Tomboy

In one of the schools that I worked in, I met a girl who everybody called a boy. She dressed in her brother’s uniform and had her hair cut short just like her brother’s. She always hung around with the boys, and when I called her by her name her friends told me - “Mam, uska naam Sheela nahi Bablu hai.” Just like her brother, she is only 8 years old.

When I was 7 years old I too was called a boy. If not by me, mostly by people around me. It was mostly because of my hyper-activity, my short hair, inclination towards sports more than dolls, my choice to role-play my dad instead of my mom, my urge to climb all over Mumbai’s bus stands rather than wait quietly for the bus like my sister. People very frequently told my mother, “Aparna, bhagwan ne galti kar di ladka bana raha tha Aditi ko, last moment mein ladki bana diya. She is such a tomboy.”

The word ‘tomboy’ hit my ears the first time then, at age 7. At that time I didn’t understand gender much, or care for how people perceived me or if it mattered. I continued the way I was. I didn’t know any better. As I grew, I slowly got a little conscious about the girls and boys around me. I realized how pretty girls dressed, how neat and clean they were, their hair clips and cartoon rubber bands were pretty attractive. I also observed the boys, the lack of choices they had in clothes, most of them were shabby, would not listen and relatively cry less than girls. I felt closer to the boys somehow, I did feel it easier to not spend time making choices about the way I dressed, or the colour of my hair clips. I rather focused on hitting a ‘four’ while playing cricket.

At age nine though slowly I felt like my mother started making a conscious effort of dressing me up, with pretty frocks and hair clips. I really hated them. I was so comfortable in my shorts and in my t-shirts. Then my mother also put me into a Bharatnatyam class, which I thought was a desperate attempt from her side to make me more feminine, atleast in her head. When I asked the boys in my gang to join, they laughed and told me, “Boys don’t do Bharatnatyam.” The confusion for me started right then, which then doubled when I met and saw my Bharatnatyam teacher dance. My teacher was a man, he danced beautifully, had a distinct male voice, his wrists and body moved like nothing I had seen before. I had never seen a man like him.

I remember a lot of girls in my class including me giggled as we saw him move his waist and his body. It was just way too different from the quintessential men we had seen dance. I though personally felt relieved. I had finally found someone like me. I had found a ‘Tomgirl.’ I first went and told my mother about my revelation. ‘I found a man who dances like a woman. He is a Tomgirl.” My mother didn’t react to it and changed the topic. I went to school and then I asked my teacher - “Mam, just like there are tomboys, there are also tomgirls right?” My teacher laughed and said, “There is no such term in the English literature.” When I asked her, why is it so? She didn’t have an answer.

Much later in life, the answer revealed itself. Tomboy is a term given by adults to girls who they can’t fit in their pre-defined gender box. The dictionary meaning of it is, ‘a young girl who likes the same games and activities that are traditionally considered to be for boys’. This ‘traditionally considered’ is a problem, because these traditions are man-made. Humans that have pre-defined notions about ‘a boy’ and ‘a girl’.

In all my time working at the grassroots, I have met many young girls like Sheela, who excel in sports, have a short hair cut, don’t like pretty frocks and like me would rather spend their time hitting a ball with a bat. They are amongst the very few in the class, and I am sure they roam around in this world confused about their identity and gender. While the world pushes them to be like Sheela or Bablu, I have realized my job is to help these girls and their class-mates break their self-created gender boxes, and be true to whoever they are. There can’t really be a better tool than sports for this, I have learned.

So, yes tomboy is just a bullshit term. Let’s stop using it! Can we?

#breakinggenderstereotypes #gender #identity #sportsandgender