![Snarky skincare advice for backwoods women [Mid-19th Century Sunbonnets, Part 1]](https://spriggedandspotted.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Sun-bonnet-illustration_1943.8.3105-e1671113113189.jpg)
Why did 19th century women wear their sun bonnets, or not?
Women who don’t wear bonnets…
- make themselves “as rough and coarse as ever [they] can, by way of being independent.”
- look– at age 26– “like a runnet* bag that had hung six weeks in the chimney corner”
- make themselves “too ugly for any use except scaring the crows off the corn”
…according to a Missouri newspaper column published in 1849.
* A rennet-bag is the fourth stomach of a ruminant (cow), a traditional natural source of enzymes for making cheese.
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