ABSTRACT
As a symbol of progress and a new era, the fashionably masculine “modern girl” had emerged in Swedish popular media in the 1920s as one of the most visually striking symbols of modernity. With her short hair and confident attitude, she contributed in important but overlooked ways to the formation of a modern self-image in Sweden. However, as Chapter 1 shows, images of gender-ambiguous “garçonne types” also raised concerns regarding the stability of a normative gender order based on male masculinity and female femininity. In this context, popular media such as movies and magazines provided a space to explore a more diverse set of female masculinities that went beyond the stereotypes of the mannish feminist or the fashionable flapper. Popular topics included not only the “masculinization” of women’s fashions but also female-to-male cross-dressing in movies. Drawing on a range of Swedish fashion and film periodicals, Chapter 1 traces how various female masculinities came into play in the 1920s as a diversifying cultural force that could be seen as a threat to society’s gender order but also as a sign of modernity.
