THE TOMBOY EPIDEMIC
ALM No.94, October 2026
ESSAYS
Being born as a girl is my greatest gift in life. I’m so blessed and lucky and charmed to be made in this image. I feel so connected to my femininity, I belong with her, she’s my best friend.
I didn’t always feel this way. A lot of girls go through the phase of disconnecting from their femininity. It’s the whole rigamarole of, “I’m a ‘tomboy’, I’m not a ‘girly girl’.” I was guilty of saying this, and it’s not as innocent as it sounds. It’s the internalised misogyny that we learn from an early age. From here on, I speak as “we,” because this happened to me. I speak as “we,” as it happened to so many of us. I am one of many.
Adults would say to me:
“But you aren’t really a ‘girly girl’, are you? You’re more of a tomboy.”
As a seven year old, this confused me a lot, but struck a spark of excitement in me. I jumped at the chance to not be a “girly girl”. I felt the need to reject traditional femininity because my mind said “maybe I don’t like princesses, maybe dresses are uncomfortable,” and that led me to believe that being a “girly girl” wasn’t for me. I rejected it. Our young, premature, tiny minds, who know no better, come to the conclusion that since we don’t enjoy these traditionally girly things, we must therefore be less feminine. We believe we must be less like a girl, and being less like a girl makes us more like a boy.
This is only perpetuated by society drilling into us that being a “girly girl” is to be ditsy, frilly, pink, fluffy. We’re led to believe that it’s a bad thing; so subliminally, we’re a bad thing, and we are dismissed. However, we are still expected by society to fulfill this girly role, whilst simultaneously being told that being girly is silly. It is almost as if no matter what direction we choose, we are predestined to be shallow, frivolous, thoughtless little girls.
If we don’t behave in a “girly” way, we’re deemed as different, as though we pass the test of being too effeminate. The backhanded praise we receive for being less feminine pits us girls against each other, allowing cracks to form.
So everything in my bedroom had to be blue. Everything. We are taught in our schools and our households that gender is binary, black or white, pink or blue, which makes it very difficult to separate stereotypes from gender. I was forced to come to the conclusion,
“I don’t like pink, so I must be a tomboy,” but this was not the case. I just preferred to play with stuffed animals instead of dollies, and I didn’t listen to One Direction. That’s all it really was. So at eight years old, I looked down on other girls who did like to play with dolls, because they were feminine, and I was not, and that’s bad and I’m better.
I rejected even the physical aspects. At eleven, when my friend had “bra problems,” I wanted the boys to know, because I thought that was embarrassing and weird.
During P.E, I got changed in the bathroom stalls instead of in the girls changing room because I was so uncomfortable. A girl even called me out once, (which was quite uncool).
“Why do you get changed in the bathroom?”
I feel like I still carry some of that with me today. It took me until I was 21 to manage to go to the bathroom with friends on a night out. Yesterday, I was asked by a male co-worker in a condescending manner, “Why do girls go to the bathroom together?” “It’s part of the culture,” I valiantly defended us.
This twisted mentality of mine went on for much longer than I would like to admit. For far too long. At twelve, I had a friend who started becoming close with another girl who was very feminine, (it didn’t help that she wasn’t very nice) ((although we were also friends at the time)). I resented my friend becoming closer to this other girl and having more in common with her because I felt like she was corrupting my friend with her femininity. The words “Barbie from hell” actually came out of my pre-teen mouth. Of course Barbie was a derogatory term. Yikes. I apologise to womankind for being such a hypocrite. I believed that girl had taken another good one, put her in a feminine mould and changed her negatively.
What was I even thinking? What was I even doing? Where did this come from?
I’m aware now, thankfully, that all of this was nonsense. I was a cog in the machine of internalised misogyny, I was a patchwork quilt of all the nullifying stereotypes and belittling comments I’d absorbed over the years.
My growth has been slow. Despite being a household of two daughters and no sons, at 13, everything about feminine development was taboo in my home, from crushes to “shark week.” The first time I bought feminine hygiene products, I wore my dullest, most anonymous hoodie, hair tied back and hidden, hood drawn over my head at the counter. In a whisper, I may have even disguised my voice. I was horrified at the thought of seeing someone I knew, terrified of being discovered, of being found out, of being assumed to be someone who needed them. I locked them up and hid the key. I was so afraid someone would find them. My poor friend also suffered in silence, tenfold. She used toilet paper for two years, bless her. Afraid to buy supplies. This is bizarre behaviour.
I was spellbound by that purple “becoming a woman” leaflet. I shared it in secret with my friend, only showing it to her when we were hidden behind a sandbank at the beach. It was so crazy, so massive, so graphic, so gruesome, so morbid, such a horrifying secret. It was something to be hidden. I resented all of these changes.
Every girl goes through this. Not THIS ^ , but almost every girl goes through these same changes; around 50% of the population. Half of us! It is so normal! So why can’t we talk about it? I would now chalk all of this up to lack of open conversation. Why was I so afraid? It was because there was a total lack of safe spaces to ask questions.
The Anaconda music video by Nicki Minaj blew my mind. I hated it, I hated her. I was absolutely entranced. I showed it to my friend who wanted to turn it off, and I was confused. Who wouldn’t wanna watch this? Even though I was absolutely disgusted with it, I constantly kept one of her videos open, because I didn’t want to give her even one more YouTube view. One time, I tried to formulate my opinion into a text about why she was so awful, but I couldn’t even send it because it all boiled down to the fact that I irrationally hated her for expressing her sexuality. I pressed delete. I couldn’t send it. She had a charity that paid for girls' university tuition, for crying out loud.
I hated all forms of expressing sexuality. Perhaps because that again was taboo in my household, and within my community in general. I think I didn’t understand it, nobody ever told me. I think I was jealous of the other girls for being so far ahead of me developmentally.
I came around thankfully. All of this now makes me believe I was a sponge for the negativity that surrounded me, and I pulled my opinions from the worst that I heard, instead of the best. In hindsight, I’m surprised I had such good friendships, I don’t think I deserved them. Then again, I mustn’t be so harsh on myself, I was the very definition of a product of my environment, in a christian school, with a religious family. I was one of many young girls who bottled it up.
Things changed for the better in my household with age and our collective trauma. Once you’ve been through so much badness together, topics that once seemed like massive deals become trivial little things said in passing. There is more of an open air, we’re closer, less things are off the conversational table.
Around fourteen, I developed a conscience, the scales fell from my eyes and I took a step back from whatever all of this madness was. However, I went to the other side and became aggressively progressive, perhaps as a way to undo the damage I had caused and the toxicity I had harboured. I loudly shared my opinions, and listened to no others. I was outspoken at the dinner table, unbearable at family events, and constantly accusatory of sexism. You couldn’t tell me anything. I defended these social issues to my final breath, and chose short skirts being acceptable in school as the hill I was willing to die on. I truly did die on it, with just the sheer number of detentions I got that year because of this behaviour. Again, I had not struck the balance just right.
Even still to this day, so much makes me uncomfortable. I don’t know why. I still cringe sometimes. It is so deeply ingrained in me. It’s still an internal voice woven in, even though I know it’s illogical and even though I no longer have shame with these subjects. I’m still shy, still sheepish, still bashful. It is that leftover trace of the internalised misogyny I once held so closely. I don’t agree with it, I know it is wrong, but it’s still a voice. I don’t believe her.
Now, I love long, frilly, ruffly skirts. I love make-up. I love pink. I love being stereotypically feminine. I love being a woman. Women are good. Women have connection, a sense of belonging. Women are so brave and so strong and so willing to put themselves out there in a way that men are often not. It is hard to see men participating in that emotional intimacy and raw honesty that women have with each other. How modern day manhood is executed can never compare to the power and community and togetherness of womanhood, and it stems from what we’ve been through together.
But the world is against us. The world is on fire. The world doesn’t want us to have what we have. All we can do is continue to fight, continue to exist, continue to be visible. I hope one day to teach my child, if she exists, that girlhood is strength, girlhood is power, girlhood is something to be proud of. I’ll tell her every day. Until she’s had it up to here with it. I will make sure that she knows it’s okay to take up space and that it’s okay to be seen.
It’s more than just letting her choose robots, choose trucks or choose dinosaurs. I will drill it into her until she’s sick of hearing it, until she undoubtedly knows that she can brandish her femininity as a shield, as an asset, as a weapon. As something to find pure love and joy and happiness in, just like I do. Just because they don’t like fairies, or they like climbing, or prefer blue, (or green or purple or red or yellow), it doesn’t make these little girls tomboys. It makes them human beings. They are children. Children love to run free, children love to play rough, children love to climb (climbing was a particular tomboy trigger for me). Let’s stop insinuating that these are boyish activities when all children have a love for them. Why must we label everything?
The tomboy epidemic still continues to grow. If you feel like a girl you are one (but that’s a whole different conversation). The negative stereotypes that the world harbours against girls needs to be separated from the definition of our girlhood. If you don’t fit the mould of being a girly girl, you’re not different, you’re not a tomboy. You’re a creature, with likes and dislikes just like the rest of us. You have preferences and complex feelings that you’re too young to put into words and express.
I hope that the childhood self proclaimed tomboys (such as myself), grow up and realise that their rejection of traditional femininity in childhood was rooted in something deeper than just likes and dislikes. That it brought other girls down and that it divided us. Children must be given the freedom to express themselves with hobbies that are free from gender expectations. So what if you want a “My First Kitchen” set, or if you want a racetrack, or a Barbie, or some bricks? Have at it, babe, but we must separate not liking traditional feminine toys and activities from not being “girly”, or even not being a girl. It pushes girls to identify as tomboys because they feel no other word describes them. It pushes them to want to be less like girls and more like boys because that’s the only thing that makes sense to someone so small, who doesn’t understand their place in the world yet.
This phenomenon is also seen in teenagers. It materialises as wanting to be “one of the boys”. This is a late stage rejection of femininity based again on hobbies and stereotypical traits, except now it’s changed to not wearing make-up, not being overly emotional, not being “boy crazy”. Drinking beer, watching sports, I don’t know, wearing a hat. The object has changed but the rhetoric remains the same. It is still rejecting femininity in order to be different, to appeal to men, to remove oneself from the girly stereotype.
As adults now, we are the ones who are able to break the mould. Children see us adults as wise, all knowing creatures. We can switch the narrative, we can use our critical thinking, and we can change how the tiny humans we may choose to raise see themselves. This will create a generation of strong, progressive, informed young people who are confident in who they are. We can open up conversations and encourage asking questions. We can allow little girls to be themselves, little boys to be themselves, and not teach them to strive to be something else, or to get away from themselves. It’ll eliminate those years of confusion and uncomfortability that children such as myself felt.
Hopefully some life experience and deep thought can undo the damage, but it takes time. It takes so much time. And it took me so much time. Thankfully I started very young and I made it to about 13 before I woke up and smelled the flowers. But it was still gradual. My femininity morphed from rejecting, to neutral, to aggressive defence, but it took me a long time to rejoice in it. It took me a long time to love it, but that is where I am today.
Femininity is a gift given to me that I’m so lucky to have and I’m thankful every single day that I’m a woman.
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