Who is the ‘girly’ girl? Tomboys, hyper-femininity and gender

This study is based on research which focused on tomboy girls and their shared leisure time with their mothers. The research was a small-scale exploratory study of 20 women in the UK; data were collected in Yorkshire in the north of England and London in the south-east. The focus of the research was on the topic of tomboy identities. In this study, we explore the nuances and ambiguities around what a tomboy is by using an indirect (and perhaps unexpected) but nonetheless illuminating route: asking what constitutes a ‘girly-girl’, the polar opposite of the tomboy. We are interested in how she compares with the tomboy, and how the tomboy participants talked about her. We conclude that the girly-girl is a powerful cultural figure, part of a narrative in which women are sexualised and objectified but she is also a form of polemic; she is contrived to be a marker of the worst excesses of hegemonic ‘femininity’. It is through this lens that we can view and understand the tomboy, and the anxieties about the tomboy experienced by those around her.