I Was a Tomboy in the 70's...

No one ever asked me if I felt like I was born in "the wrong body"

Last month, Stephanie’s story, “I Was a Girl Who Wanted to Be a Boy,” struck a chord with many of our readers who, like Stephanie, had identified as a “tomboy” growing up. We loved hearing from you!

It felt like we were onto something, so we launched our first Restore Childhood open call for submissions ~ info here: Calling All “Tomboys!” ~ June 30 deadline approaching ~ keep sending us your stories!

Today we’re sharing our first selected submission from Lea Munoz-Steele, a bilingual-certified, award-winning teacher and youth sports coach from Fowler, California. Her previous piece was A Life Saved in the Classroom.

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These are my valley champions this year. Imagine if biological males had identified as female and stolen their trophies? They are why I write.  (Lea in center in baseball cap)

Last fall, my husband and I settled in to watch another season of Survivor. They were interviewing a cast member, a gay man married to a transgender-male-born-a- biological female.

Together they had gotten pregnant and given birth to two biological children. 

The gay man was talking about how “manly” his spouse was; emphasizing how he liked to exercise and describing him as the outdoorsy type. Someone who liked to go camping and fishing with their children. 

After silently trying to do the mental gymnastics of what we had just watched, I turned to my husband and asked, “how long have you known you were gay?”

We both started laughing, because this castmate on Survivor had just described what it was like being married to a tomboy like me. 

Born in the 70’s and growing up in Southern California, I was raised during a time of a cultural shift; when society was getting used to the idea that girls can be whatever they wanted to be. Adults were beginning to understand the concept of gender stereotypes, and I was not your “stereotypical” girl. 

As a kid, I was perpetually outside, my Toughskins covered in grass stains. Vans shoes had just taken off, and I wore my Authentics everywhere. I much preferred the company of boys, gravitating to the games they were playing, and by the time I was seven or eight, my mother had given up trying to coax me into pastels. 

I didn’t really mind dolls, dressing up in my mother’s party clothes, or wearing an Easter dress. I just preferred my jeans and tennis shoes.

I was a girl who didn’t like what most people in the 70’s considered “feminine.” 

I never felt pressured to be anything other than I was. No one ever asked me if I felt like I was born “in the wrong body.” My identity was not being questioned; the gender norms society had been placing on women were. And it was about time. 

But can we say the same of girls today?

What happened?

Today I teach eighth grade. These days when girls don’t like their developing bodies, they wonder if, perhaps, they should have been born male. When I share that a scant few fourteen year old girls in the history of the world liked her boobs at first, the relief is palpable.

Why haven’t we women communicated this to our girls? We absolutely must!

In a matter of a generation, we went from relaxing gender stereotypes to weaponizing them. 

Covid seemed to accelerate this phenomenon. But when corporations and mainstream media proclaim that feeling female is the same as being female, the only group that gets hurt, oddly enough, is females. 

I fully embrace my tomboy life and my female sex. They are not independent of each other. I never wanted to be a boy; I was simply jealous of them because they seemed to have so much more freedom than females their age. 

Today’s teenagers are jealous of us, 70’s tomboys…

We were free to be. We didn’t have to assign labels. We weren’t forced to allow biological males in female spaces. And the things we loved, like exercise and camping, weren’t described as “manly.”

Instead of adding value and meaning to kids’ lives, we have subtracted from them. We should be ashamed as a society that we have placed this burden on children when they face so much already. 

Let kids be kids. 

Let tomboys be tomboys. 

Let gay teens be gay (without questioning if they’re really meant to be the opposite sex). 

Restore the full messiness of childhood, where lives are neither defined nor labeled, but lived! 

Let their souls become as grubby as our 501s.

Childhood is imaginative and contrary and ethereal. They are supposed to figure it out as they go by living freely, without rigid definitions.

It is the only healthy way to bring up the next generation.