#TomboyCulture
By Stephanie Cook (MJour'18)
Search for Title IX and youâll find a landmark federal civil rights law passed in 1972. Search for the term âtitle nine,â however, and the top result will likely be a national chain of womenâs athletic clothing stores.
Legally, the implications of Title IXâwhich established new requirements for gender inclusivity in federally funded educational programsâwere broad. Publicly, the law is known mainly for one thing: allowing women in sports.
As women growing up with Title IX took to fields, courts and arenas, the trend became woven into the fabric of society. Sporty girls became known as âtomboys,â a term that fascinates Jamie Skerski, senior instructor in the Department of Communication.
âThatâs my generation, thatâs Mia Hammâs generation,â Skerski says. âFor the first time, you have a generation of women who benefit from Title IX, and in the 1990s, imagery of sporty girls explodes in popular culture. Books and movies depicting athletic girls went mainstream.â
Originally, âtomboyâ described a young boy who was out of control or didnât conform to polite culture. Later, it shifted to describe unruly women. The modern incarnation is a young girl who is biologically female but prefers the activities we associate with boyhood, Skerski says.
âThey exhibit gender behaviors that we associate with masculinity,â she says. âThat used to be seeking education or wanting to wear pants, and now, because of Title IXâbecause girls and women have had more opportunities in athletics and sportsâtomboy has come to mean athletic girl.â
The word âgirlâ is important, as societyâs acceptance of tomboys almost always has an expiration date.
âMost narratives have tomboys trading in their soccer cleats for high heels in the end,â Skerski says. âItâs a way to discipline that rebellion. You can do it, but popular culture says this isnât a permanent status. You should grow out of it.â
At TEDx¶¶ÒőÂĂĐĐÉä in 2018, Skerski presented the talk â,â inspired in part by students in her senior seminar on gender and rhetoric, whom sheâd asked to present gender collages.
âI had not even talked about tomboys at this point in the semester, but I heard, over and over again, âHere was my tomboy stage.â It was all about freedomâfreedom of dress, freedom of being strongâuntil you hit that junior high-middle school adolescence,â she says. âWhen I heard it coming out of my studentsâ mouths, I was like, âWow, itâs cultural, itâs personal, itâs on an identity level as well as a narrative level.ââ
As industries from entertainment to fashion embraceâand profit fromâtomboys, Skerski warns that they often rob tomboys of an essential function: gender rebellion.
âYou get sexy tomboy or pretty tomboy,â she says. âItâs becoming more of a normative, dominant kind of identity rather than that rebellious woman or girl.â
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