This study was designed to investigate accounts of tomboyism cessation and continuation in adolescence in the narratives of a small sample of adult, working and lower-middle class, New Jersey-area lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual women who identified as childhood tomboys. Study participants discussed several reasons for ceasing and continuing tomboyism in adolescence, including maturation, heterosexual interests, parental and peer pressures, athletic participation, and sexual desires for girls or women. Several participants questioned the tomboy label by highlighting discrepancies between behavior and identification. Women’s relationships to the varied gendered meanings referenced in the “tomboy” label, the salience of women’s adult sexualities in their narratives of gender in adolescence, and the dangers for scholars of presuming conformity and heterosexuality are discussed.

Although scholars have produced several retrospective studies of childhood tomboyism, they have offered few studies of women’s recollections of tomboyism and cessation of tomboyism in adolescence. Where “tomboyism” is defined as “cross-gender,” “masculine,” or “androgynous” identification or behavior in girls, social scientists tend to assume that most girls cease tomboyism in adolescence. There is little empirical analysis of why they do so, why they do not, or the relationships between women’s adult sexual statuses and their narratives of tomboyism cessation or continuation. Women’s stories about what happens to their tomboyism at adolescence are important to social scientific understandings of gender identification; in the absence of this information we may presume conformity and heterosexuality.

In the present study I investigated accounts of adolescence within the life history narratives of a small sample of adult lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual women who identified as childhood tomboys. The following research questions were asked: What are the stories women tell about the tenacity or temporariness of tomboyism in adolescence?; What reasons do they give for continuing or ceasing their tomboy ways?; Do women’s reports of cessation of tomboyism represent behavioral change or merely rejections of the “tomboy” label?; How do women’s recollections of gender conformity and resistance vary by their adult sexual identifications?