Text on the card reads
"Bole toh?"
The A Chottu Essay Series
TOMBOYS!
Bole toh?
A THRILLING HISTORY OF GENDER
Bole toh. gender gol hai!
Text on the card reads
ΤΟΜΒΟΥ: ANGREZI ORIGINS AND ATTITUDES
The word came from
-1556 TOMBOY (n)
(An extra- boisterous boy, low-class fellow)
- 12th century THOM (n) (pronounced 'tom') = Boy (like tom-cat)
Over time, the word SWITCHED GENDERS
100 years
-1656- ΤΟΜΒΟΥ (n)
A lascivious woman whose sexual appetites rivaled men's. It was a slur
Bole toh: A woman physically or sexually uncontained wasn't a proper woman. These things were meant for gents.
BUT AT THE SAME TIME...
Shakespeare: Hit director of that zamana
Popular culture (my plays!) had space for tomboy love!
Gender bending plays abounded...
Mr. William Shate TWELFTH NIGHT,
OR WHAT YOU WILL
...For our identification and forbidden pleasure
le audience
Text on the card reads
TOMBOY CROSSINGS
300 years later, the word 'Tomboy' showed up in Amrika
Till I arrived, Amrikis used HOYDEN for a woman out of control
Bole toh, whose control?
But from the late 1800s to mid-1900s, tomboys became aspirational in the USA
WHAT CAUSED THIS CROSSOVER?
AGAINST
Tomboys are vulgar and dangerous. Girls education? Equality with boys? What malignant ideas! Education is a peril that siphons blood from the womb!
The USA Health and Child- rearing Debates
FOR
San Francisco Morning Sun, 1891 "The American Tomboy: She Often Becomes a Woman Men Admire and Worship." Being sporty makes a strong, healthy woman, suited to reproduce healthy babies.
FOR TEAM, WONI
THE WHY?
EUGENICS
EUGENICS IS THE SELF DIRECTION OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
(Bole toh, from a boy called Eugene?)
Nope! Anxiety (about race)
Text on the card reads
A SERIES OF ANXIOUS EVENTS
END SEGREGATED RULES
As the movement to abolish slavery grew,
As immigrants coming to the US grew...
PUBLIC SCHOOLS
so did...
anxiety about race.
DANGEROUS BLACK MAN
What if we become the minority?
"Tomboyism offered an antidote to this problem. A new code of female conduct stressed proper hygiene, daily exercise, comfortable clothing, and whole- some nutrition, designed to boost the health of middle- and upper-class white women and so, better prepare them for the physical and psychological demands of marriage and motherhood. - Michelle Ann Abate (Tomboys: A Literary And Cultural History)
TOMBOYS: SUCCESSFUL BREEDERS OF HEALTHY WHITE CHILDREN
THE TOMBOY, A SOMEWHAT TRANSGRESSIVE FIGURE, WAS BROUGHT INTO THE CHETERONORMATIVE) FOLD TO SERVE THE IDEA OF A NEW IDEAL WOMAN
The All- American Girl!
HARPER'S BAZAAR
PASSING OF THE TOMBOY
"The passing of the tomboy is complete. The girl of to-day at her American best is a hearty, healthy, happy, graceful child."
Bole toh - the end of gender bending?
Breaking NEWS
Pop Culture to the rescue!
Text on the card reads
PRACHEEN VIRAL TOMBOY CONTENT
Society might have tried to contain the Tomboy's non-conforming ways. But non-conformity was lodged in feminist hearts
NEW PRINTING PRESS
"Our Daughters, Tomboys
By LV.F. "... if restricted (physical) education, enfeebled health. delicate nervous system, and above all a purposeless, aimless life, are not calculated to bring out the genius and build up the reputation of their sons; neither are they to be depended on to do this for their daughters."
1859 THE FIRST AMERICAN BESTSELLER
E.D.L.N. SOUTHWORTH
THE HIDDEN HAND
OR CAPITOLA THE MADCAP
Featuring mischievous tomboy orphan Capitola Black! Kids loved Capitola and books about feisty. motherless girls. misfits who were pals with misfit boys
New kinds of print technology was making viral content
1868 - LITTLE WOMEN
LOUISA M. ALCOTT
LITTLE WOMEN
A non-conformist Alcott wrote en specifically Litttle Women for girls. Jo March wasn't just a mischievous kid but a smart. resourceful young woman too.
THE TOMBOY WAS A FIGURE OF LIBERATION NOW. BUT. A LIMITED ONE
Bole toh?
Who could read? White middle class school going kids. Not poor working kids of other races. The Tomboy was limited to middle class white women.
The Good Housekeeping Magazine: Tomboy: The New All- American girl, physically, mentally, morally!
THE HETERO- NORMATIVE GUIDE TO TOMBOYS - WHAT'S IN, WHAT'S OUT
In
Tomboy = hatke feisty white woman (you go girl!)
Out (or in the closet Feminine boy (nahiiin). Lesbian lover? Sarva- nash
English Alt Text:
There are rainbow coloured spectacles with “respectable freedoms” written on the shades.
In a row, there is a Victorian lady with short hair and flat chest, a man dressed in a suit with a briefcase and a hat, Rosie the Riveter, a blonde woman holding a pie, and a little girl holding an airplane happily.
In another row, there is a lady biker wearing sunglasses and a t-shirt that say “Dykes on bikes,’’ a short haired lady in a suit holding a cigar, a drag queen standing threateningly with a gun in her hands and two short haired ladies in night suits who are smoking cigarettes.
There is also an old nun and a short haired woman, smiling with open arms.
Text on the card reads
THE REVOLVING DOOR
Each time the Tomboy came into prominence something was liberated.
Respectable Freedoms
1920s - The Flapper (flat chests! Short-hair! Fun!)
1930s - Enough fun! Time for bras and corsets ladies'
But something was made invisible too.
Hint: All things queer
1940s - Rosie the Riveter (women must work for the war!)
1950s-The war is over! Out of the factory! Bake us a pie!
1970s
In the mid 70s feminist parents sought to empower girls by replacing the ideal feminine little girl of their childhood with the tomboy
THE TOMBOY EXPRESSED A DESIRE FOR FREEDOM FROM THE GENDER BINARY. SOCIETY KEPT LIMITING THIS TO ACCEPTABLE BOXES
Gender play thrived under- ground, in queer spaces-
DYKES BIKES
BUT THEN... THINGS TOOK A TANTALISING TURN
"When the good lord closes a door, somewhere he opens a closet
not in the main- stream
How do you solve a problem called Maria? You don't (it's not a problem queer dear)
Text on the card reads
EXPANDED EXPANSIVE
The tomboy became an entry point to express queer experiences, expanding that space. Tomboys could be straight or queer.
BUTCH
ANDRO
TOMBOY
MASC
BI
STYLEBHAIS
What was once called tomboy, expanded to a spectrum of being.
TOMBOY CHARACTERS FEATURED IN QUEER ROMANCES
Bend it Like Beckham
Emma in Blue is the Warmest Color
Malory Towers, 2019, presented Wihelmina, or Bill, as a trans boy
The hills are alive with the sound of queerness... right?
Tomboy!
Race!
Class!
Sex!
Masculinity!
Tauba! Femininity!
Oh! Echoes of anxiety...ab kya?
GENDER DEPARTMENTAL STOREI 90s mode straightness pinker, bluer, straighter
PINK SECTION
There's no such thing as a straight tomboy. Tomboys are all lesbians only.
BLUE SECTION
Boys don't feel blue, they wear blue!
QUEER SECTION? Not in this shop!
Text on the card reads
IN APNA INDIA, THE WESTERNISED ΤΟΜΒΟΥ ROMPED ON THE BOLLYWOOD SCREEN
GEETA BALI
FEARLESS NADIA
SAIRA BANU
Living traditions of cross dressing, outlawed by colonialism showed up in songs
Not everyone needed the Tomboy to express their being
MAYA SHARMA'S BOOK 'LOVING WOMEN'
traced many stories where people live in a spectrum of identity and relationships, not always named
"The women who were addressed as "Babu." "Bhai."
Same-sex partners claimed as romantic and referred to as dost, saheli, sathin, and sakhi
Neighbours who called the couples "miya-bibi jodi
"When I was small I used to wear shorts.
When the dukh (menstruation) started. I began to wear pajamas.
Near my house another Ramsnehi woman always dressed like this, in dhoti- banian, so I decided to do the same”
-Babubhai
Text on the card reads
Around the world, Tomboys had many expressions & subcultures
TAIWAN Taos and Paos
THAILAND Toms and dees
INDIA Babu Tomboy
Tomboys can be seen as Adventurous
Independent
Challenging traditional gender roles
subverting social expectations.
BUT THE WORD TOMBOY COULD ALSO BE USED TO TEASE, OSTRACISE, DISMISS AND MARGINALISE ANYONE SEEN AS A THREAT TO TRADITIONAL GENDER AND SEXUALITY
It's a phase!
It's who I am!
But the quintessential Tomboy figure short haired, shorts-wearing, active is still found across India- the route to a different life, a different self, for many
Text on the card reads
TOMBOY BOLE TOH KAUN BUT? MUST WE DEFINE IT?
For some, being tomboy is the gateway to a different, queerer life journey
For others, it's irrelevant, even a world of so much more quaint in gender fluidity
I knew I was a tomboy at 13. I also knew I was attracted to girls. - Shruti
"For me I was boy not tomboy. - Aryan
For many it's also a term that prevents them from being pinned down or boxed up as straight or queer.
I hate being part of buckets. I want to be myself. Tomboy was a way" - Anjana
"Tomboy" once offered a temporary, protective bubble of ambiguity, even if it came with a long list of conditions. But the search for clarity is perhaps the wrong quest - maybe we should search for the power to be comfortable with ambiguity, to create more protective bubbles of it. - Lisa Selin Davis. Tomboy: The Surprising History of Girls Who Dared to Be Different
THERE'S A LITTLE BIT OF TOMBOY IN ALL OF US, TRAILING A COMPLEX HISTORY OF GENDER. WHO KNOWS WHAT DOOR THEY WILL OPEN NEXT...?
