Why we need more ‘tomboys’ on the playground
Just look at her. There’s something so free about the girl on the playground who hasn’t gotten the message that she should act like a “little lady.” The playground is her place to soar, to dream of flying, driving a race car, climbing mountains, becoming a great soccer star, or setting new records on the basketball court or ice hockey rink.
She can get dirty, tear her jeans, scrape her elbows and shins, hang upside down forever, shout and laugh uncontrollably, and make any sound from any body part that she wants. For a time in her life, there are no limits placed on her just because she’s a girl.
She values her body in terms of how it functions to accomplish her many dreams, not as an object judged by others. She couldn’t care less about how she looks and what she wears as long as it helps her to run fast and jump high or do whatever else she wants to do.
She might be called a “tomboy,” but that’s not so bad in our culture. Our society’s sexism actually protects her for a while. A “girly boy” is of more concern because patriarchy takes boys more seriously than girls.
“Tomboys” are just different and cute the way little children can be cute. We don’t think of girls as that threatening to the conditioned gender roles. So, for a while she can ignore the system and play.
When girls start feeling the pressure to conform
Most girls, however, had already gotten the message that they should be preparing for, and thinking of themselves in terms of, what boys want in a girl. It starts earlier than ever as our consumer society sells little girls on how to be pretty little ladies who will attract boys.
Girl’s toys, and so much in our culture and its media, have taught them that their ultimate validation will come from “getting a man.” That should be the real measure of their success at femininity. And the sooner they prepare for it, the better.
By adolescence, how to do it becomes very clear. Be polite rather than honest. Be pretty rather than just fun. Be quiet rather than sounding intelligent. Be deferential and dependent. Never compete with boys.
Finally, forget that relaxed attitude toward your body and take up the self-criticism necessary to conform it to the image that attracts the attention and approval of men. In spite of feminist movements having fought against this, it persists and is displayed today in how women must look for men in the current U.S. administration.
What happens to girls who don’t conform
The girl who refuses to change and defer, to hide her whole self, or to sit quietly, will be criticized. She’ll probably hear: “You’ll never get a man that way.”
And if, frankly, she shows little interest in boys and continues in adolescence to be free from the pressures to act and look “straight,” she might also maintain her freedom to accomplish what the “straight” and “straight-acting” girls are less likely to accomplish.
She is free to remain her own active, rambunctious self, free to explore her athletic abilities, free to pursue her career, and free to think of her body as hers and to push it to learn how few limits she actually has.
As she does so, she’ll be accused of being a lesbian. And as long as that’s considered a bad thing, the homophobia of the lesbian slur will be an effective tool to steer most women back into the role of a dependent lady.
The pressures to become “ladylike” are everywhere, strong, and confusing. They may tear the young woman up inside as she struggles with the fact that her own dreams are being ripped from her to squeeze her into a gender role.
The freedom of non-conformity
However, if she continues not to care at all, or if she finds that her sexual and erotic orientation is for other women and can live with that, she’s freer to pursue her athletic dreams than the girl who sets her main goal on getting a man. We are more likely to find her on athletic teams, or at the top of the class academically. In spite of the odds, she has courageously broken the rules.
In athletics she can find a protective space in which to grow. As psychologist Mary Pipher wrote in the now classic Reviving Ophelia, girls in sports are often more emotionally healthy than those who aren’t.
They’re members of a peer group that defines its members by their own abilities rather than popularity, wealth, boyfriends, or beauty. They can choose their own self-discipline and athletic goals and can cooperate with other girls. They can bond with other women for a cause. And they can do so without males.
Even with the hard-fought advancements of women in sports, pressures persist to make sure women defer to men. It’s not just the past preponderance of male coaches. Women’s sports have a history of being devalued that is on display in this current administration.
Only with the federal Title IX program in the U.S. had equality been possible. And that program (note the conservative politicians who continue to be against “the feds” interfering with education) is probably most responsible for the fact that the U.S. has world championship women’s ice hockey and soccer teams and a preponderance of women medalists in the Olympics.
Conformity as control
Yet the put-down that women with great athletic abilities are lesbians remains. In effect it implies they’re not “real” women, not “ladies.”
If a culture considers it bad for a woman to be a lesbian, that accusation will be an effective method of controlling women. And lesbians will be represented out of proportion to their numbers on athletic teams.
It’s not that lesbians have more inherent athletic ability than heterosexual women. It’s just that they’ve often been freer to stay in touch with their abilities. They don’t need to be defined by men even though for acceptance in adult sports they still must prove they’re as good as men.
Until society makes more changes in its attitude toward lesbians (including transgender women), that’ll be the case. In the meantime, it will continue to take courageous women of all sexual orientations who do not “need” male approval in order to free women to be free like that “tomboy.”
Several years ago I was consulted in response to a report that a male women’s athletic coach at a major university had announced to his team that: “There will be no lesbians on this team.”
It was unquestionably a discriminatory remark and had to be dealt with institutionally. But given the realities of the pressures on most women today to stifle their talents, my first personal response was: “Doesn’t he want to win at all?”
Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas where he taught for 33 years and was department chair for six years, Robert N. Minor (he/him), M.A., Ph.D is the author of 8 books as well as numerous articles and contributions to edited volumes. He is an historian of religions with specialties in Biblical studies, Asian religions, religion and gender, and religion and sexuality. His writing has been published in Whosoever since 2005 and he continues to speak and lead workshops around the country. In 1999 GLAAD awarded him its Leadership Award for Education, in 2012 the University of Kansas named him one of the University’s Men of Merit, in 2015 the American Men’s Studies Association gave him the Lifetime Membership Award, and in 2018 Missouri Jobs with Justice presented him with the Worker’s Rights Board Leadership Award. He resides in Kansas City and is founder of The Fairness Project.