Until the 80s, society expected that tomboys shed their boyish ways, once puberty hit, and join the world of women. I never thought, as a child, that such status was out of my reach, but I knew I couldn’t be too girly if I wanted it. Though I couldn’t have verbalized it at the time, the world was bombarding me with messages about the power and superiority of men. Selin Davis’s book showed me that making my pretend friends male was also about status. Girls were sidekicks, and I had no interest in being a sidekick. They modeled boys as positive and powerful. I was aware of this, but it wasn’t until adulthood that I realized that I assigned male gender to my “stuffies” because boys, with very few exceptions, were the stars of every book, film, and TV show. Reflecting on my own tomboyism, I was never into dolls, but I had dozens and dozens of plush animals, and all of them had male names and identities. But Selin Davis, raising a tomboy of her own, investigates if the erasure of the word tomboy isn’t also the erasure of a certain type of girl who is not currently encouraged to flourish. During the Victorian era the term took on more positive connotations, and that’s where it’s lived ever since: in the heroine worlds of Jo March and Scout Finch. As it turns out, it is a very old term, having been coined in 1556 to describe an “extra-boisterous boy.” Within a century its meaning had shifted to describe boisterous girls, though it was not a favorable descriptor in either case.

Now girls that exhibit traditionally masculine traits are butch or trans or gender fluid, possibly a budding lesbian. The word tomboy has all but disappeared from our lexicon, and Selin Davis explores where it’s gone and why.

Those horrid horizontal striped shirts and Toughskin jeans were equal-opportunity garments. Our parents raised us during the height of second-wave feminism, during a time where the Sears catalog marketed many styles of clothes to both boys and girls. What’s clear, after reading Selin Davis’s book, is that most girls of the 70s were tomboys of one kind or another. The book refers to “always tomboys” as never wanting to wear traditionally feminine clothes nor wanting to associate much with other girls.

I was also happy to dress up in a frock for special occasions. This means I generally eschewed girly things like dolls and dresses, preferring to wear pants and T-shirts so I could climb trees, ride my bike, get dirty. More of a “sometimes tomboy” by the definitions in Lisa Selin Davis’ new book, Tomboy.

Tomboy lisa selin davis