Tomboy?

(This is a very personal post about gender and bodies and identity. It makes some generalisations about male and female and bodies and stuff to explain my changing, and still somewhat confused, identity. It’s not intended to cause offence in any way and I apologise if it does.)

Ever since I was little I’ve been a tomboy. My entire childhood was spent wearing t shirts and jeans (or jodhpurs if I was working at the stables) and climbing trees and watching wildlife in the cemetery next to my parents’ house. As soon as I could, I cut my hair into a crop and I was one of very few girls to wear trousers at secondary school. In fact, the small group of us who did wear trousers managed to change the uniform rules to allow girls to wear them. I got a lot of flack for having short hair at school. I was asked if I was a boy several times a day, and often called a dyke. I didn’t care particularly about that level of bullying, the more serious emotional abuse my friends were dishing out to me caused far more misery. I was happy not looking like a girl. It’s hard to climb a tree or muck out a stable in a skirt and I enjoyed being kind of invisible. I didn’t like the fuss and attention and restrictive behaviours that came with being a girl. It seemed far better to just be me, to be nothing.

I knew from a young age that I liked boys and girls. It kind of made sense to me as a ‘normal’ way to be because in my head people were people, so of course sometimes you’d like someone from the same sex. I liked people and didn’t particularly think about their gender. I still kind of think like this, although with a side of political awareness about gender and queerness, of course. I fancied boys and I fancied girls and I didn’t even think it was an identity until I was about 16 and I read about lesbians and bisexuals. It was kind of nice to have a label but it wasn’t really something I ever struggled with. I was lucky in that respect.

Puberty hit me rather suddenly. I grew tits overnight and was gifted lots and lots of puppyfat. I hated my body and felt betrayed by it. The strong, fast body I’d had as a child – the long arms that helped me climb trees, the fast legs that let me run faster than boys, the anonymity of being a child who saw themselves as without a gender, was all gone. I couldn’t run without my tits getting in the way or being noticed by other people (thanks, catcalling builders). I wobbled. People asked me ‘why don’t you dress nicely for once?’ (for nicely read: feminine), I stopped being active because I was self conscious and felt adrift in my body. I lost strength.

Learning to dress as an adult took me a long time. I wanted to wear t shirts and jeans and be androgynous again but my body betrayed me. My shape meant clothes didn’t fit properly and I never felt able to be tomboyish. So I had to work out another identity. I tried looking girly but it never really stuck so I went headlong into the 90s and 00s refuge for the confused: skater girl. Big jeans, big t shirts, and huge hoodies to hide in. But I outgrew that, and started wanting to dress for work and more like an adult. So slowly I worked out a way to dress that felt sort of comfortable and meant I could fit in a little. Although of course I still have to be an outsider, so I clash prints and wear crazy colours to convince myself that I’m still odd. If I don’t feel strange I don’t feel like me.

But every now and again I remember that <13 year old me. How comfortable she was in her tshirts and leggings, climbing trees and confusing people as to whether she was a boy or a girl, and not really caring either way. I still kind of feel that she's inside me, and that my adult body is a fleshy overcoat she's having to wear rather uncomfortably. I see all the cute soft dykes/butches/stone butches/queers* on Tumblr and their bodies are boyish and they can wear men's jeans and their shirts fit properly and their braces don't lie misshapen over their chests. I wish I could dress that way and not feel stupid. I wish 13 year old me had just grown taller not wider and curvier and fleshier. I wish I didn't have this body, so I could be me.