I almost did not read the graphic novel, Tomboy: A Graphic Memoir. I had seen it on lists, at the library, and other places. But it never said, “Read me.” Then one day I was looking at my library’s online catalog of titles to request a book. When I clicked “place hold” and it was complete, a list of suggested books appeared to read while waiting for the request you put in. One was Tomboy. I figured that if I had been getting signs saying it was a book I would put on a TBR list one day, then this meant (as it was available that day) today was the day to start reading.
Of course, I had a preconceived idea of what was going to happen due to the classic bathroom sign for ladies with a “Women’s” body with an ambiguous looking head on top that was the cover. I figured it was either going to be a book about a girl who is a tomboy and then transform into a more girly figure, like girls “should” look. Or they would be transgender and were really male. I guess the binary system is pretty well ingrained in my brain from when I was a kid and gender norms were pretty solidly presented to society. They were what you should do and deviations were unacceptable. Therefore, though I know things are not so black and white, I was still assuming of course a book I was reading would only have one of two possibilities. And when Liz Prince was a kid, things were pretty much the same. Boys were boys, girls were girls. And boys didn’t like girls who looked and acted like boys. And Liz was a girl who looked and acted like a boy.
But Liz knew those “rules” did not fit her. And though she would eventually wear the “tomboy” label proudly, or at least her particular style of being not only herself but a woman, her journey is anything but easy before that acceptance. Prince uses humorous and serious commentary to create a memoir of a girl (herself) learning that you might be a tomboy (whatever that means), but you are still 1000% a girl (and woman) because who is to say “what” makes a girl? There are just different ways to be female.