one of the major misapprehensions of modern people is that wearing heeled boots, stockings, long skirts and a corset stopped women from doing any of those things in western europe and the american colonies in the 1800s. women were doing back-breaking field labor and carrying 50 lbs of laundry up and down the stairs all day in those outfits. they worked as farriers, blacksmiths, and farmers. rich women rode horses and went hunting in those outfits. Mary Kingsley hiked on foot all over Africa in boots corset, petticoats and bustle and she makes note of it in her writing which ***I*** then made a note of because it struck me as completely insane. but it just wasnt a big deal apparently!
At age 11 she should be transitioning from the short white puffy dress of childhood to the tween longer dress and possibly have smaller grownup clothes already, it depends on the specifics of her region and social clique of her parents etc. the girl in the purple sash is about 11 in the series of three girls i posted above, and the other two are a toddelr and about 5 respectively. she would be out in the woods in normal clothes for her gender and location and really not noticing them at all. likely she would have a sensible "day dress" made of wool tweed or a similar fabric. it would look like an adult woman's dress but be shorter and not as corseted, but she would likely already have a corset (not for tightlacing, just as underwear). she would have buttoned or laced leather boots with a low heel, and wool or silk stockings, and she would have various outdoor toys like lawn tennis equipment, balls, butterfly nets, and probably archery and shooting gear as well.
one of the big anachronisms of modern writers writing about historical women is making a big deal out of how horrible and burdensome the corset and petticoats and skirts and blah blah were, when really it just wasnt regarded in that way. an 11 year old girl who lived in 1870s america and had money would not consider wearing her brother's clothes liberatory or rebellious, she would mostly not care or just find it weird. why do we know this? because women were writing plenty of books and letters and diaries at the time. there are surviving complaints about the clothing but not nearly to the extent it is depicted in modern media, because for the most part they just werent in the way that much.
im not saying the standard usa-euro women's garments of the time werent restrictive, they definitely had issues (mostly related to drowning), but the way a modern person FEELS when suddenly laced into a badly-fitted commercially-produced costume corset and floor length skirts for the first time (like youre being strangled and killed) is not how Lizzie the housemaid felt when she got up every morning and put on the corset that had been heat-molded to her body over a period of ten years. she wasnt tightlacing down for a ball or for a portrait, she was just putting on a basic bra and making beds for four hours, you know. a closer equivalency would be to a broken-in pair of snug jeans, or a flight attendant's pantyhose. like yeah it's harder to step over a waist-high fence in those things than in sweats, but youve learned to work around it, and the compression they provide can help you stay on your feet all day
annie oakley in a performance getup and captain jack (not a performer), both historical personages. in the photos of captain jack including this one its notable that she is visibly corseted (60 year old women's boobs dont stay in that position without support). she really doesnt need to be, shes a thousand years old and lives in a mining camp and walks donkeys all day, shes not wearing a corset to impress anyone, its clearly just something she's wearing by choice. annie looks uncorseted here but was corseted in other photos, she was both an actual sharpshooter irl AND a stage performer so her outfit is sort of half and half bullshit and real
split riding skirts were available, but im not sure anyone would bother making them for an 11 year old who would already have a short skirt on
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