Tomboy
It may include wearing androgynous or unfeminine clothing and engaging in physical sports or other activities and behaviors traditionally associated with boys or men.
"[3] Before the mid-19th century, femininity was equated with emotional fragility, physical vulnerability, hesitation, and domestic submissiveness, commonly known as the "Cult of True Womanhood".
This led to the paradigm shift in people's expectations of young women from languishing, decorative beauty to vigorously healthy, thus laying the groundwork for tomboyism.
[4] In Charlotte Perkin Gilman's 1898 book, Women and Economics, the author lauds the health benefits of being a tomboy, that girls should be "not feminine till it is time to be".
[5] Joseph Lee, a playground advocate, wrote in 1915 that a "tomboy phase" was crucial to physical development of young girls between the ages of 8 and 13.
American wives, mothers, and young girls who used to rely on the men in the household for security now had the duty of protecting their homes from the army.
[8] With the main purpose of critiquing the patriarchal system, this movement opened avenues for women in education, employment, and legal protection against domestic violence.
[1] The term is used less frequently than before in the West mainly because it is now a societal norm for adolescent girls to engage in physical activities, play with peers of the same and opposite gender, and wear comfortable clothing.
[9] Sebastian Zulch of Bustle argued that since the term tomboy implicitly associates a behavior to masculine gender and reminds the societal expectation for girls, its use could be considered condescending and sexist.
[11] Some parents might be concerned by the lack of femininity in their child but the tomboy phase is, in fact, crucial to physical development between the ages of 8 and 13, according to Joseph Lee, the playground movement advocate in 1915.
[19] In this case, masculinity may be seen as a defense mechanism against the harsh push toward femininity, and a reclaiming of agency that is often lost due to sexist ideas of what girls are and are not able to do.
Barbara Creed argues that the tomboy's "image undermines patriarchal gender boundaries that separate the sexes", and thus is a "threatening figure".
An increase in the popularity of women's sporting events (see Title IX) and other activities that were traditionally male-dominated has broadened tolerance and lessened the impact of "tomboy" as a pejorative term.
[25] Scholar Kale Bantigue Fajardo argues for the similarity between "tomboy" in the Philippines and "tombois in Indonesia", and "toms in Thailand" all as various forms of female masculinity.
[26] This largely reduces the value of women to only romance and diminishes girls' confidence in working in what is traditionally defined as the "boy's realm.
[2] While some tomboys later reveal a lesbian identity in their adolescent or adult years, behavior typical of boys but displayed by girls is not a true indicator of one's sexual orientation.
This type of story is also often nationalistic, and the tomboy is usually presented as the hero that more female characters should look up to, although they still often shed some of their more extreme ways after the war.
