In praise of the tomboy
Leah Hardy looks at the growing trend for girls to divide into tribes at a certain age – ‘tomboys’ and ‘girly girls’
Leah Hardy
Sat 27 Sep 2014 01.30 EDT
“I think I’ll wear my army clothes”, announced my nine-year-old daughter, Cecily, one morning. She was preparing for her first day at her new, non-uniform, primary school, and wanted to look her best. Her outfit of camouflage trousers and T-shirt, cap and dog tag chain, a much-begged-for birthday gift, consisted of, in her eyes, the coolest possible option.
I gently suggested that going the full Arnie on day one might not make the right impression. Instead we went to Gap, where she was delighted to find camo-print jeans.
In a shoe shop, Cecily cast a brisk, disdainful eye over rows of pink and white, rainbow-embellished trainers, and instead chose a black-and-orange pair and a green pair. We sat and waited to be served.
“But … but … these are the wrong shoes. They are for boys!” exclaimed a confused sales assistant.
I was surprised that, even today, the idea of a little girl who dresses “like a boy”, can still cause a frisson of horror. If a girl is also lively, likes cars or swords or rough-and-tumble, she gets a label – tomboy – and in playgrounds, many girls now choose to divide themselves into two tribes: tomboys and girly girls.
Tomboyishness is very common. In a US study from 2012, while nearly half of girls reported being traditional girls, the rest almost equally identified as either “in-betweens” or tomboys.
But what is a tomboy, why do girls want to be one, and what does it say about them, about gender and about us?
According to Cecily: “Tomboys like to run about. They like bikes, skateboards and roller skates. Their favourite colours are blue, black, brown, red and green. When they are younger they like watching Spider-Man. They get pretend plastic swords and Nerf guns. Some like to play video games like Mario Cart. Some girls pretend to be tomboys because they want to hang out with boys and look cool.”
“Girly girls like wearing dresses and skirts. They like nature and flowers. Their favourite colours are pink, red and purple. They play mums and dads and princesses, and hate Power Rangers. They can be a bit bossy.”
From the moment she tottered to her feet, Cecily has always been the child who’d run furthest without looking back, climb to the top of the tallest climbing frame, then hang upside down above a 15ft drop, and generally terrify her rather more risk-averse mother. Even now, I sometimes ask Cecily to be less daring, to jump less far or dangle less perilously when we are out with her friends, as she makes their mothers so anxious.
However, until a few years ago, Cecily’s wardrobe was still crammed with Disney princess dresses. At nursery, clad in frocks yet physically fearless, she reminded me of a dauntless Victorian lady explorer, heading up the Limpopo river in a crinoline.
Then it all changed. Cecily now refuses to wear a skirt or dress. The princess dresses and Halloween witch costumes have been replaced with Ninja and werewolf ensembles.
Cecily can’t pass a tree without climbing it. She does press-ups for fun, and is working on a clap between each one, army-style. She’s also ferociously competitive, both at school sports and when playing board games.
In these things, Cecily is very typical of tomboys.
Professor Carrie Paechter, head of department for educational studies at Goldsmiths College in London, interviewed girls aged nine to 11 to find out how they defined tomboys and girly girls. As well as dressing in boys’ clothes and having short hair, girls cited an interest in tree-climbing and football as signifiers of tomboydom. They also mentioned competitiveness and, in particular, “minding if your team loses”.
Cecily’s age is typical too. Psychologist Rachel Andrew says: “You might notice behaviour such as tree-climbing in younger children, but tomboyishness becomes more obvious between the ages of five and 12.”
Research suggests that tomboyishness peaks between seven to 10 years and fades as puberty begins.
This, says Melissa Hines, neuroscientist and professor of psychology at Churchill College, Cambridge, may be rooted in brain development. She says, “Between the ages of two to three, children start to understand they are boys or girls. This is when girls start to show a preference for pink. However, at this stage, both sexes don’t realise they will still be male or female as they get older, which can worry them.”
Paechter says that this results in “frilly dress syndrome” in which, “if girls like climbing trees or playing with cars, they also opt for pink dresses to confirm to themselves and others they are really still girls.”
However, says Hines: “By the age of six or seven, girls know they won’t change sex if they do things associated with the other gender, so they relax and loosen up. Their interest in pink goes down and gender-stereotypical behaviour reduces.”
Girls also tend to reject princess dresses and pink as they are considered babyish.
It’s no coincidence that To Kill a Mockingbird’s heroine Scout, aged between six and nine in the novel, is a tree-climber who feels “the starched walls of a pink cotton penitentiary closing in on me” every time she is made to wear a dress. Even Princess Tiaamii, the seven-year-old daughter of that juggernaut of femininity Katie Price, appears to be rebelling right on cue. Her father, Peter Andre, was recently quoted as saying: “Princess is telling me she doesn’t want me to call her Princess and she doesn’t like the colour pink any more – all of a sudden she wants everything blue.”
Hines says social pressure is a key cause of girls’ and boys’ gendered behaviour, with boys socialised even more strictly than girls. “They soon learn that gender non-conformity carries a price,” she says. But there is also evidence that tomboyishness may be influenced by prenatal hormones. Hines studied girls with a condition that meant their adrenal glands produced more testosterone than normal while they were still in the womb. By the age of three and a half, these girls were significantly more likely to want to play with trucks, rather than dolls, to enjoy rough and tumble games and to prefer male playmates to female ones.
A small minority of tomboys reject everything girly, sometimes, says Paechter, to be accepted by boys who are very intolerant of femininity. But most do not. US researchers Pat Plumb and Gloria Cowan, who were among the first psychologists to study tomboyism, wrote:
“Self-defined tomboys do not reject traditionally female activities. Instead, they expand their repertoire of activities to include both gender-traditional and nontraditional activities.” In other words, they want to have more fun.
Studies have also found that tomboys are just as compassionate and sensitive as other girls, but are more assertive, self-reliant and less judgmental.
Andrew says: “Parents should see tomboyishness as positive. To stand out and choose different clothes and activities shows the kind of self-confidence, determination and sense of self that all parents should encourage.”
I have noticed that Cecily’s very long blond hair (she refuses to get it cut) means that she is seen as feminine despite her tomboyish play. She has friends of both sexes, including girly girls and for all her skateboarding, army outfits and press-ups, Cecily firmly rejects any sort of label.
I recently overheard a conversation between Cecily and her friend Amy, who considers herself a tomboy. Amy insisted that Cecily must be a tomboy because “you don’t wear skirts or dresses and you aren’t a girly girl”. Cecily snapped back: “No. I’m not a tomboy. I’m not a girly girl. I’m a normal person. End of.”