Confessions of a middle aged tomboy.

My early class pictures showed me in a dress with my hair neatly combed and with holes in my tights and scrapes on my chin. Later on in elem, my mother had given up. I was wearing hand-me-down tough skins and silly 70s t-shirts.

I had one doll who's hair I chopped off and legs and arms were removed repeatedly. I ran around in the woods, climbed trees, went on exploration parties, caught frogs and snakes..... I was a gymnast starting from around age 7. So, I was muscular and daring. I was athletic, but didn't like the weird social **** that went on with team sports.

Now, I own 3 or 4 dresses which I have never or rarely worn. One is a bridesmate's dress from my sister's wedding - the only time I ever did that sort of thing. I do own several casual skirts and wear them often in the summer. I don't wear makeup. I can't be bothered to 'do' my hair. I wash it and brush it. For a while I went all hippie and didn't shave.

My neice told me to wear a dress for a date I recently had. When I reported that I didn't wear a dress, she told me to wear a dress for the next date. So, I went online trying to fathom what type of dress might be a good style for me. I found some I thought might be ok. But then I relaized - SHOES. I don't have the kind of shoes you wear with dresses.

Yep. I'm low maintenance in the beauty and fashion departments.

I was kinda tomboyish - but also not - I dunno, I think I was just ME. I was kind of a nerd as well.


I HATED being in dresses - not per se, exactly (except the HORRID party things that scratched and stuff) but because I was expected to keep CLEAN - and I never remembered to. I was always in deep **** for coming in dirty.

Why my mother didn't just surrender and let me wear crap clothes I don't know.

Perhaps because suburban middle class Australia at that time was a screamingly narrow, rigid, stultifying, AWFUL thing. I could sort of feel it, even then, especially because I sort of gathered friends, slowly, who did not live by its rules.


Anyway, it is odd because:

a. My mum grew up on a remote sheep station, and was a wild child herself.

b. She never actually stopped me doing stuff, she just yelled at me and hit me when I got dirty doing it - which was all the time.

I ran with the boys - the only girl. But, I also had female friends. (When the guys were attacked by other guys for having a gIRL with them, they would say_- "She's not a girl, she's DEB!) But I WAS a girl, and I LOVED that. Always have. Just not silly rules that are supposed to go with it.

And, I did dolls and such as well as the boy stuff (ha! they did the dolls with me - just didn't let their dads know!)

And, sometimes I wanted some sort of doll thing for gifts - other times I wanted a microscope and all kinds of knowledge and nature stuff.

I was the only girl EVER to use the drain pipe to get under the road to my friend's place (it was scary and dark and had spiders and such) but I REALLY wanted high heels and make-up before I was allowed to have 'em.

I guess those are rites of passage things, though, hmmm?

osso, it is really interesting to me that you mentioned sewing because that was something I was thinking of.

Isn't it strange that sewing is considered womanly where the professional field is dominated by men?

I am a modest sewer - I've made most of the curtains for my house. Partly because I hate paying the crazy prices but partly for the designing/making something aspect. I have a real interest in textiles.

I was wondering too about birth order and tomboyism. FreeDuck mentioned her sisters, you mentioned your only childism, I know littlek has sisters, I'm pretty sure soz is an only child -- I was the youngest of four. I have a very masculine older brother and two girly sisters, then me.

I remember watching my sisters get ready for dates and all the time it took. I always felt like mini-anthropologist because I didn't really relate to what they were doing but I was trying to understand it. I hung out with my brother, pounding on the bathroom door.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, FreeDuck - the imposter thing.

Don't worry about the "duh" because that's what I'm trying to get at. I know you know what I'm talking about and I'm thinking littlek does too....

Littlek mentions sports, a weird point with me. When you say "tomboy" a lot of people think "sports" or "athlete". I suffered a big eye injury when I was really little which left me with no depth perception -- sports were pretty much out of the question.

I don't have any tolerence for team sports either. I played on a volleyball team. I was crap until it was my turn to serve. Nobody could return my serves. It was game over after I served.

What I feel like you're getting, and FreeDuck is getting is that it is not really about movement but about a state of mind.

I've never really discussed this before and now I'm glad I started talking about it.

Oh - and I loved all animals - snakes, lizards, insects (not spiders so very much) - and had the joy of having a friend from a renowned science family - who always had all sorts of weird and wonderful animals that they were raising - possums, stormy petrels, exotic reptiles, marsupial mice etc (usually rescued on research trips) - and where I could get up to the minute information on the science of whatever creature I was interested in - or band butterflies, or birds, or help record bird calls when a species count was being done - fabulous stuff like that. As well as playing amidst a wonderful collection of Aboriginal cultural artefacts - given to my frend's grand father, who hads been a medical doctor as well as a researcher amidst remote Aboriginal communities early in the 2oth century.

And Peter - the older brother of my best friend, who was doing medicine and all - after doing agricultural science.

One thing, though - some of the boys loved to kill things. I found that disgusting, and still do. What IS that? I was always protecting some damned lizard or something, when the guys went all "Lord of the Flies" on me.

Boomerang, I think you are trying to say that you are an alien, like me, and a few others here.

It's funny, I just saw my sister who lives in Spain a few weeks ago. We stayed up late talking one night and I remember talking about this very thing. Less about being a tomboy and more about being weird, socially inept, and feeling like we don't really belong. About how we just blurt out what's on our minds with little thought as to how normal people will interpret it -- often with negative consequences. How we never know what to say, or the things we want to say are often inappropriate. It's true that we are weird, maybe geeky is a better description. But I've gotten to a place where I accept it and no longer try to fit. I wish I could have figured it out sooner because I think trying to fit actually held me back. If women are around talking about things that women are supposed to care about and my eyes glaze over or it sounds like a foreign language, that's just because I'm a weirdo.

I guess what I'm saying is that being a tomboy, for me, was just a symptom of the real problem, which is that I'm an alien.

Hmmm indeed, dlowan.

My mother had been a bit of a tomboy too. Her sisters were much older and her mom was very sick from the time she was small so she just ran wild. Somehow she became civilized. Perhaps that is why she allowed me to be so boyish.

I never wanted dolls. Or anything girly except an easy bake oven and I longed for one of those. My family was pretty poor when we were little so toys didn't play a big part in my upbringing - boys or girls toys.

I do remember saying that I would never be a wife.

I did get married (eventually) but I don't know how wifey I've ever been.

I know EXACTLY what you mean with the "she's not a girl...." bit.

I was always threatening to "clobber" someone. Luckily my big brother is a BIG brother - a gentle giant whose size intimidated away anyone that I thought I might fight.

Oh, and littlek, I'm with you on the skirts in the summer. I like a knee length skirt with sandals in the hot months, but I don't, I guess I feel like I can't, wear them at work. Definitely remember thinking of buying a dress and then realizing that I'd have to buy shoes too and that was just more shopping than I wanted to do.

Hmmm about the toys. You might be on to something. We were pretty poor growing up too -- big family on a single salary -- and toys were whatever we made. So we played a lot of games. Any toys we might have had were shared among all of us, boy or girl.

Fascinatin' thread laddies . . .


(No, i did not misspell that word . . . )

I admit it, I'm a tomboy and always was. I'm one of them gals that can do all kinds of home improvements and was right up there on the staging putting up siding on houses with all the guys working for my dad.

I can dress up nice like the rest of the gals, but I'm mostly in my cozy jeans and a tank top or something.

3 cheers to the tomboys :-D

I'm the Tool Queen! Love using tools and fixing things. Always took things apart as a kid and TRIED to put them back together.

When I was in 6th or 7th grade I participated in a campaign to allow us girls to wear pants to school. Up til then you had to have poison ivy and a dr's note to wear pants to school. (We all wore shorts under our dresses so we could play and not have the boys see our underwear. LOL)

And I only remember playing with dolls on a few occasions. I had one of those dolls who's hair grows. The only time I remember playing with her was when I was trying to figure out how the growing hair thing worked without taking her apart and getting in trouble.

As far as dresses and skirts.....I was offered a technician job once but turned it down when the owner of the business mentioned having to order me some uniforms with skirts. How did he think I was going to get inside a copier to repair it with a skirt on?

One of the hottest females i've ever seen (in the simple sense of appearance) was a line technician for the telephone company. I was pulling coaxial cable for a cctv surveillance system, and was then pulling the cable into the telephone closet for that wing of the building for termination in the patch panel. In comes this woman, mid-twenties, medium height, generours figure, in tight levis and a flimsy tight-fitting white t-shirt, with one of those really expensive white lace bras underneath (yeah, the t-shirt was that flimsy). She knew her stuff--she opened up the phone switch and went right to work, talking to her co-worker on a head set as she tested and reset the switches.

I saw her over a couple of days, and my impression was that she loved her job and she loved the attention she got as a "drop-dead" beautiful woman (did i mention the raven-black hair and smooth complexion?). For a woman who loves the attention of men, she had a great profession.

Hey Bod! I'm the tool queen too :-D

Did I mention that I was out in the shed cutting wood today?

It is fascinatin'.

I have always suspected that the roots of tomboyism went much deeper than the typical definition. I think FreeDuck hit it on the head - it's a very alien feeling.

Perhaps because it is very alienating for a young girl to not really "get" girl stuff.

I love animals too, dlowan, and can't imagine hurting one. Maybe I'm lucky in that the men in my circle are animal lovers too. I was never exposed to a hurt animal environment.

We dug worms and we fished and we ate the fish but that is really as far as it ever went.

I know what you mean about the social thing - not knowing what to say, FreeDuck. I am inept in social situations.

I completely agree that the "trying to fit in years" were the most awkward and restrictive. I'm glad I blasted out the other end of it okay and, as an adult, I can go back to being a tomboy.

I have done the eye glaze at every single wedding/baby/whatever can be termed "shower" that I have ever had to go to. (I'm planning a menopause shower for myself, however, never having been showered before.)

Montana, any chick that works in a fish/seafood/whatever plant deserves the tomboy label. My gorgeous friend just returned from a summer in Alaska where she advanced to the position of "caviar glumper" (her words).

Tomboy!

Oh yeah, right on :-D I did the digging up worms for fishing, but I prefered using bread because the fish seemed to like it better.
I also didn't like the girly toys mom always got me for Christmas and my birthday and you'd think she would have gotten a clue when the dolls were never touched and I was always in my brothers room playing with his stuff.
Yeah, working at a lobster plant is a dead give away that I am at least 60% tomboy.
Believe it or not , though, I'm one of the more feminine gals there. You should see some of the butch women there.
I'm not butch, just independent, as I like to call it ;-)

Hey Bodhi...., shorts under dresses. Oh yes!

I had a job once that required me to dress up and sit on airplanes all day and rent cars and drive around strange cities and then go climb ladders and crawl on the floor and wiggle under cabinets and other ridiculous things. Sooooooo not worth it!

I sometimes wear boxer-briefs under my skirts.

Hmmm - yes - the not getting married thing.

I met up with older cousins a few years ago, and they remember me saying from a really tiny tot that I would NEVER marry.

I think it was partly to do with my parents' awful marriage - but I also felt deeply that marriage diminished women.

I do not know that it still does - and, indeed, I think there were circles where it didn't back then, too - but it sure as hell did in my environment.


I do not feel like an alien, as some of you mentioned - I feel deeply female - but I just have always refused to have a role laid out for me because of that, but I "belong" - at least in the milieu I have created around me. New job will be interesting in that regard.

I must have been encouraged, right? Certainly education was a strongly valued thing in my home - and there was never a "you're a girl, you don't want to know about that" said. My school expected that you would learn - about everything - lots of girls really were excelling in maths and physics and stuff, and that was valued.


Re the cruelty.

We are often discussing how much of that is "normal" in boys as they grow up - partly because cruelty to animals is such an alarming prognostic sign for kids.

My lived experience suggests that more of it is "normal" in boys than it is in girls.

I do not ever remember knowing a girl who would hurt an animal - except mebbe in temper loss with a horse, or something - but never anyone who did any damage to one - but I knew lots of boys - who have grown up to be perfectly normal fellas - who were.

All degree, I guess.

I certainly know no adult men who are - though my father was. Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!

nice thread, boomerang!

i've always been attracted to you down-to-earth, unpretentious wimminz

The butch thing I don't get at all. I'm very comfortable in my body and my body is obviously that of a girl. I'm more likely to show it off a bit than try to disguise it.

To me, being a tomboy is not at all about wanting to be a boy. It's more about not understanding why anyone would spend $30 a week on their fingernails, or take their curling iron to the camp ground, or wait by the phone for some boy to call -- the things that my girlfriends did or the magazines told me girls did.

I remember friends always saying "You always have the best boyfriends" and I always did have great boyfriends. I think it is because I understood where boys were coming from and what they wanted in a relationship -- because that's where I was coming from and that's what I wanted too.

dlowan - I remember my sister always wanting to play house. I would only play if I could be the dad and leave for work. Maybe that is a reflection on my parent's marriage....