Tomboy Catalog

Exhibit curated by Kate Wells & Mary Murphy
Essay by Virginia Thomas
Illustrations by Jazzmen Lee-Johnson
April 1 —
June 30
2022

ApPEARing
fIRst
in the 1590s, the term “tomboy” was defined as a “wild,
romping girl, who acts like a spirited boy”; or “strumpet,
bold and immodest woman”.* This exhibition interrogates
the history of cultural expectations and gender norms
for girls and women, especially in the interplay between
lifestyle, aesthetic, play and self-identity. It looks at historical
shifts in definitions of femininity and gender via
three themes to understand who controls cultural norms
and how tomboys have used their capabilities and their
personal expression to challenge them.
*Harper, D. (n.d.). Etymology of
tomboy. Online Etymology Dictionary.
Retrieved December 6, 2021,
from https://www.etymonline.com/
word/tomboy
Visitors are encouraged to ask themselves about the relevance
of the tomboy today. How have various societies
and cultures defined femininity? Does the term “tomboy”
hold meaning currently? As society has developed a
more nuanced understanding of femininity, is it a term
that holds continued relevance? If so, for whom? Do
current cultural conversations about the intersections of
gender identity and queerness complicate the use of the
term? In what ways?
We invite you to learn more by visiting the exhibition,
attending programs and events, and checking out suggested
videos and readings about tomboys at https://
www.provlib.org/programs-exhibitions/tomboy.

What
Would
It meaN
to think about the word “tomboy” as a tool? The word
“tomboy” carries a wide variety of meanings, connotations,
and feelings for different people around the
globe and is most commonly understood as an identity
category. At once a feminist icon, a deviant child, and a
foreshadower of sexual difference, there are many ways
to unpack tomboy’s varied meanings. While many usually
consider the word tomboy an identity label, Tomboy
pivots from the question of what a tomboy is and asks:
what does the term “tomboy” do? In other words: what
does “tomboy” make available or unavailable to those
who use it? Throughout this exhibit, we invite you to
consider “tomboy” less as a set of particular characteristics
associated with an identity, and more as a tool that
enables different possibilities in a world structured to
enforce a strict system of gender originating in Europe:
the gender binary.
What is the gender binary and why does it matter? The
“gender binary” is important because it names two
entwined phenomena: 1) the fact that most people in societies
influenced by European culture understand there to
be only two genders: man and woman and 2) the systems
that reinforce the idea that there are only two genders
as common sense. The first names the dominant way
people understand gender to work. Many of us in the U.S.
were raised to understand that there are two genders,
1–Anne-Fausto Sterling “The Five
Sexes Revisited” in Introduction
to Women, Gender, and Sexuality
Studies, 32-37.
man and woman, and that those two genders are natural
on a biological level (i.e. based on genitalia and chromosomes).
In this way of understanding, “man” and “woman”
are the only two genders that appear in nature and that
these categories are complementary to one another. The
idea here is that any single person is born as either a boy
or a girl, that those gender identities are based on what
kind of genitalia they have, and their gender will stay the
same until they grow into a man or woman respectively.
Behind and supporting this idea is that heterosexuality is
natural because “men” and “women” need each other to
reproduce.
Feminist writers of the eighties and nineties challenged this
idea by revealing the second important part of the “gender
binary”—its role in creating and maintaining systems in our
social and cultural worlds. Feminist scientists such as Anne
Fausto Sterling helped make clear that the idea that there
are two genders—man and woman—is not produced in
nature, but in our culture: that one’s genitalia does not correspond
inherently with their identification with a gender. 1
The term “gender binary,” then, is also useful for describing
the way in which our culture reinforces the idea that there
are only two genders. This reinforcement happens on the
level of the law (birth certificates), religion (Adam and Eve),
clothing (skirts vs. pants), movies (When Harry Met Sally),
books (Harry Potter), familial norms (mom and dad), gender-reveal
parties (pink or blue), sports (men’s vs. women’s
basketball), and countless other arenas of human interaction.
By being surrounded by a world that emphasizes that
there are only two genders and that they are “man” and
“woman,” many people grow up thinking that it is natural
for there to be only two genders. This is where the first
meaning of the gender binary and the second meaning
collide and amplify one another: when we are raised in a

culture that tells us there are two genders, we believe
there are two genders. And when we believe that there
are two genders, we think the culture simply reflects
that reality. However, as feminist, gender non-binary, and
trans people have articulated and expressed, the gender
binary is not only a constructed idea, it is a harmful one.
What many do not realize is that the gender binary—the
idea that men and women are complimentary and the
only two genders—originated in European cultures as
a means of outcasting the gender systems of peoples
in Africa, Asia, and the lands that became known as the
Americas. The gender binary became a powerful tool
for Europeans to degrade, police, control and capture
Black and Indigenous groups whose gender expressions
differed from that of Europe. This process of maligning
other gender systems provided a rationale for Europeans
to colonize and enslave those peoples as a strategy to
build wealth and power. As Europeans sailed across the
oceans enacting genocide and enslavement in places like
India, Nigeria, and Brazil, they used the idea that there are
only two genders against the people they encountered
whose gender presentations differed from their own as
an excuse to dehumanize them. Holding the European
gender system above other gender systems became a
rationale for dehumanizing, sexually violating and enslaving
Black and Indigenous people as well as stealing their
lands and natural resources in order to accumulate power
and wealth among European nations. 2
It is with this context in mind that we can truly grasp
the power of the gender binary as it continues to function
in a similar way today. The gender binary not only
erases people who fall outside of its narrow definitions
of accepted gender presentation. It remains as a logic
2–Margaret Robinson, “Two-Spirit
Identity in a Time of Gender Fluidity,”
Journal of Homosexuality 67,
no. 12 (2020); Jennifer L. Morgan,
“‘Some Could Suckle over Their
Shoulder’: Male Travelers, Female
Bodies, and the Gendering of Racial
Ideology,” in Laboring Women:
Reproduction and Gender in
New World Slavery (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press,
2004); Tani Barlow, “Theorizing
Woman: Funu, Guojia, Jiating
(Chinese Women, Chinese State,
Chinese Family),” in Inderpal Grewal
and Caren Kaplan, Scattered
Hegemonies: Postmodernity and
Transnational Feminist Practices
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1994); Oyewumi, Oyeronke,
“Conceptualizing Gender:
The Eurocentric Foundations of
Feminist Concepts and the Challenge
of African Epistemologies,”
Jenda: A Journal of Culture and
African Women Studies. 2, no.
1 (2002); Sarah Haley, “Convict
Leasing, (Re)Production, and Gendered
Racial Terror,” in No Mercy
Here: Gender, Punishment, and
the Making of Jim Crow Modernity
(2016); Raewyn Connell, “Rethinking
Gender from the South
Raewyn Connell” Feminist Studies
40, No. 3 (2014).
3–Elías Krell, “Is Transmisogyny
Killing Trans Women of Color?
Black Trans Feminisms and the
Exigencies of White Femininity,”
Transgender Studies Quarterly 4,
no. 2 (2017).
designed to dehumanize those who do not seem to fit
into its two-dimensional, euro-centric scope. People
in power systemically continue to be euro-descended
people who comply with the gender binary and they
use the gender binary with particular force against
Black, Indigenous, and people of color in the present.
Black Lives Matter protests have shed light on the
importance of this issue: that of violence against trans
people of color, and particularly Black trans women,
remains a central way that the dominant class and
those who aspire to be like the dominant class use the
gender binary to oppress and harm Black and Brown
people. Tony McDade, Tyianna Alexander, Domonique
Jackson, Monika Diamond, Nina Pop, Merci Mack, Shaki
Peters, Rayanna Pardo, Bree Black, Dior H Ova, Sophie
Vásquez, Riah Milton, Brayla Stone, Dominique ‘Rem’mie’
Fells, Asia Jynae Foster, Chae’Meshia Simms, Shai
Vanderpump. These are only some of the names of the
Black trans people who were targeted and murdered
in 2020 and 2021 due to their blackness or browness
and the difference of their gender expression from the
euro-centric gender frameworks doctors assigned them
at birth. 3
Where does the word “tomboy” fit into this picture of the
gender binary as a mechanism of domination? “Tomboy”
began to appear in English dictionaries as early as the
1500s, during the onset of those European campaigns to
build wealth by stealing from, harming, and killing people
from lands and cultures outside of Europe. At that time,
it was used, not as a term of empowerment, but as one
of policing girls’ gender expression in English-speaking
countries. In the 1550s and 1560s, the term meant, “1)
A brash, boisterous, or self-assured youth 2) A forward,
immodest, or unchaste woman.” By the mid-1600s, it

began to mean “A girl or young woman who acts or
dresses in what is considered to be a boyish way, esp.
one who likes rough or energetic activities conventionally
more associated with boys.” 4 It is important to consider the
emergence of “tomboy” into popular lexicon and its various
definitions within the historical context of European
expeditions around the world to demolish other peoples
and cultures as a strategy for building wealth and consolidating
power. In order for European colonists to maintain
the idea that they were superior to the Indigenous people
they were encountering due to their improper gender
performance, they needed to ensure that their own families
and children adhered to the gender binary at home in
Europe. The word “tomboy” in this context was designed
to do just this kind of work: to discipline Europeans who
4—Oxford English Dictionary,
(Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2022) s.v. “tomboy”, https://wwwoed-com;
Elizabeth King, “A Short
History of the Tomboy” The Atlantic
January 5, 2017.
5—For example, Kale Bantigue
Fajardo discusses the figure of
the Filipino tomboy as one that
troubles conventional masculine
and heterosexist narratives of the
Filipino diaspora. Kale Bantigue
Fajardo, “Transportation Translating
Filipino and Filipino American
Tomboy Masculinities through
Global Migration and Seafaring”
GLQ 1, no. 2-3 (2008).
did not comply with the gender binary by assigning them
a label that marked them as outside of the norm. This is
largely how the term has functioned until more recent
decades when people with varying relationships to the
history of colonialism have begun to reclaim the term and
use it as a source of pride. 5
The term tomboy continues to carry weight as both a
mechanism of policing and, as this exhibit will explore, a
tool of empowerment. In Tomboy, we are interested in
the multiple ways “tomboy” has been and continues to
be used, both as a way to enforce compliance with dominant
ideas of what “boys” and “girls” should be like as
well as the way people use it to undermine and challenge
the rigid gender binary system. While “tomboy” has often

been used as a way to bully girls who could be perceived
as “gay,” it is also a source of camaraderie for those who
don’t vibe with heterosexuality. There are some who have
argued that the term “tomboy” only reinforces the gender
binary by creating an acceptable window of time for girls
to express themselves outside of gender norms while
they are young, as long as they conform to appropriate
expressions of womanhood later in life. 6 Building on this
idea, others have argued that tomboy ingrains the gender
binary by labeling any non-“girl” behavior in people
assigned female at birth as “boyish” behavior. According
to the work of Michelle Abate, “tomboy” was also used to
reinforce white supremacy during campaigns to abolish
slavery in the United Kingdom as well as United States.
“Tomboy” was revived as a kind of precursor to eugenics
in response to fears of the white race dying out. It
encouraged acceptance of a more able-bodied physical
presentation for white women so as to become robust
mothers of white children. 7 Over the last few years, the
word “tomboy” has seen a resurgence in popular culture
and commercial products. 8 The figure of the tomboy has
appeared in movies, literature, in comics, and—lately—
marketed as a style in the fashion industry, even as a kind
of underwear. These modes of deploying the tomboy
figure both bring the tomboy to broader publics and also
seek to make profit off of the idea of the tomboy. This
marketing tool relies on selling tomboy as an identity that
one can access through purchasing a product. These
examples demonstrate the movement of “tomboy” in and
out of white colonial culture–absorbed into acceptability
at some points while refuted as disdainful at others.
Tomboy lingers on tomboy as a tool of possibility and
rupture, a tool with the power to crack open spaces in the
Euro-centric gender binary. “Tomboy” is a name that many
6—Dianne Elise, “Tomboys and
Cowgirls: The girl’s disidentification
from the mother” in Sissies
and Tomboys: Gender Nonconformity
and Homosexual Childhood
Ed. M. Rottnek, (New York:
New York University Press, 1999);
Sheana Ahlqvist, “The Potential
Benefits and Risks of Identifying
as a Tomboy: A Social Identity Perspective,”
Self and Identity 12, no.
5 (2013).
7—Michele Ann Abate, “Launching
a Gender B(l)Acklash: E. D. E.
N. Southworth’s the Hidden Hand
and the Emergence of (Racialized)
White Tomboyism,” Children’s
Literature Association Quarterly
31, no. 1 (Spring, 2006); Michelle
Ann Abate, Tomboys: A Literary
and Cultural History (Philadelphia,
Temple University Press, 2008).
8—Anna Kolos, “Tomboyism in
Fashion and Contemporary Popular
Culture,” The Contested and
the Poetic: Gender and the Body
(2014).
people of many backgrounds wear with pride and this
exhibit highlights tomboy as a tool designed to challenge
the gender binary and its history as a tool of gender-censorship.
Rather than trying to make concrete exactly
what a tomboy is, however, we draw upon the themes
Control, Capability, and Expression to consider the ways
tomboy creates spaces of potential, of containment, and
of subversion. Breaking open a discussion about tomboy,
we acknowledge that “tomboy” is just one term, embedded
with layers of colonial history, that people have used
to contest the gender binary. The figures you see in this
exhibit may or may not have identified as a “tomboy” but
we are interested in how tomboy joins and complements
other forms of rebellion against the gender binary across
history. As you walk through each section, we invite you
to think and rethink what “tomboy” means to you and
how you see this meaning refracted and altered in the
light of the various people, stories, and objects who have
defied the gender binary across this exhibit.
—
Exhibit curated by Kate Wells, Curator for Rhode Island Collections at
Providence Public Library and Mary Murphy, Nancy L. Buc Pembroke
Center Archivist at Brown University.
Essay by Virginia Thomas, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for the
Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Rice University.
Illustrations by Jazzmen Lee-Johnson.
Exhibit produced in partnership with the Pembroke Center for Teaching
and Research on Women at Brown University. For more information,
please visit pembroke.brown.edu

CoNTROL
CAPABILItY
EXPRESSION
“The Story of Romping Polly”,
Slovenly Peter; or, cheerful stories
and funny pictures for good
little folks by Heinrich Hoffman.
Philadelphia: Porter & Coates,
189-.
“Tomboy Kate and Naughty May”,
Freaks and Frolics of Little Girls
by Josephine Pollard. New York:
McLoughlin Bros., 1887.
Eloise by Kay Thompson, illustrated
by Hilary Knight. New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1955.
Five on a Treasure Island by
Enid Blyton. London: Hodder &
Stoughton, 1951.
Girl who would rather Climb Trees
by Miriam Schlein. New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975.
On loan from private collection.
Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by
Beverly Cleary. New York: Morrow
Junior Books, 1981.
Harriet the Spy by Louise
Fitzhugh. New York: Harper &
Row, 1964.
I Wish I’d Been Born A Boy,
words and music by Al Trahern.
Williamsport, Penn.: Vandersloot
Music Pub. Co, 1906. Sheet music.
Tomboy by Hal Ellson. New York:
Bantam Books, 1950.
No No No: A Guide to Girling
Wrong by Annie Mok. 2015. Zine
On loan from the Sarah Doyle
Center for Women and Gender,
Brown University.
Dorothy Young, ca. 1930. Bertillon
card. On loan from Providence
City Archives.
Sydney Allen, ca. 1930. Bertillon
card. On loan from Providence
City Archives.
“Yale versus Vassar”. Illustration
in The Gibson book : a collection
of the published works of Charles
Dana Gibson. Scribner’s, 1906.
Reproduction courtesy of Mohr
Memorial Library.
Girl Scout doll, ca. 1900. On loan
from Boston Children’s Museum.
Girl Scout uniform belonging to
Mary Turner Tinney, Wollaston,
Mass, 1928-1935. On loan from
Girl Scout Museum at Cedar Hill.
The Girl Scout Canoe Trip by Edith
Lavalle. 1922. On loan from Girl
Scout Museum at Cedar Hill.
How Girls Can Help Their
Country: Handbook for Girl Scouts
by Juliette Low. {Savannah], 1917.
Photographs: New Bedford
Drum & Bugle Corps, circa
1916, Cornflower Troop, 1927,
Fairhaven, MA, Luscomb Personal
CollectionCornflower Troop,
Fairhaven Mass., 1927; Hiking,
Troop III, Brookline Mass., 1933.
On loan from Girl Scout Museum
at Cedar Hill.
Film: I don’t want to be a man
by Ernst Lubitsch. Germany:
Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-
Stiftung, 1920.
Alwilda the Pirate, scrimshaw on
whale tooth. Nicholson Whaling
Collection.
Broadside ballads: The Female
Rambling Sailor, The Gallant
Female Sailor, The Handsome
Cabin Boy, The Female Husband.
Potter & Williams Collection on
Irish Culture.
Historia de la Monja Alferez,
Dona Catalina de Erauso by
Herself. Paris: Julio Dido, 1829.
A General history of the pyrates,
from their first rise and settlement
in the Island of Providence
by Charles Johnson. London: T.
Woodward, 1726.
Postcards: Two unidentified
women on horseback near the
woods, “Little Sure Shot” - portrait
of Annie Oakley, “Calamity
Jane when a Scout for Gen.
Cook, South Dakota”, Two young
women riding an Ariel motorcycle.
Reproduced from images
in the Elizabeth West Postcard
Collection, Schlesinger Library.
Flaming iguanas: an illustrated
all-girl road novel thing by
Erika Lopez. New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1997.
Photograph. “Women’s Auto
Class, 1918”, YMCA of Greater
Providence Archives.
Photograph. “Lady
Longshoremen”, RI General
Photograph Collection.
Hard hat and construction
boots. On loan from Sarah Gray,
Plumber Local 51.
WorldTeam Tennis dress worn by
Billie Jean King, 1974. On loan
from the International Tennis Hall
of Fame Museum.
Poster advertising the “Battle of
the Sexes” between Billie Jean
King and Bobby Riggs, 1973.
On loan from the International
Tennis Hall of Fame Museum.
Nancy Ann doll, circa 1955. On
loan from Boston Children’s
Museum.
Nancy Drew board game, 1957.
On loan from Boston Children’s
Museum.
Royal Court softball jersey and
ball cap, Kim Deacon Collection,
RI LGBTQ+ Community Archives.
Tomboy! Go Go Doll, 1965. On
loan from private collection.
Roller Derby player portraits and
tickets, circa 1950. Collection
of Rhode Island roller derby
ephemera.
Playtex sports bra, circa 1980
and Playtops advertisement. On
loan from private collection.
I Always Wanted to be somebody
by Althea Gibson. New York:
HarperCollins, 1958. 1st edition.;
Photographs of Althea Gibson,
1957 & 1958. On loan and reproductions
courtesy of International
Tennis Hall of Fame.
GB2B binder in trans flag print,
circa 2019. On loan from PPL
employee Rae Fotheringham and
their spouse, Charlie Tanzi.
The Female Review; or, memoirs
of an American young lady...by
a Citizen of Massachusetts [by
Deborah Sampson]. Dedham,
Mass: Heaton, 1797. On loan
from University of Connecticut at
Storrs, Special Collections.
History of Jemima Wilkinson, a
preacheress of the eighteenth
century; containing an authentic
narrative of her life and character,
and of the rise, progress and
conclusion of her ministry by
David Hudson. Geneva, N.Y.: S.P.
Hull, 1844.
Tomboy: a graphic memoir by
Liz Prince. San Francisco: Zest
Books, 2014. On loan from the
Sarah Doyle Center for Women
and Gender, Brown University.
The Woman in Battle: a narrative
of the exploits, adventures and
travels of Madame Loreta Janeta
Valezquez, otherwise known
as Lieutenant Harry T. Buford
by Loreta Janeta Valezquez.
Hartford: T. Belknap, 1876.
Photograph. Gladys Bentley at
the Ubangi Club in Harlem, circa
1930. Reproduction courtesy
of Rochester Visual Studies
Workshop.
Postcard: Two unidentified
women dressed as men in suits.
Reproduced from images in
the Elizabeth West Postcard
Collection, Schlesinger Library.
Coloring books. Girls Will Be
Boys Will Be Girls Will Be… by
Jacinta Bunnell. Oakland: PM
Press, 2018. & Gender Now by
Maya Christina Gonzalez. San
Francisco: Reflection Press, 2010.
Patti Smith: Before, Easter, After
by Patti Smith & Lynn Goldsmith.
Koln: Taschen, 2019. Limited
edition. On loan from a private
collection.
Photograph. “Pretty Please,
1974” - Delgado girls, Lou Costa
Collection on Fox Point.
Jean jacket with Siouxsie Sioux
patch. ca.1990. On loan from
private collection.
Shotgun Seamstress, Volume
IV by Osa Atoe, zine, ca.2010;
Xicanistas & Punkeristas Say It
Loud! by Brenda Montaño, zine,
2013. On loan from Sarah Doyle
Center for Women and Gender,
Brown University.
Photograph of punk youth
by unknown photographer.
Savannah, GA, ca.1985. On loan
from private collection.
Poster.“Every Girl Every Boy” by
Irit Reinheimer & Jacinta Bunnell,
Gender Subversion Kit, 2001.
Video. Tomboys of Tiktok.
Compilation of TikTok videos
courtesy of @imkellcantyoutell,
@Emxalexbxy, @genlacombe, @ayrara19,
@Leniselani, @Bexx0308, @Auntyskates,
@Lemontwisst, @Royaloakfc16,
@Sugarza20, @Danaecummins,
@Katieee10, @_kileaux, @Mototi46,
@Lizzytaf_, @Dumarspaige,
@Kbuena95, @Carlitayes, @Monikkaam,
@Smallsideofcurlyfries, @Bortbytinq.

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