The ballfields of our hearts: Tomboys, femininity and female development

Feminist social psychology originated in a critique of androcentricism. Feminists have done much to correct this bias, producing a vibrant social psychology of women. But in writing women into psychology, feminists have conflated femaleness and femininity. As a result, feminist theories of women's development describe a feminine psychology rather than a psychology of women.;Girls and women who are more culturally masculine than feminine--such as tomboys--do not appear in existing feminist texts. Tomboys do, however, appear in mainstream social psychology. There they are largely portrayed as "anomalous" girls. A substantial portion of the psychological literature also considers "tomboyism" in explicitly pathological terms. Academic texts both reflect and influence everyday life understandings of tomboys. Together, academic and commonsense meanings divide tomboy experience into that which is considered normal and that which is pathological. This "gender normal divide" has considerable implications for individual tomboy lives.;Descriptions of tomboy childhoods are written from a non-tomboy, adult point of view that distorts the lived experiences of tomboys. Based on the life stories of twenty-five adults who were tomboys, this dissertation explores "being a tomboy" from the inside out. At adolescence the distinction of normal and pathological tomboyism forces a divergence in tomboy identity. Some girls "reform," and become 'normal" girls. Others though, persist in their tomboy "careers." This embodied resistance to heteropatriarchal definitions of femininity is not without its toll. In junior high and high school, career tomboys must navigate the pathological meanings imposed on their tomboyness. For some this struggle continues into adulthood, where tomboys grapple with their continued ambivalence over things feminine. Some eventually seek to heal the wounds resulting from their gender non-conformity. Looking across tomboy lives implies a sociology of authenticity and points to the necessity of an inclusive contextual and critical sociological psychology.