The cover of the first issue featured a photo of Dale, a boxer from Ohio, in a homage to Gainsborough's masterpiece, albeit without any trousers and a conveniently repositioned hat. The reappropriation came in the form of a gay magazine first published in 1974, called "Blue Boy". "The emerging ideas about how people see gay men is so important to how the Blue Boy becomes an iconic image," says Hedquist, "first of all as a source of ridicule and then as a reappropriation." A Dennis the Menace cartoon published in 1976 also featured the Blue Boy, where he was again labelled a "sissy". The cartoon's covert message and sentiment is homophobic Hedquist sees it as Blue Boy's first "outing". In Mad Magazine in September 1970, one cartoon featured a character called Prissy Percy, who is teased by a group of sporty, all-American boys – the final scene reveals Percy to be Blue Boy. It led to sinister comedic parodies of perceived gay behaviour in popular culture, with outlets including cartoon strips. Common stereotypes of gay deportment – now laughable in their ignorance – such as lacy cuffs and fancy shoes, were cited as signifiers of these "enemies within". According to Hedquist, a formative episode was the so-called "lavender scare" in the 1950s in which gay men and women were perceived to be threats to national security and were hounded from government office. How it was interpreted by its new host nation was also subject to the winds of cultural change. Marlene Dietrich dressed as Blue Boy for a comedy revue in Vienna in 1927, and Shirley Temple did the same for the film Curly Top in 1935.Īfter Blue Boy arrived in the US, it became famous, appearing on ceramics, textiles and thousands of reproduction prints. In 1922, the year that Gainsborough's painting found a new home in the US, Cole Porter performed his musical Mayfair and Montmartre, in which Nelly Taylor dressed as Blue Boy and theatrically emerged from a frame singing a song called Blue Boy Blues. "By the latter part of the 19th Century," she explained, "the magazines are just filled with pictures of girls dressed as Blue Boy." This, for Hedquist, was the start of the "feminisation" of Blue Boy.
And these actors would frequently be girls. This began on stage in the 19th Century, where actors playing "Little Boy Blue" in pantomimes were frequently dressed up in the silks, breeches and lace collar of Gainsborough's Blue Boy.
But for Hedquist, the idea that the boy in the painting is dressing up in costume and acting is critical to his later reappraisals: "the Blue Boy invites performance," she says.