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Tomboys are girls who behave like boys and, as such, challenge some theories of sex-typing. We recruited tomboys (N = 60) ages 4-9 through the media and compared them with their sisters (N = 15) and brothers (N = 20) on measures of playmate preference, sex-typed activities and interests, and gender identity. On nearly all measures, tomboys were substantially and significantly more masculine than their sisters, but they were generally less masculine than their brothers. We outline some scientific benefits of studying tomboys and describe some goals and initial findings of the Tomboy Project.
KEY WORDS: tomboys; gender nonconformity; sex-atypicality; gender roles: gender development.
INTRODUCTION
The Tomboy Project is a longitudinal study of girls identified by their parents as tomboys. In this article, we outline the intentions of the Tomboy Project, present descriptive data from the first cohort of tomboys and their families, and demonstrate how data from tomboys can address important questions about gender development.
What Is a Tomboy?
The word "tomboy" conjures up similar images in most people's minds: a young girl, possibly with short hair and a baseball cap, who likes sports, plays with boys, and has little use for dolls and dresses. The Merriam-Webster dictionary (Merriam-Webster, 1998) defines "tomboy" as "a girl who behaves in a manner usually considered boyish." Although few would dispute this definition, it leaves unanswered several important questions.
For example, do tomboys behave like boys in all respects or only in some? Tomboys may be male-typical in their interest in sports and their aversion to dresses, but are they also more physically aggressive than other girls? Increasingly, psychologists have conceptualized sex-typed behaviors as a multidimensional space (Ruble & Martin, 1998), meaning that individuals can be male-typical in some respects and female-typical in others. In which behaviors do tomboys differ from other girls?
The answer to this question actually depends on two separate issues: our collective notion of "tomboy" and the actual covariation of sex-typed traits. It is possible, for example, that people understand "tomboy" merely to mean a girl who likes sports and other boy-typical activities, and that the concept has nothing to do with aggression. But it would still be possible that tomboys are more aggressive than other girls if aggressiveness and male-typical interests...