Mighty Warriors and Tomboys

Ada with axe and dragon

Ada’s cousin had his third birthday party and wanted a knights theme; being somewhat concerned about the prospect of a gaggle of three year olds with swords I did what any responsible parent would: I bought Ada a sword, a shield, and the biggest axe I thought she could handle.

As it happened, it all went smoothly, not least because the knights had a dragon pinata to slay.

It has, however, given me a mighty new peeve: the tomboy; when I was telling a temporary creche worker about Ada’s weekend with axe and shield, while she was playing with trucks in the sandpit, said worker described her as a tomboy, which got a fairly visceral negative reaction from me.

Firstly, it’s not terribly accurate. Ada has begged, pleaded, and wheedled on the topic of nail polish until she has some bright yellow stuff of her own. This is not, as I understand it, the sort of behaviour one associates with the word; like her mother, who enjoys long evening gowns and fencing, Ada has tastes I would refer to as “well-rounded”.

But more fundamentally it’s that the very idea is a kind of third state of gender; it’s a peculiar construct, because on one level it lacks the wholly negative connotations of the closest equivalents I can think of for men (all of which, like, say, ‘effeminate’, leave the listener in no doubt as to the second-class status of the object). On the contrary it can be viewed quite positively by some. The problem, for me, anyway, is that it’s also got a big chunk of essentialism and denial of feminity about it. Because, it says, you are interested in cars and trucks and building castles, you are not a Real Girl. If you were a Real Girl you’d be uninterested in those things and interested only in Proper Girly Things.

I reject this—I see no reason to assign “interest in building things in a sandpit” as being an inherently masculine activity, and I see no reason my little girl should be assigned a kind of not-girl status for liking them.