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Concept
Tomboy
Summary
Tomboy is a term used for girls or young women with masculine traits. It can include wearing androgynous or unfeminine clothing and engaging in physical sports or other activities and behaviors usually associated with boys or men.
The word "tomboy" is a portmanteau which combines "tom" with "boy". Though this word is now used to refer to "boy-like girls", the etymology suggests the meaning of tomboy has changed drastically over time.
In 1533, according to the Oxford Dictionary of English, "tomboy" was used to mean a "rude, boisterous or forward boy". By the 1570s, however, "tomboy” had taken on the meaning of a "a bold or immodest woman", finally, in the late 1590s and early 1600s, the term morphed into its current meaning: "a girl who behaves like a spirited or boisterous boy; a wild romping girl."
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". Under the influence of this ideal of femininity, women did not engage in strenuous sports or any physical activity. This paradigm remained stagnant until the mid-nineteenth century. During the Long Depression of the late 1800s, the US's increasing economic instability made fragile femininity no longer desirable. Young women joined the workforce to support their families and learn practical job skills, and thus a more robust physique was needed to support the physical demands of job practices. 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.
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". 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.
Official source
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