Saying Goodbye to the Tomboy
The disappearance of this gender trope means progress for identity and labels — but is there anything we stand to lose?
When I was in fifth grade, I wrote a fan letter to Alex Mack. Perhaps only ’90s kids will remember exactly who that is. She was the protagonist of Nickelodeon’s The Secret World of Alex Mack, a show about a preteen (played by Larisa Oleynik) who — after being doused with a top-secret chemical called GC-161 — could move things with her mind, shoot electricity from her fingertips, and morph into an iridescent puddle of water.
All I wanted at age 11 was to be her.
But it wasn’t just the puddle powers. (Who even knows what the long-term effects of GC-161 were.) If I couldn’t be Alex Mack, I would’ve taken smart girl Clarissa Darling from Clarissa Explains It All, or maybe eternally curious Harriet M. Welsch from Harriet the Spy, or flannel-wearing Tai Frasier from Clueless (you know, pre-makeover). I would have worn baggy soccer jerseys and sports bras like Jess and Jules from 2002’s Bend It Like Beckham; played guitar like Josie from Josie and the Pussycats; shared dark secrets like Christina Ricci and Anna Chlumsky did in Gold Diggers. To me, these girls represented freedom.
