Naive’s Guide To Everything in the World

Tomboy

A tomboy is not a boy but a girl who looks like a boy but is still (technically) a girl. Tomboys are identified by their short hair, preference for jeans instead of sundresses, copious sailor-related tattoos and their oversized Adam’s Apples. Unlike women, tomboys engage in such un-ladylike behavior as cursing profusely, smoking stogies, betting on horses, building shelves and NOT collecting flowers. So how do you know it’s a girl when you spot them? You can’t. You just have to take your chances and hope that the boy you’re talking to in boyish tones or playing jacks with isn’t really a girl. Unsurprisingly, tomboys are the source of much confusion, sexually and comically, throughout history. The first tomboy was St. Thomas Aquinus — whereforth the “tom” — who was really a woman but who resembled a wildly religious man. The truth was not discovered till after she achieved sainthood, much to the consternation of the clergymen, who back then hated women. Thomasina, as was her real name, paved the way for such famous historical tomboys as George Eliot, King Charlemagne, Jack the Ripper, Ernest Shackleton, Carol Channing and Paul Giamatti. No one knows what makes a girl turn tomboy, but it’s likely hereditary or transferred via shared needles, and it’s treatable only by murder. Do not fall in love with a tomboy or it will be your last; they hate being loved and possess an awful, deathly temper that usually results in vital organs being slowly torn out.  My own dear sister was once a tomboy. I myself spent the bulk of my childhood convinced I had a brother. I also believed myself to be a girl since my mother, who never could figure out what clothes went with which gender, thought I should wear skirts and pigtails, as well as titter and demure. There is no male counterpart to the tomboy. Males are always men. – Matty Fatty