Temporary Tomboys: Coming of Age in ‘My Girl’ and ‘Now and Then’

This guest post by Elizabeth Kiy appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.

Young girls have little power.

Controlled by their parents and teachers as well as financial and societal restrictions, often their only agency is the refusal to obey and to fit into standard gender roles. In early adolescence, they mature physically and socially but have yet to assume real adult responsibility.

A clear example of the the transitory nature of this period is the frequent presence of the tomboy character in coming-of-age films.

Though in real life many girls maintain masculine identities into adulthood, in these films as in much of society, the tomboy is a temporal figure tied to early adolescence that girls are expected to grow out of it order to be a healthy, happy (and inevitably heterosexual) adult. And in coming-of-age films, a genre where characters go through moral tests and life-changing tragedies and emerge stronger and wiser, the proof of her growth is her adoption of a female identity.

Because of female liberation movements in the 1970s, media scholars tend to see the decade as the heyday of the tomboy character in popular culture, with stars such as Jodie Foster, Christy McNichols, and Tatum O’Neal. Female-focused narratives gradually tapered off at the end of the decade, with a rise in powerful male protagonists, effects-driven blockbusters and action heroes in the 80s. In the 90s, “Girl Power” movements brought about an increase in female-directed media, but with a different framing. Gay and lesbian films encouraged positive portrayal of masculine women, but were directed exclusively to adults and others in the community.

 

However, the tomboy was a prominent figure in two well-loved films of the period aimed at young girls, though both presented her as a transitional stage in development. My Girl (1991), is the story of precocious 11-year-old Vada Sultenfuss (Anna Chlumsky) who grew up in a funeral parlor and is obsessed with death, while in Now and Then (1995) four childhood friends reunite as adults and remember (in flashbacks) the summer they were 12. The girls each fill a particular character archetype, with Christina Ricci and Rosie O’Donnell playing child and adult versions of tomboy Roberta Martin.

As adolescents, both characters are depicted as going through the early stages of puberty, where their female body and nascent sexuality are becoming impossible to ignore and they must come to terms with their gender identities.

Their tomboyism is only a cause for fear or treatment, when the girl appears to have extreme male identification or her tomboyism threatens to extend into adulthood. In this vein, it is acceptable for Roberta and Vada to climb trees, play sports and dress like the boys, but fear of puberty is a step too far.

 

Roberta is panicked about the growth of her breasts and regularly measures them and binds them. Although it is not explained exactly why she is sensitive about them, the film portrays her anxiety as irregular. The other girls, all more acceptably feminine, tease her about their size and tell her she is lucky because men will like them. In this discussion, Roberta is clearly uneasy and disgusted by the idea.

Similarly, Vada is horrified when she learns about her period rather then feeling pride at becoming a woman as girls often do in coming-of-age narratives. She tells her father’s girlfriend Shelly (Jamie Lee Curtis) that it isn’t fair because nothing happens to boys and kicks her friend Thomas J (Macaulay Culkin) out of the house until it is over. As with Vada, a girl’s crisis of gender is because of her difficulty reconciling her view of herself with that of her new sexualized body and differences from male playmates.  In both cases however, unease with the tomboy’s female body is portrayed as transitory or naiveté, rather than indication of transsexuality, while her lack of interest in boys is because of her youth, not lesbianism.

Both girls are also established as outsiders who are different from their peers and attempt to be independent from them.  Roberta is the only one of her friends who is not feminine and who isn’t interested in romance. Likewise, Vada is neurotic and is a hypochondriac who always feels she is sick. In both cases, they have lost a parent, which leaves a gulf between them and their friends that they cannot possibly understand. As such, the masculine girl often functions as a lone outsider rather than as part of an elaborate subcultural group.

 

In both films, the tomboy takes on a leadership role within their group as well. Roberta constantly places herself in the front and distributes things to the other girls; she is also the first to act and suggest new ideas. In this fashion, My Girl begins with Vada selling tickets to a tour of the funeral home, attempting both to scare the boys and make money off them. Vada goes a step further, not only being the protector in her group but the protector of a more feminine boy. Tomboy characters are often paired with effeminate male characters, as it reinforces the binary of masculinity and femininity, suggesting there is no grey area between them.

 

Roberta also transgresses into what is consider boy’s territory by placing herself in direct conflict with the boys, most notably after they steal the boys’ clothes. Later at the baseball game, she gets in a physical fight after one of the boys tells her she needs to remember to act like a girl and says she needs a mother to teach her how to be one. She tries to defend her right to be present in the masculine space, but her friends restrain her, supposedly to keep her dignity.

Moreover, both girls grew up without mothers or a feminine influence on their lives. Instead, each has a father who encourages her tomboyishness rather than attempting to suppress it. Vada’s father (Dan Aykroyd) is portrayed as well meaning but incapable of raising her properly alone. The film suggests he has done a fine job to this point, but he does not know what to say about as she is going through puberty. Likewise, Roberta grew up with a father and three older brothers.

This familial structure suggests their tomboyism is acceptable because they have no female role models. It is suggested, at least in Vada’s case, that her tomboyism is because she doesn’t know how be a woman, rather than a conscious decision.

 

That the film begins with the introduction of an older woman to become Vada’s female role model/motherly influence suggests she couldn’t go on living this way without it.

Shelly is the epitome of femininity–she is a makeup artist, well-versed in fashion and romance. Vada sees Shelly as fascinating and exotic and allows her to take on a motherly role, showing her how to put it on lipstick and reassuring her boys will think she is pretty. In the next scene Vada, wearing full makeup, is trying to walk in an exaggerated impersonation of a movie star’s walk and posing for Thomas J. His next line, asking where her bike is, subtly suggests she will begin to abandon her tomboy qualities as she discovers femininity.

 

Both Thomas’s death and Shelly’s influence bring her to a point where, by the end of the film she has nearly abandoned her tomboyishness. At the film’s end, she shows up at her last writing class with her hair out its ponytail, having abandoned her t-shirt and jeans for a frilly dress. Yet she retains some of her old self, still riding bikes, even in her dress.

In contrast, Roberta receives no new mother figure or female role model and could be viewed as what Vada might have become with Shelly. The adult Roberta, though straight, is portrayed as a stereotypical lesbian, a doctor who wears masculine clothes, drinks beer, and plays softball.

 

Despite this, in the scene where Roberta finds the newspaper with her mother’s death notice in it, she remarks at how beautiful she was. Though she is usually portrayed as strong, this makes her cry and because she keeps repeating the comment, it seems as if she is yearning to be like her mother, but she does not know how to get there without her.

The film uses Chrissy (Ashleigh Aston Moore), Roberta’s childhood friend, as her “mother figure.” Chrissy is naïve and sheltered, to the point where most of what she says is clearly something parroted from her mother. She reminds Roberta to “be a lady” rather than fight and reminds her to “act like a girl” when she is splashing in the mud. In a sense, Chrissy’s mother, though not present in these scenes, is sort of a mother figure to Roberta.

Though best friends, Chrissy and Roberta seem to be opposites. While Roberta is a tomboy, Chrissy is the most stereotypically feminine in the group, easily scared and weak. In the future scenes, where Chrissy is having her baby, they are coupled, with Roberta taking on the husband role. While Chrissy’s actual husband only arrives to hold the baby after its born, Roberta drives her to the hospital and delivers the baby. After it is born, rather than sharing a look with her husband, Chrissy and Roberta are shown looking at each other mouthing “I love you.”

Furthermore, in both films, their first hint of romance is used to suggest a softening of their personalities and movement into a feminine disposition. Early on, Roberta is disgusted by the love quiz her friends are completing.

 

 

Her kiss with Scott Wormer plays on her need to question masculinity as he tells her she is good at basketball, not just for a girl but for a guy.  Though she threatens to beat him up after if he tells anyone about their kiss, it is revealed later that she has stopped taping her breasts as a result.

Likewise, Vada has a crush on her teacher, an impossible object with no real hope of a future. At the same time, she is disgusted by Shelly’s romance novels and doesn’t understand why people have sex and get married.

When she kisses Thomas J, it is approached as an experiment to see what it is like. Magical sounding music plays as they kiss, as if this kiss will result in a big moment where a spell is broken. Though nothing happens immediately afterward, the kiss marks a change as she is now able take him, someone her age, as a realistic love object.

 

His death soon after suggests that his function was merely to pull her out of her tomboyishness and introduce her to heterosexual romance. Indeed, only after Thomas J’s death is she able to make her first female friend. In this sense, the kiss could be seen as breaking a spell.

Though these films make no mention of links between tomboyism and lesbianism, as tomboy characters are given romantic subplots in films where more feminine characters are not; it is suggested that these romances are included as proof they are heterosexual.

Though Now and Then shows the adult Roberta as a fairly masculine woman, it reinforces her heterosexuality as she is referred to as “living in sin with her boyfriend.” Interestingly, this character was based on a real person who did grow up to be a lesbian, but all references to this were edited out at the last moment. This inadvertently serves to tell viewers that even the most masculine girl can grow up heterosexual.

As such, these tomboy characters emerge at the end of their respective films with more submissive feminine gender identities, the experience of their first love, and close female friends or role models. Due to this, the young girl viewer is meant to assume they fit comfortably into society and are no longer outsiders or ostracized. As such, she is give the message that she too, can only grow up straight and feminine.

Hopefully she realizes it is in her power to question it.

 

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Elizabeth Kiy has a degree in journalism with a minor in film from Carleton University. She lives in Toronto, Ontario and is currently working on a novel.