User:Myosoto/Tomboy

History
Gender roles during time periods differed, and tomboyism is one of the examples of this. In the mid 1800s tomboys were not seen as how we might now see them. Though still not considered normative, tomboys were just one way of being a girl, and not so tied with androgyny as one might now label it, tomboys were seen as girls who were more hands on, outdoorsy, outgoing and less girly, but they were not seen as manly, or even un-girly, just another way of being, though expectations of growing out of it still existed.

Due to changing social structures during World War I and II an increase of tomboys could be seen in society, literature and then film. As rigid structures of femininity changed, and women were more easily allowed to engage in different forms of masculine activities, more tomboys could be seen arising. A similar rise occurred during the 1970 and afterwards as feminist movements, and queer movements gained popularity. As social acceptances changed and shifted, more were welcomed into the tomboy ranks.

Society
The idea that there are girl activities, and clothing, and there are boy activities and clothing is often reinforced by the concept of the tomboy. Tomboyism can be seen as both refusing gender roles and traditional gender conventions, but also conforming to stereotypes. Thus, it is often thought of as outdated, common, and even occasionally spoken of in a positive light, as feminine traits are devalued and often unwanted. Tomboys themselves often echo this type of judgmental language, especially towards other young Girly girl. This can be due in part to a few things, their environment that desires and only values masculinity, often leading to a reproducing of these values and traits by those involved. Harmful idealized male masculinity is atop the hegemony and sets the traditional standard, and often it is this idealized masculinity that is reproduced and spread in young children, especially through children playing with one another. Another reason for this hierarchy to often be spread by tomboys is that femininity has been pushed on them, and the consequence of such is negative feelings towards femininity and those that embrace femininity, even if girly girls are doing it on their own volition. In this case masculinity can be seen as a defense mechanism against the harsh push towards femininity, and a reclaiming of agency that is often lost due to the sexist ideas of what girls are able to do and what they are not able to do.

However, there is still the expectation that tomboys will one day stop being such, usually during or right before puberty, they will return to femininity, and always with the expectation of heteronormativity behind them. Tomboys who do not do such are often stigmatized, and usually they are stigmatized in a homophobic fashion. Creed writes that the tomboy's "image undermines patriarchal gender boundaries that separate the sexes," and thus is a "threatening figure." This threat affects and challenges the idea of what a family must look like, generally nuclear independent heterosexual couplings with two children.

Fiction
Tomboys in fictional stories are often used  to contrast a more girly girl and traditionally feminine character. These characters are also often the ones that undergo a makeover scene in which they learn to be feminine, often under the goal of getting a male partner. Usually with the help of the more girly girl character, they transform from ugly duckling into a beautiful swan, ignoring past objectives and often framed in a way that they have become their best self. Doris Day’s character in Calamity Jane (film) is one example of this ; Allison from The Breakfast Club is another. Tomboy figures who do not eventually go on to conform to feminine and heterosexual expectations, often simply remain in their childhood tomboy state, eternally ambiguous. The stage of life where tomboyism is acceptable is very short and rarely are tomboys allowed to peacefully and happily age out of it without changing, and without giving up their tomboyness.

Tomboyism in fiction often symbolizes new types of family dynamics, often following a death or another form of disruption to the nuclear family unit, leading families of choice rather than blood. This provides a further challenge to the family unit, including often critiques of socially who is allowed to be a family - including critiques of class and often a women's role in a family. Tomboyism can be argued to even begin to normalize and encourage the inclusion of other marginalized groups and types of families in fiction including, LGBT families or racialized groups. This is all due to the challenging of gender roles, and assumptions of maternity and motherhood that tomboys inhabit.

Tomboys are also used in patriotic stories, in which the female character wishes to serve in a war, for a multitude of potential reasons but patriotism and wanting to be on the front lines, being one of them. This often ignores the many other ways women were able to participate in war efforts and instead retells only one way of serving by using one's body. This type of story often follows the trope of the tomboy being 'discovered' after being injured, and plays with the particular ways bodies get revealed, policed and categorized. This type of story is also often very nationalistic, and the tomboy is usually the hero that more female characters should look up to, though they still often shed some of their more extreme ways after the war.

Race
What is considered masculine or feminine differs depending on the place, time and culture. Merely in the West what is a tomboy has changed due to how ideas of what is feminine has changed. Tomboys not only challenge gender roles and what it might mean to be a girl or women, but also what it meant to be a white woman and what was acceptable. Due to how deadly and harmful beauty standards to achieve femininity were for women, tomboys became a symbol of health. Tomboys, who were tied to physical health through sports, and through the rejection of highly detrimental feminine beauty standards were seen as the key to keeping white population high, as the same feminine standards they rejected often lead to more sickly women and lowered reproductive health. More healthy tomboys, would lead to more healthy mothers, specifically white mothers, due to fears of white Americans becoming a minority after the abolishment of slavery and an increase in migration from the racialized other. Abate writes that during the 1840-50s with the abolition and emancipation movement at its height "[changes] in the nation’s racial and ethnic composition raised fears over the literal and ﬁgurative health of Anglo-American girls and young women" and thus tomboyism was a way to uphold white supremacy and enact eugenics.

However in the same vein, Abate writes that tomboyism defies "convention of white womanhood, and thus they can be seen as defying the conventions of whiteness and even establishing a kinship with blackness" complicating the transgression of tomboyism once more. Yet. more so, white tomboys are able to transgress typical gender roles and boundaries due to their race and the privileges it grants them, where this privilege might not be granted to girls and women of other races.

Femininity is so often tied to apply broadly across the scope to all women, however this is not the case, even in the West, black women are often stereotpically masculinized, due to histories of slavery and the work that black women were forced into. Thus, black women and girls are more likely to be pegged as tomboys, and assumed to not be feminine, even if appearance or their own attitudes contradict this. Thus, where often black women and girls were denied access to femininity, and its assumption of fair skinned, and delicacy, white women and girls were assumed to be feminine.

Though tomboy in the western context does not inherently tell us anything of the tomboys sexuality, or even their gender identity, as it is often tied to young girls, and conjecture this is not the case in all contexts. Filipino tomboys, for example, are masculine presenting women who have relations with other women, with the other women tending to be more feminine though not exclusively, or trans masculine or trans men who have relationships with women, though the former seems to be more common than the latter. Thus women who engage in relationships with other women but who are not masculine are often still deemed heterosexual. Leading to more invisibility for those that are gay and feminine. The Filipino tomboy's masculinity is one that is tied to the attraction in women, either by other masculine women, or by trans masculine or men individuals, thus Filipino tomboys are inherently LGBT. Scholar Kale Bantigue Fajardo argues for the similarity between 'tomboy' in the Philippines and "tombois in Indonesia," and "toms in Thailand" all as various forms of female masculinity.