An Oklahoma Girl portrait, Oklahoma City, 1909

About this postcard

An idealized profile portrait of a young woman with dark hair swept up, printed under the caption 'An Oklahoma Girl.' The vignetted head-and-shoulders image looks like an artist's illustration rather than a photograph, signed 'Cobb Shinn' at the lower right. The sender's message reads 'All the girls look like this out here,' a wry comment that turns the regional beauty label into a local joke. Idealized female heads were common on early twentieth-century postcards, often pairing a generic pretty face with a place name. Oklahoma had become a state less than two years earlier, and the caption presents her as a type.