As a kid, I got called “tomboy” a lot, and while I mostly took it as a compliment, it also felt weird that I was proud to be defined as being more like a boy than the other girls. If running and jumping and following my curiosity made me a wannabe boy, who exactly would want to be a girl?
My girls, aged 8 and 9, have never heard the word “tomboy” in their real lives but have run into it in some books they read. It’s led to conversations about people’s expectations of girls and the push and pull of both being proud of atypical accomplishments while being shamed for liking and doing the things we do.
Last night I ran out with my girls to do some last minute replacement shopping. Our local Sears is liquidating, so it was a good time to look for shoes. The conversation verbatim:
Fred: “Do you think some of the kids will make fun of me if I buy Avengers sneakers?”
Me: “Absolutely. The important question is, do you care?”
Fred: “Well, my friends are getting used to the idea of a girl like me. But now they wonder why I carry a My Little Pony backpack.”
Me: “Just tell them that you like what you like, and they’ll be okay with it if they’re really your friends.”
The new tomboy? She proudly wears her Ultron sneakers with a flowered shirt and is fully sure that her interests don’t make her a tomboy at all, but a girl who knows what she likes.
She’d get along well with my daughter, who switches from her dance shoes to get Captain America sneaks seamlessly.
When my daughter was in kindergarten, she asked me to buy her a Transformers nightgown for pajama day at school – the best I could do was a pajama short set from “the cool kids” department.
In second grade, she declared she only wanted to wear boy clothes (but not boy shoes, girls were cooler). Turned out it wasn’t a gender thing, it was simply that she wanted to wear tshirts with Pokemon and Ben 10.
Now she’s 11 and does exactly what she loves and spends equal time in her week between ballet, Minecraft, and martial arts!
“Tomboy” is a word I’m happy to see go by the wayside. It’s good to let our children just be people who like what they like.
My daughter calls herself a Tomboy because that is how people describe her, I really try to tell her she is just herself. Not sure I like a 6 year old being ‘branded’!