The tomboy conjures an image of a girl in overalls and baseball hats, wearing short hair and nondescript shoes. She probably isn’t into Barbie. When the term “tomboy” first appeared, in the mid-16th century, it actually was a name for male children who were rude and boisterous. But by the 1590s, the word underwent a shift toward its current, feminine usage: a “wild, romping girl, [a] girl who acts like a spirited boy.” [...]
By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the tomboy was everywhere, dovetailing with both women’s suffrage and first-wave feminism. But the tomboy’s popularity was confined to a specific demographic: middle and upper-class white women. [...]
During the 1840s and ’50s, when the abolition of slavery began in the U.K. (the U.S. would follow in the 1860s), social elites became concerned about the physical health of white women due to restrictive clothing and a lack of exercise. Amid fears that white people would become a minority as more immigrants arrived and abolition neared, white women were encouraged to lead more active, outdoorsy lifestyles. The tomboy became a perfect cure for white malaise. It would, in theory, better prepare young white women “for the physical and psychological demands of marriage and motherhood,” as Abate writes, and further ensure that the white race would not die out. [...]
Today’s queer tomboy reclaims some of the altered gender norms that were once promoted among (white) antebellum girls. Of course, women of various sexual identities continue to be tomboys into adulthood (and many queer women were never tomboys). But Elise’s take—that adolescent gender ambiguity gets left behind when heterosexual teenage girls abandon tomboy ways—suggests that by providing a label that is free from the mandates and judgment of sexual orientation, the tomboy demonstrates that gender expression is not necessarily tied to sexual orientation.
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