Girl in Recital Costume, Living Room Armchair, 1950s

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Girl in Recital Costume, Living Room Armchair, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Girl in Recital Costume, Living Room Armchair, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-2EE55C

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A girl of about seven sits on the arm of a fringed upholstered chair, dressed for what is clearly a dance recital or pageant — red patent-leather shoes, thick white bobby socks, a dark felt skirt trimmed in red and white rickrack, a silk scarf knotted at the throat, white cotton gloves folded in her lap, and a feathered hat perched on her curls. Someone spent a considerable amount of the family's Saturday morning getting this outfit exactly right. In the 1950s, enrolling a daughter in tap or baton lessons was a standard parental investment in poise, which was understood to be a skill with a reliable return on the order of popularity and a good marriage. The living room itself — sculptured carpet, damask chair fabric, floral drapes — represents the postwar domestic ideal that the child's outfit is designed to inhabit. She is performing composure for the camera with the focused effort of someone who has been told exactly how to sit, which is itself a form of choreography. The recital would last forty-five minutes, the gloves would be lost by Tuesday, and the theory that poise was an investment strategy would quietly retire sometime in the following decade.

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