Laura Horak

“Though
the actresses who played female boys were of all ages and performed in a vari-
ety of acting styles, they were generally small, thin, white, and photogenic, and
their performances combined boldness and vulnerability. Their femaleness al-
lowed them to convey fragility and androgynous beauty. These performances
demonstrate that cross-gender casting, which may seem like an inherently
transgressive practice to twenty-first-century scholars, can also uphold conser-
vative gender, class, and racial regimes. At the same time, the performances
cannot be dismissed as reactionary or antifeminist, because they embodied
middle-class women’s sentimental politics and created a space in which wom-
en’s bodies had an important role in producing an idealized masculinity.”
― Laura Horak, Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema, 1908-1934