Most of us think fondly, and uncritically, of tomboys: spunky girls who act and dress boyishly, who don’t give a hoot about gender norms. As well as running through fields and climbing trees in real life, tomboys were the stars of 19th-century novels like E.D.E.N. Southworth’s 1859 The Hidden Hand—the country’s first bestseller—starring the mischievous tomboy orphan Capitola Black. In 1868, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women hit the scene, and Jo March captured the hearts and imaginations of girls around the country. Tomboys continued to be a hit in the media, right up to the end of the 20th century.
These tomboys had something else in common besides their refusal to submit to sexist restrictions: They were almost always white.
In fact, tomboyism in America is firmly rooted in racism.
The word tomboy had meant a boisterous boy when it was coined in the 16th century, then morphed into meaning a lascivious woman and, eventually, came to mean a boisterous girl. Sometimes tomboys were called vulgar or dangerous in the press, with experts declaring that girls should not be raised with the malignant idea that they deserved equality with boys, or be educated with them. The biggest peril? Studying would siphon blood away from the womb.
But another idea about the benefits of tomboyism took hold, one which promoted the opposite conclusion: that tomboyism was good for the womb. Nineteenth-century tomboyism was, in fact, connected to one of the white middle class’s great projects of the time: breeding the white race.
Middle-class white women, in their 25 pounds of restrictive bustles, corsets, and crinolines, were largely constrained by the gender roles of what was known as the “cult of true womanhood,” sometimes called the “cult of domesticity,” in the Victorian era. This ideology promoted the ideal of women sticking to the private sphere, tending to children and cultivating piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness.
Good health, then, is a code, meaning: tomboy now, successful breeder of white children later.
But the ultimate femininity of frailty wasn’t much good for procreation, and the birthrate was declining among these white women. An 1873 article stated that parents should “allow a girl to be as ‘tomboyish’ as her inclinations lead her to be. . . . Let her ride, drive, row, swim, run, climb fences, and even trees, if she has a mind to. She is only laying the foundation for future good health.”
Good health, then, is a code, meaning: tomboy now, successful breeder of white children later. Michelle Abate, author of Tomboys: A Literary and Cultural History, called tomboyism “a code of conduct” that “stressed proper hygiene, daily exercise, comfortable clothing, and wholesome nutrition . . . designed to boost the health of middle and upper-class white women.”