Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I Cross-Dressed Women as American Ideals (1908–1921)
1 Moving
Picture Uplift and the Female Boy
2 Cowboy
Girls, Girl Spies, and the Homoerotic Frontier
Intermezzo Codes of Deviance (1892–1914)
3 Cultural
Hierarchy and the Detection of Sexual Deviance in A Florida
Enchantment (1894 and 1914)
Part II The Emergence of Lesbian Legibility (1921–1934)
4 Enter the
Lesbian: Cosmopolitanism, Trousers, and Lesbians in the 1920s
5 The Lesbian
Vogue and Backlash against Cross-Dressed Women in the 1930s
Conclusion
Appendix: U.S. Films Featuring Cross-Dressed Women, 1895–1934
Notes
Bibliography
Index
LAURA HORAK is an assistant professor of film studies at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. She is also the coeditor of an award-winning book, Silent Cinema and the Politics of Space.
"Horak has produced a meticulously researched, astutely argued, and
highly readable text … her use of archival materials is impeccable
and her filmic and historical analyses clearly display a nuanced
understanding of her topic."
*Publishers Weekly*
"Laura Horak's Girls Will Be Boys is without peer as a historical
contribution to queer scholarship on early film. It is a
revisionist work that draws upon a wealth of historical research to
completely overturn previous accounts."
*author of The Fun Factory: The Keystone Film Company and the
Emergence of Mass Culture*
"Who knew how important were those girls who would be boys? Not
only as signs of 'deviancy' but as ideals of red-blooded boyhood
itself? This engaging, well-researched book tells more than we ever
knew about the many and various reasons 'girls will be boys.'"
*University of California, Berkeley*
"This fascinating and well-written treatise is a laudable addition
to film scholarship and a must-purchase for academic collections
with concentrations in film or women's and gender studies."
*Starred review*
"Drawing on the early archives of American cinema, Horak questions
the assumption that cross-dressing actresses were inherently
transgressive ... and provides a new lens through which to view
gender, sexuality and film."
*15 Queer/Feminist Books To Read In Early 2016*
"Fascinating and timely ... As the lesbian subject is being
normalised in Hollywood and far beyond, this study of
cross-dressing’s early filmic transition from heterosexual ideal to
queer deviance is particularly valuable."
*Times Higher Education*
"Horak's exhaustive research turns up many incredible moments in
the history of gender shake-ups in the movies. Girls Will Be Boys
is a hugely satisfying read, one of those rare books that offer
distinct value to scholars while siultaneously being an
entertaining read."
*The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide*
"Girls Will Be Boys is an excellent work of film scholarship,
meticulously researched and expertly presented, while still being
an approachable and enjoyable read for the diligent non-academic
reader. This is a wonderful book for those cinephiles who take an
interest in how gender and sexuality have been presented throughout
film history, and for social historians who recognize the important
role cinema has played over the last century in shaping popular
perspectives on gender and sexuality. Laura Horak has written an
informative and necessary book."
*Fourth & Sycamore*
"Girls Will Be Boys is a good read. It is thoroughly researched,
well argued, insightful and readable. Anyone interested in LGBT
history, film studies, or the early 20th century will appreciate
this recommended book."
*Huffington Post*
"Laura Horak's first monograph, Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressed
Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema, 1908-1934, is refreshing and
invigorating. In a moment when pop culture is ablaze with stories
of the 'novelty' of transgender and gender nonconforming people,
this historian was delighted to sink into a thoroughly researched
book that was ten years in the making."
*Film Quarterly*
"One rarely comes across works that can recalibrate an entire field
the way Horak’s does. This amazing book reconfigures
cinematic depictions of cross-dressing and lesbianism …
Meticulously researched and accessible, Girls Will Be Boys is a
must read for anyone working in GLBT film, gender studies, or early
American cinema. Few scholarly arguments as sophisticated as
Horak’s are presented in such clear and precise language … Summing
Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty;
general readers."
*Choice*
"Girls Will Be Boys expands and complicates the existing
studies of androgyny, female masculinity, lesbian representation,
and proto-queer identity in the early decades of U.S. film ... The
reader may leave the book feeling grateful for Horak’s interpretive
and anthropological labors, melancholy for how few of the films
have survived on celluloid prints, and eager to pass Horak’s work
to anyone—a new student or a senior scholar—who will be likewise
surprised and challenged by its findings."
*Women's Studies*
"Meticulously researched and engagingly-written … Horak's work is
solidly interdisciplinary and combines contemporary feminist,
queer, gender, and critical-race theory with thorough historical
research; she uses media texts as a way to tell a larger story
about American culture and succeeds brilliantly."
*The Journal of American History*
"A thorough and thoughtful look at early cinema's phenomenon of
films featuring female boys, mannish women, and cross-dressing
girls ... [Horak's] approach changes what we thought we could
assume about the history of sexuality and asks us to question how
we made such assumptions."
*Feminist Media Studies*
"Horak’s work is solidly interdisciplinary and combines
contemporary feminist, queer, gender, and critical-race theory with
thorough historical research; she uses media texts as a way to tell
a larger story about American culture and succeeds brilliantly"
*The Journal of American History*
"With this fascinatingly detailed and thorough study of
cross-dressed women in pre-code cinema, Horak puts the light on a
seldom studied practice."
*French Journal of Media Studies*
"By repositioning our perspective within the lens of the films’
initial reception, Horak provides a much-needed new view of what
cross-dressing women and lesbians meant within the context of early
film."
*The Velvet Light Trap*
"An edifying study at the crossroads of film history and gender
studies, Laura Horak’s Girls Will Be Boys will, one
hopes, inspire students and scholars to explore the forgotten
films, novels, and plays that Horak recovers and to re-examine the
familiar examples on which she sheds new light."
*Film and History*
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