The Masculine Woman in Weimar Germany by Katie Sutton (review)

As the centenary of the First World War approaches, the war and its effects can be expected to be scrutinized through a variety of (theoretical) lenses. One of the deadliest conflicts in human history, with military and civilian casualties in the millions, it left its scars in all areas of life. Political and economic instability would mark the German nation for years to come, but Germans also had to adjust to a decisive shift in gender roles which had begun in the nineteenth century and had been bolstered during the war years, as more and more women entered the workforce. The nation's defeat arguably led to a destabilization of masculinity, giving rise to various conceptions of the New Woman, which, in turn, became symbolic of societal change in general. By the 1920s it was commonplace to associate the New Woman with strong characteristics of masculinization in the mainstream media - a sure sign of degeneration, according to Max Nordau. Upon closer examination, this concept of masculinization encompasses a number of manifestations of female masculinity, and despite the growing scholarship on the New Woman, the study of various female masculinities in Weimar Germany has hitherto been a lacuna.

The Masculine Woman in Weimar Germany fills this lacuna, as Katie Sutton explores the masculinization of women during the Weimar Republic in different sources, especially as it was depicted in popular mainstream and subcultural print media. She examines presentations of this new type of woman particularly in relation to changing fashion trends but also in literary texts and film, as well as in various embodiments, such as the masculinized female athlete, and in actors' performances in Hosenrollen ("trouser roles"). Each of the book's five chapters builds on the preceding one, thus painting a comprehensive picture of the masculinized woman in Weimar Germany - alternately functioning "as ideological template, role model, interpretive lens, and scapegoat for German audiences" (8) - while at the same time cleverly complicating the development of the New Woman and the various queer female masculinities emerging especially in the 1920s. The book's carefully chosen images from the relevant sources examined throughout - over 4,000 various newspapers and magazines were published in Germany by the mid-1920s - suitably illustrate the author's arguments by providing both useful and interesting visual examples.

Building on the work of Judith Halberstam and her concept of female masculinity, Sutton delivers a consistent analysis of the masculinization of the modern woman, going beyond existing studies of the New Woman and gender relations in Weimar Germany. Furthermore, she considers both heterosexual and non-heterosexual women and genders, thereby remedying the fact that "'queer' genders and sexualities have all too often been relegated to separate [. . .] studies focusing exclusively on homosexual subcultures or texts" (3). The result is a more rounded picture of this new masculine woman - "positioned at the juncture between fascination and rejection, tradition and modernity, heterosexual erotic appeal and the threat of sexual perversion" (8) - as represented and commented on in popular and satirical publications. Sutton also includes those publications targeting homosexual women who came primarily from the lower and middle classes (there were at least six magazines for a lesbian readership during the mid-1920s). A major factor distinguishing the subcultural publications from mainstream print media is that while both were engaged in disseminating sexological knowledge, the subcultural publications negotiated popular stereotypes of female masculinity and homosexuality by employing scientific arguments for female sex-gender inversion, maintaining that it was the result of natural, inborn conditions that warranted, among other things, legal protection. Many of the mainstream publications, on the other hand, tended to ridicule and caricature female inverts.

The chapters on the shifting paradigms in fashion - from the Bubikopf hairstyle, via the modern garçonne in tuxedos and suits, to the monocled woman in trousers, and back to the Gretchen ideal that regained traction with the National Socialists' rise to power - and on the...