Why did you choose to be a Tomboy? How does it affect your life?

15 comments

  1. My dad had no idea how to raise girls, so he raised us as if we were boys, and being a tomboy just followed that naturally.

    Growing up on a farm being raised as a boy definitely gave a wholly different mindset when I moved to the city or more urban areas. I’ve always been a straight shooter, and as a teen some friendships were harder to navigate, but I never found making friends with any gender particularly hard or challenging, nor is one more likely than the other to be shit humans.

    I had to work at figuring out how to be more feminine, and basically stopped after learning how to dress my body and apply eye liner.

    Zero regrets.

  2. Tomboy is a label that has been given to me more than me choosing it. Apparently not wanting to wear dresses everyday as a little girl means you’re a tomboy. I was raised primarily by my dad and stepdad and they didn’t care what we wore.

  3. for starters, I wore my brother’s hand-me-downs as a kid. We lived on the same property as our cousins so we spent a lot of time outside, playing with animals getting dirty. Culturally I didn’t bend to their expectations so I was called a tomboy (machetona in spanish).

  5. I didn’t. It doesn’t.

    That just a label that other people give me when they see me doing things or having interests that they gender as belonging to men. I’m still just me whether I’m dressed all fancy at a cocktail party or climbing trees on a hike. Makes no difference to me, but some people have trouble separating their perceptions and gendered expectations from the reality of other people’s lives.

  6. I don’t think I chose to be a tomboy; I just have always like and been good at stuff that is traditionally masculine and not good at stuff that is traditionally feminine. I prefer men’s clothes because they last longer and are more suited to the stuff I like to do but I have women’s clothes for work and formal stuff.

    It’s been fine for me so far except now I have a little girl who is very feminine so I’m having to learn how to do hairstyles and nail polish and go shopping a lot more. I’m not looking forward to figuring out makeup but she’s got a lot of aunts who like that stuff.

  7. I don’t know that I *chose* to be a tomboy. My mom sewed me frilly dresses and pinefores (the kind you only see the fundamentalist girls/women wearing these days were actually regular dresses for girls in my town in the 80s LOL) and bought me Barbies and I enjoyed these things when I was by myself or hanging out with my mom.

    But I also had 2 older brothers and so in my frilly dresses I’d be climbing trees and fences and running around in the mud after church. I wanted to do “what the boys do” because I only had boy siblings and when you’re the youngest, sometimes you want to emulate what your older siblings do.

    I didn’t do all the “boy” things though — My brothers loved army men and setting up model wars and things and you could not have paid me to do any of that. War movies? Yes. War play? Nope.

    So I guess I just did what was natural, appealing, and available to me and that was what got me the tomboy label in the 80s.

    As an adult it made me ok with being the only girl/woman in the room. Which came in handy when girls started dropping out of the advanced math classes in middle school and were almost completely gone by high school and college. I was an engineering major and never felt weird or awkward being in a male-centric major (at the time — my college experience was 20 years ago).

    So I guess it was handy to be a tomboy because it made me comfortable around boys in a profession where boys are the majority. The women I know who grew up around mostly women have expressed more discomfort with being the only girl in the room, and they seem more uncomfortable with some of the behaviors more closely associated with boys (competitiveness, rough housing, etc)

  8. I was too broke to be part of the girly crowd and for some reason they hated me so I was part of the miscellaneous group.

  11. I didn’t. I loved girly stuff, but my mom was raised with very feminine gender roles and went the opposite with me on purpose. I’m a proud feminist but I believe it’s about choices. I wasn’t given any. It’s only now in my 40s that I’m really embracing my feminity, learning to style my hair/make-up. I’m bummed I didn’t get to enjoy being a girl when I was one.

  12. I didn’t choose it. It’s what I’ve always naturally gravitated towards. Throughout middle school and high school, I tried to force myself to be more feminine to order to fit in and so people would stop bugging me about not being feminine enough, but it took too much mental and emotional effort to keep it up because it’s just not who I am. And even in my 30s, it’s still not who I am. I never grew out of being a tomboy like girls are apparently supposed to.

  14. I never chose it. By age 3 I already refused to wear the cute, pink things my mum bought for me. I was into Ninja Turtles and dinosaurs at age 5. I preferred climbing trees and fighting with the boys over playing with dolls.
    It affected me only because other people would tell me I wasn’t girly enough, and that made me feel weird and inadequate.
    This continued way into adulthood too. Being ‘one of the guys’ made that I heard my male friends complain about women, and when I pointed out that I am a woman too, was told that ‘I don’t count’. One time a friend asked me outright if I have gender dysphoria, bc I act so much like a dude.

    The thing is, I think I’m just a normal woman. I just happen to like certain things that are considered ‘masculine’. It’s not even like I exclusively like those things, but that’s what people see.

    I also have to say that I’ve always been a large person, both in height and weight, and I think that definitely changes peoples perspective of me. I couldn’t look like a cute girly even if I tried.

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