The turn of the 20th century was a progressive era, and Americans were not merely coming around to the idea of tomboys?—?child rearing experts, cultural critics, and writers were in fact championing the benefits of tomboy-ism. But while the loosening of gender strictures seemed to signal the dawn of a more egalitarian age, society’s evolving acceptance of tomboys didn’t merely spring from concern for the wellbeing of women in their own right.
“The angel in the house,” the ideal upper middle class mother, was mild and subservient, rarely outdoors, and tightly bound in a corset. The languorous look of the consumption patient was considered attractive, but this aesthetic of frailty was literally killing them. Where the wealthy Anglo-Saxon American woman was at risk, so was the white race, since a dead white woman cannot bear children. With increasing numbers of Japanese, Chinese, Eastern and Southern European immigrants pouring over the borders, upper middle-class anxiety was high. As Ohio State University historian Michelle Ann Abate writes, “In this way, tomboyism was more than simply a new childrearing practice or gender expression for the nation’s adolescent girls; it was a eugenic practice or, at least, a means to help ensure white racial supremacy.”
Gilman’s advocacy for tomboy-ism and female physical fitness was part and parcel of her nativism. She was alarmed by the increasing number of “degenerate” immigrants coming to “pollute” the American citizenry. A proponent of female physical fitness after being raised by an invalid mother, she practiced rigorous exercise routines: running, weightlifting, rope climbing, vaulting, and jumping. At the height of her career, she was advocating for female economic independence, female physical fitness, women’s participation in the public sphere, and stricter immigration laws. Her 1923 essay “Is America too Hospitable?” voiced anxieties about races mixing. “If you put into a melting pot promiscuous shovelfuls of anything that comes handy you do not get anything out of it of value,” she argued.