Girls will be boys : cross-dressed women, lesbians, and American cinema, 1908-1934 / Laura Horak.

New Brunswick, New Jersey : Rutgers University Press, [2016]

xii, 311 pages ; 23 cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction -- Part 1. Cross-dressed women as American ideals (1908-1921) -- Moving picture uplift and the female boy -- Cowboy girls, girl spies, and the homoerotic frontier -- Intermezzo codes of deviance (1892-1914) -- Cultural hierarchy and the detection of sexual deviance in a Florida enchantment (1894 and 1914) -- Part 2. The emergence of lesbian legibility (1921-1934) -- Enter the lesbian: cosmopolitanism, trousers, and lesbians in the 1920s -- The lesbian vogue and backlash against cross-dressed women in the 1930s -- Conclusion -- Appendix: U.S. films featuring cross-dressed women, 1895-1934.