Book Review: ‘Tomboy’ Looks at Gender Roles, and Role-Playing, Through the Ages

In “Tomboy,” the author Lisa Selin Davis leverages a familiar term to take a comprehensive look at gender performance in girls. As for who counts as a tomboy, Davis includes anyone who is seen (or who sees herself) as moving off the narrow path of conventional femininity. Under Davis’s big umbrella we find girls who reject dolls, dresses and sparkles in favor of athletics, sportswear and dirt; those who embrace both the stereotypically girlish and boyish; and some for whom tomboyism is an early expression of what will evolve into a lesbian, trans or gender-nonconforming identity.