laden with so much meaning, seemed to lend itself to comments and teasing. That’s the theme of the next two poems.

I’ve got ‘em at last, but say – I hate to go outside;

As soon as I show up in ‘em, I know that I’ll be guyed;

Of course I like ‘em, but I wish I wore ‘em sev-ral days,

The kids will make me feel blamed cheap in half a dozen ways.

“Hey Jim, them britches shows your wrists,” ull likely come from Joe

While Skinny Smith will josh me ‘bout high water pants, I know.

And probably something ‘bout like this ull come from Billy Brown;

“Yer feet should give a party and invite yer britches down.”

Well, anyway, I won’t be called Jim Spindleshanks no more,

An’ stocking holes won’t show up like they allus did before;

I feel and look just like a man, and that can’t be denied

I’ve got ‘em on at last, but say – I hate to go outside. 

“Your First Long Pants,” The Summerfield Sun (Summerfield, Kansas), 27 Feb 1908, p. 8.

The first and third of four stanzas of this poem are included. 

When your mind begins to canter to the days of

long ago,

And you get to ruminating on the joys you used 

to know,

There’s a boyish recollection that you never can

forget,

And you have to stop and chuckle when you 

think about it yet,

‘Tis the time you blushed, as people

passing by you looked askance,

At your gawky-like appearance

in your first long pants!

And your playmates dubbed you “Dudie,” and

By gesture and by word,

They declared your cringing figure looked 

ungainly and absurd.

But the girls, they pointed at you as you

Shambled down the street

And defended you as “manly” and the boys as

“Indiscreet.”

While your relatives – your uncles and

Your cousins and your aunts,

How they “joshed” you when they saw you in

Your first long pants!

Sources:

     Frost, Natasha. “For Centuries, People Celebrated a Little Boy’s First Pair of Trousers,” Atlas Obscura, 18 Sept 2017, https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/breeching-party-first-pants-regency-trousers-boys

     “Little Boys in Pink Dresses,” Maryland Center For History and Culture, https://www.mdhistory.org/little-boys-in-pink-dresses/#:~:text=It%20is%20not%20until%20the,girls%20still%20looked%20the%20same.

     Paoletti, Jo B. “Clothing and Gender In America: Children’s Fashions 1890-1920,” Signs, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Autumn 1987), pp. 136-143. 

Newspapers:

“The Chaperon,” The Weekly Kansas City Star, 22 Sept 1943, p. 6.

Copyright by Andrea Auclair  © 2024