Boy/Girl With Dolly
Actual size
This picture was sold with the title 1930s Vintage Photobooth Smiling Handsome Boy? Holding Doll. It comes from a German photobooth. While it could be a boy, my feeling is, given the era, it is much more likely a little girl with her favourite friend.
In the days where certain illnesses or a lice infestation could prompt the shaving of a child’s hair, my guess is that this is a young lady recently recovered from one or other of those scenarios. There is also something coquettish about her gaze that I cannot acquaint with a young man. What do you think?
Photobooth Journal 
That is a tough call, it may well be a girl, but it could be a boy who played with dolls. coquettish? That is quite a word……hang on…..looking it up……ok, it means young flirting girl and I really did look it up. That is a great word to describe that face. How you get so smart?
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Isn’t that word in an old nursery rhyme? I am sure I have known it since I was wee. Or I was probably told by an aged ancestor to stop being coquettish to try to get my way!!
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I would also vote for a girl who is suffering/recovering from some sort of hair loss. My first thought was something along the lines of a lice infestation, too. Unless this child was a cabaret artist in Berlin (which, of course, I doubt), then I would argue that Germany in the 1930s was not a time when it was considered acceptable to be fooling around with gender identity.
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Thanks for the comment Matt. I agree completely!
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Not sure, I really think it is a boy and I feel it’s a little disturbing. Funny how we all interpret the same scene differently.
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That is what is so great about blogging, isn’t it Sue?
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I’m with you Katherine. I know a little girl who has some of that face, and it makes her look more masculine than expected.
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Intriguing!
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