When I was a kid (whenever I refer to my childhood, I always refer to myself as a 'kid', never as a 'girl' because that doesn't seem like 'me'), I lived in sunny South Africa… a country of 8-month-long sunny seasons in which every other family has a swimming pool in their back garden. My best friend, who lived just two houses away from me, had a pool and my brother & I would often go round her place during those long summer afternoons for a bit of a swim. Also, my parents would take us out most weekends for a braai (barbeque) in some lovely picturesque spot where swimming would usually form part of the day's activities.
Throughout my childhood, I was what might be considered a 'tomboy'. But the difference is: most 'tomboys' grow out of being a tomboy and grow into being a woman, but I never did. I've never been comfortable with being in a female body. Can you still be a 'tomboy' when you're 40? Or is it time to accept that this isn't just a phase you're going through, but it's who you really are?
As a kid, I loved going out swimming… in fact, I loved everything about the great outdoors. My elder brother and I used to go 'adventuring' in the African bushveld that surrounded our home, making 'forts' out of remains of old buildings; imagining that dinosaurs had left footprints in the volcanic rock formations in our local veld; climbing trees; fishing for tadpoles; making water features in our garden; finding and playing with bugs in our rockery; playing rugby (if we didn't have a ball, we'd use an old 2-litre Coke bottle with a bit of water in it to give it some spin); arm-wrestling; riding our bicycles; play-fighting in slow motion whilst pretending to be the 'Six Million Dollar Man'; and if the weather was bad we'd stay indoors and play with his Scalextric set, or play Top Trumps with fighter jets & Formula 1 cars. Or if I wanted a bit of space, I'd simply sit and paint in my room.
So at this point, are you wondering whether I participated in all of these activities because I had an overbearing older brother who would strongarm his long-suffering little sister into them?
If that's what you think, you couldn't be more wrong.
I love my brother and have always looked up to him, but he has no backbone and he couldn't strongarm me into anything if he tried. If I'd ever fancied playing 'girly' games, I could easily have just gone round to my friend's house and played with her. But I didn't want to do anything 'girly'; I wanted to do all the 'boyish' things I did with my brother. I loved our rough-and-tumble play and I feel very fortunate that my brother was welcoming and accepting of my enjoyment of his games. Especially considering the fact that we were kids in the 1970s, a very sexist decade in which 'boys' and 'girls' were expected to follow strictly demarcated gender roles.
The truth is that my brother and I played together, co-operatively, with neither one of us dominating our play sessions. Now that I come to think about it, it was quite an ace early childhood really, especially compared to the way many kids are wrapped in cotton wool today.
Anyway, back to swimming. When I was about 5 years old I had two swimming costumes: a one-piece costume that my mother had bought for me, and a two-piece bikini that my friend's mother made for me on her sewing machine, to match the one she'd made for her daughter. Oh, but with one subtle difference: my friend's bikini was in her favourite colour of pink, and mine was in my favourite colour… blue. I loved blue clothes as a child - I was mad about the colour and everything I wore had to be blue. My favourite dress was dark blue with a picture of a 1920s car on the front. Apart from the fact it was a dress, it was perfect!
I loved that bikini. Can you guess why?
I loved it because as soon as my parents were distracted with their grown-up conversations around the braai, I could discard the bikini top and run around with just the bottoms on. Just like any other boy. It was great! I loved running around topless in the African sunshine; it felt like the most natural thing in the world. Indeed, I would often spend my summer afternoons, barefoot and wearing just a pair of boyish shorts, playing topless in the garden. And although my parents would make the odd comment to me that it's not very 'ladylike' to run around topless, I ignored them and carried on regardless for as long as I was able. I understood from their words that I was expected to behave in a 'ladylike' fashion; I just didn't identify with being ladylike. It didn't seem relevant or applicable to me.
So I had a lovely, carefree, topless early childhood… until that horrible day, when I was about 7 years old, when my parents noticed that my breasts had started to grow. Just the tiniest beestings, mind you, but the dairy section had definitely started to bud.
On that day, my mother told me that I would have to wear a top from now on, and would never be allowed to run around topless again.
I was devastated.
It was so unfair!
Why was I being forced to be different from my brother, when I feel the same as him?
Why wasn't I allowed to be myself any more?
Why did I suddenly have to start pretending to be a girl, when I knew deep-down that I wasn't one?
I was forced to fit into a different mould. I felt like a square peg being hammered into a round hole.
So I started wearing a bikini top or a t-shirt at all times, in spite of my (then) pathetically small beestings… and for the first time in my life, I started feeling desperately uncomfortable with my body. Young children are fairly androgynous, and as long as they're raised by fairly open-minded parents their sense of identity can flow organically so that they can demonstrate who they truly are. But puberty doesn't care who you want to be. It changes your body the way it wants to change it, regardless of what you might prefer. My body was doing things I did not want it to do. It was becoming girly, even though I was not.
Damn you, hormones!
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