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Why girls should be tomboys Not all male characteristics are toxic

Jo March, a literary tomboy. Credit: Little Women

Jo March, a literary tomboy. Credit: Little Women


September 23, 2024   6 mins

In my late teens, I went from being very girly to very boyish. After being intensely feminine during high school — skirts, makeup, boy band crushes — I adopted a new identity. I was a tomboy. My hair was buzzed off. I wore baggy jeans and joined a boxing club. Weekends were spent with a group of risk-taking guys, “toxic males”, who would mountain bike and waterski, party all night long, and then keep partying all day long. We listened to punk music. We’d challenge each other to new feats of daring on BMX jumps, or mountain bike downhills, or jumping off a bridge into the lake below. We’d applaud each other when we’d pull-off a great stunt, but cheer even louder when one of us would fail. We lived for ridicule. Somehow no one ever got hurt, not in body and certainly not in feelings.

Looking back, there are a number of reasons why my identity transitioned so abruptly to that of a tomboy. The wildness of the guys was different from that of the girls: the risks they took were ones of daring and skill. The girls took risks with emotion and intimacy (being sexually intimate was an emotional risk). For another, the manly virtues were powerful: courage and valour and strength. I admired them, and I coveted them. I wanted to test myself, to prove my worth. More than anything I wanted others to see these qualities within me and to respect me for them. Femininity was disenchanting, with little to offer. While I was out on the mountain trails with the guys, testing and challenging my strength, the girls would be lazing on a lake dock, reading magazines, painting nails. Girliness was boring.

But there was another force at work, deeper and less comfortable to name. Being boyish was an escape from the anxiety of being a woman. It is one thing to jump off a 40-foot bridge into swirling water, quite another entirely to grapple with the pressures of being a young woman. I resented male sexual attention. It was exhausting, that constant awareness of male hunger. I wanted to be free from that background buzzing.

Instead, I was privy to their locker room talk. They would often tease each other about whom they had bedded the night before and laugh about the way the girl would wake up hoping for more commitment, more connection, more promises of care. Though I see only now that the guys were also afraid of the risks involved in love. Their mockery often concealed a lurking fear and resentment of their own need for female affection, a threat to their independence and autonomy. But I had a secret terror of becoming one of these girls, of being treated casually, of feeling unvalued. There are differences in how young women and young men respond to the risks of intimacy. As a woman, I was afraid that I might become callous and disillusioned, or wounded and hurt. The promises of the sexual revolution that offered freedoms and pleasures without guilt held little appeal for me. It wasn’t guilt I wanted to avoid, it was the self-protective cynicism that disappointments often lead to. I wanted to avoid the sexual marketplace altogether. Shedding my femininity was the easiest way to do this.

But it wasn’t just because of the influence of men that I became a tomboy. Women, too, in ways that are subtle, judge other women, especially pretty ones, with preconceived notions that I was keen to avoid. Young pretty women are sometimes seen as superficial, as dumb, as less serious than a type of woman who covers up her attractiveness by appearing to not care about her looks. Young women often earn social points with other women for having a type of look that loudly says, “I’m not vain, and not pandering to socially constructed expectations of beauty.” Baggy clothes become a sign of ethical enlightenment. Not wearing make-up a signal that one has inner beauty. That this style is itself carefully cultivated, an exercise of moral vanity, often seems to be lost on young woman. Cutting off my hair as a young woman was taking this aesthetic one step further. It was a decisive striking out against the femininity of my teenage years and a clear signal to those around me that I was not to be confined by gender expectations. (It was the late Nineties. I shudder to think of what I may have been tempted to cut off were I to be in my late-teens now.)

At any rate, it worked. Immediately I was taken more seriously by my professors, by my friends, by guys and by girls. I was seen as tough and as independent. And the more I was seen as tough and independent, the more I became tough and independent. We tend to become the person we pretend to be.

“It is important to man-up in life, even if you’re a girl.”

There were three aspects to the change in my appearance that seem to be absent from today’s discourse on young women and gender, all of them related. The first was that I had a deep and genuine affection for men and for masculinity. I had no interest in correcting their “toxic” attitudes and humour. I had no desire to domestic their behaviours. I adored their swagger. I loved their courage. I delighted in their jokes, their irreverence, their ridicule. The second is that virginity was a concept that had not yet been entirely corrupted by the accusation that “The Patriarchy” employed it as a weapon to keep women controlled and confined. And the last was that though I wanted to push against convention, this push was aimed at enlarging what it meant to be a woman rather than what it meant to be merely “gendered”.

I am often surprised, and troubled, now by how quickly a young woman will abandon being a woman because she isn’t at home in the stereotypical idea of femaleness. That rather than redefine the female stereotype, she jettisons her female gender. What makes her dislike it so much, I wonder? The added irony is that when she becomes a “he” or “they”, as we often see today, he/they does so without any genuine affection for masculinity. That is, rather than challenge the feminine stereotypes she clearly doesn’t fit, he/they becomes a boy who isn’t, often, at all masculine. He/they appropriates the concept of maleness into herself (himself, themself), making it safe rather than wild and scary and foreign and fun.

I am sympathetic to the young women I see today who seem to want to escape the burden of being a woman by becoming some form of nonbinary. It may feel like it offers freedom from the confines of a girlish stereotype, frees one from social expectations, and, importantly, from sexual pressures. Identifying in ways that cut against the norms of gender is often seen as a kind of power move, a way to position oneself so that others take one seriously as an individual. It answers to our desire for uniqueness and self-expression. But as it does so, it often forms a young woman into a new stereotypical type, while cementing the idea that femaleness is merely girly, an idea that feminism once worked hard to break.

I remained a virgin into my early twenties. This allowed me to not only slowly grow into my skin as a woman, but also gave me the independence from gender I was so keen to embrace. But once we label virginity as a form of male dominance, a remnant of a more repressive sexual era, one in which men controlled women’s sexual experiences in an effort to eliminate their own anxieties around female sexuality, it makes it much harder for a young woman to remain a virgin while being an oppression-fighting ethical person. (And why would men be so keen on keeping women virgins, exactly, we might ask? Isn’t it possible that men might be the primary beneficiaries of sexually available women?), In an effort to express their sexual freedom – a moral imperative – young women may feel internal pressure to have sex in order to be unrestricted from traditional sexual mores.

Being a tomboy freed me from the anxieties of sexual relations. I was able to indulge in my deep affection for males without the demands of being on the sexual marketplace. And I won respect and admiration from others I desired by succeeding in masculine pursuits. I was able to do this because, not in spite of the fact, that I remained solidly and joyfully a female. I was granted respect from the guys I spent the summer months with not because I was seen as their equal and certainly not because I demanded that they respect my “inner-truth”, but because I was a girl doing the same things they were — and sometimes even doing them pretty well. That I was a girl doing tough-guy things made me even more admirable. I didn’t have to persuade anyone to respect me by ideologically brow-beating them.

I am now a grown woman with teenage daughters of my own. I grew out of my tomboy phase but the toughness and the confidence I developed have stayed. Though often deemed as toxic, this strength helped me to deal with a painful intimate relationship when it eventually occurred. (The poetic irony of the human condition is that we often run headlong into the thing we are keenest to avoid.) The risks of the sexual marketplace are very real, and the power of a man to manipulate and wound a woman something that recent feminism has been right to emphasise. But this should not be at the expense of colouring over women’s affection for men with resentment towards them. It is this affection for manliness that I want to instill in my daughters, an affection that grows into their own identities. It is important to man-up in life, even if you’re a girl.


Marilyn Simon is a Shakespeare scholar and university instructor. She writes the substack Submission


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Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
22 days ago

This is a really great essay. The author pinpoints precisely the emotions and psychology which causes young women to hold back from embracing their femininity until they’re ready to do so – as the vast majority will, given the vital breathing space and without the pressures now being exerted upon them to take steps which they’ll later regret.
Being allowed to mature at your own pace is something which seems far more difficult to navigate now, and this applies to both males and females. She clearly has a very healthy view of the opposite sex, which again is something the “toxic male” crowd would do well to learn about. As per the current idiom, they should read this article and Learn More.

William Shaw
William Shaw
21 days ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

She mentions men trying to control female sexuality.
What she doesn’t mention is that women also try to control female sexuality.
Men seek to control female sexuality because a man wants to know he is the father of her child.
Women seek to control female sexuality because promiscuous women undermine their sexual value and create a race to the bottom in the dating marketplace.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
16 days ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

Extremely powerful writing! I am sending this on to the school counsellor where I work!

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
22 days ago

Isn’t it time there was a discussion about misandry in all the talk about toxicity? Just asking though, really, I don’t care one way or another.

David Morley
David Morley
21 days ago
Reply to  Jerry Carroll

Yes, there absolutely should. And surely Unherd is just the place for it.

William Shaw
William Shaw
21 days ago
Reply to  Jerry Carroll

If they ever organize, 18 year old men with nothing to lose who have been told by society they are toxic and unnecessary are a civilization destroying force. Women beware if the anger and resentment of disenfranchised young men is ever unleashed.

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
21 days ago
Reply to  Jerry Carroll

You mean like this: “Not all male behaviours are toxic”.

Yah, pretty sick of it too.

Deb Grant
Deb Grant
9 days ago
Reply to  Bret Larson

It might help if fathers stuck around and presented their sons with good male role models.

When the pendulum swings too far one way, it swings back the other way. Hopefully we’ll achieve a balance sometime soon.

I loathe the phrase toxic masculinity, but the effects of testosterone on male sexuality and risk taking should be taught.

In the meantime, outing the likes of Weinstein, Fayed, and the powerful predators has to be done in reparation. My worry is how the plain boys find out whether a person they’re attracted to is interested without being accused of sexual abuse – because unattractive men are always the ones accused.

Brett H
Brett H
22 days ago

Very nice work. Keep it up Marilyn.

Essais Online
Essais Online
22 days ago

Thank you. A relative few, I think, among many guys do ‘tough-guy things’ for validation. Perhaps it’s because the tough-guys are the ones who elbow and push to stand out front that these few seem to predominate the male masses. It is indeed unfortunate that ‘male hunger’ (well put) strikes the innocent so early at puberty, and many never un-learn the behaviour it compels. For me, I saw difficult, physical activities at that time as personal challenges, and indeed practice, to tune and coordinate the ultimate instrument, my body, in which I resided. It was not about being a ‘tough-guy’, although I saw such competitions in others, of course. Girls I knew who were active runners, gymnasts, skiers, and climbers seemed to have similar goals, and they still stand out in my memories. I admired them for their more elegant and agile motions. Eventually, when the season arrived, I married just such an elegant form.
If time and society would allow, girls and boys might be better to recognize a more comprehensive path to becoming men and women before jumping onto that path while ignorant of its responsibilities. But how is this done?
Your article helps, I must say, by illustrating farther along the path than just its beginning.

Trevor Q
Trevor Q
21 days ago

Good for you.

David Morley
David Morley
21 days ago

Or perhaps like many girls at that age you were simply struggling with the move from girlhood to womanhood.

And let’s be honest, being a woman is far less restrictive than it used to be. Women run, they kayak, they mountain bike, they wild swim, they jump off bridges etc. none of this is now seen as a male preserve and no man is put off by it.

David Morley
David Morley
21 days ago

That rather than redefine the female stereotype, she jettisons her female gender. 

The thing is that this has already largely happened. Female stereotypes went through an enormous loosening which allowed women to do precisely the things the author describes. Indeed, she was clearly part of that process. Arguably male stereotypes remain more restrictive. And yet many women still don’t appear to be happy.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
21 days ago
Reply to  David Morley

Sadly, thanks to gender ideology, I think stereotypes for men and women are alive and well.

David Morley
David Morley
21 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

In a perverse way perhaps – but I don’t think biological women feel any pressure to emulate the more stereotypical behaviour of trans women.

And trans women gravitate towards stereotypes of women precisely because their femininity is fragile and they are actively rejecting a maleness they don’t want, but cannot fully escape.

steve hay
steve hay
21 days ago

Go Marilyn
in my country we call it going your own way. You apparently were able to be respected as an equal by the males concerned. Encourage your daughters to do the same,
steve_au

Graham Cunningham
Graham Cunningham
21 days ago

I found this a fascinating personal tour through the sexual confusions of adolescence. But I feel it also served to obscure certain hard truths about nature’s huge inequalities in the ‘sexual marketplace’. 1) most girls would (if only they had the choice) far rather be the pretty one than the ‘interesting’ one and 2) not all boys are confident and daring (perhaps not many in fact) but they would – again if only their nature had given them the choice – far rather have been that way than the sensitve nerdy kind they actually were. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-less-desired

Brett H
Brett H
21 days ago

That’s very black and white. “pretty” or “interesting”, “Confident and daring” or “sensitive nerdy”. Surely there’s a huge swathe of females and males in between, presumably including yourself.

Graham Cunningham
Graham Cunningham
21 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

Well yes of course….it’s a ‘more-less’ spectrum like most things are. I don’t see how that has much bearing on the point I was making which is that where one is on the spectrum is a very big deal in terms of one’s experience in the ‘sexual marketplace’. The vast majority of journalism on sexual relations tends to be oblivious to it though…. and tends to stereotype both the the male experience and the female experience.

Brett H
Brett H
21 days ago

Sure, whatever you say.

Konstantinos Stavropoulos
Konstantinos Stavropoulos
21 days ago

Thank you for being a beautiful, real and spirited woman..!

I mark the comment you wrote in parenthesis..:
(The poetic irony of the human condition is that we often run headlong into the thing we are keenest to avoid.)

John Tyler
John Tyler
21 days ago

Obviously, as a man I am in no position to comment on the ins and outs of the female perspective. I can say, however, that I never much fancied girlie girls. I’ve always found personality, talent and lovingkindness (to use an old word) as attractive as physical aspects. Too much self obsession and vanity I find off-putting in both sexes. I also find locker-room masculinity most unappealing.

David Morley
David Morley
21 days ago
Reply to  John Tyler

I think that goes for a lot of men. And if you are an active type yourself you’ll be looking for someone who is active too. Nobody really wants a living doll obsessed with handbags and makeup and getting Botox injections. Unless you’re the kind of man who just wants to show off an expensive woman in the same way as you’d show off an expensive car.

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
21 days ago

Girliness was boring.”
It wasn’t just boring, it was a language that I felt like I should be able to speak naturally, but never could (and still can’t). It took me until my mid- to late-30s to stop caring about/feeling bad about the lack of this talent.
“I wanted to avoid the sexual marketplace altogether.  Shedding my femininity was the easiest way to do this.”
I can absolutely relate to this. It was partly because of fear (of physical intimacy, of becoming an object, of being hurt, just the general messiness of it etc.), but also because not being typically feminine (I never had to “shed” anything as I was never super-feminine or girly anyway) seemed to be the best way of ensuring that you got on in life.
Since work was a very male place (or at least it was in the country and profession I spent my young adult years in) then part of my success strategy had to be the reduction of anything about me that might cause me to become an object of desire rather than someone who was there to get work done and be adequately rewarded. Getting pulled onto that territory of desire wasn’t something you were in control of (men were), so it was about risk management.
The things the author is writing about are the story of my life – feeling very much like a woman, but struggling with the fact that I don’t match up to traditional female stereotypes, like the company of men, and have spent most of my working life trying to make my way in very male industries (I just seem to end up in them).
At times it is not at all clear where the boundary is between just being a different type of woman and trying to be “like a man”.
Is the mode of behaviour I’m engaging in actually “me”, or am I just imitating the guys so I can relate to them better in the hope of getting on better at work? Does it bother me that people have said (in a pitying tone of voice, like it’s an affliction) that the first thing they noticed about me is the general toughness – or is that just how I am?
These questions come back to again and again in my own writing as I never feel I have it all worked out. I can tell the author is on the same sort of wavelength.

C Yonge
C Yonge
21 days ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

Thanks for this. Very honest and revealing. The great thing about your comment is that we know, based on your comments over time on various articles, that you are not someone trying to virtue signal or overly captured by a woke ideology.

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
21 days ago
Reply to  C Yonge

Thanks. No – I’m just trying to “be”!

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
21 days ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

You’re succeeding, and there’s a real appreciation of it, as per the comment by C Yonge. I also have no doubt that your intellect may have been slightly intimidating to at least some of your male work colleagues. That’s the sort of thing that really sorts out the men from the boys, whatever their physical attributes!

Jonathan Andrews
Jonathan Andrews
21 days ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

Thank you for your openness and clear writing. I do not doubt your experiences but

“Getting pulled onto that territory of desire wasn’t something you were in control of (men were), so it was about risk management.”

Risk management, I understand, women must do all they can to protect themselves from the worst of men who are extremely dangerous. Moreover, I understand, it’s impossible to determine which of us are cruel and harmful.

However, those if us who are neither cruel or dangerous do not feel we have the slightest control. We hope that someone we like, will respond. If they don’t then we leave them alone and hope someone else will come along.

I believe most men are decent and would not harm a woman but, amongst us, there’s no doubt that women are (rightly) in control.

Deb Grant
Deb Grant
9 days ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

I can relate to that.

mac mahmood
mac mahmood
21 days ago

Tomboys are nothing new, pontificating about tomboyishness may be. I have seen more tough girls with long hair, than ones with short.

Daniel Lee
Daniel Lee
21 days ago

What a wonderful essay.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
21 days ago

Tomboys are great. At a young age, many girls are physically on par with or ahead of boys, and make wonderful teammates in sporting activities. A lot of them grow into the most feminine women one can imagine but they remain unafraid of getting dirty or sweaty, climbing trees, etc.

blue 0
blue 0
21 days ago

As a lady who was a tomboy growing up in the 70’s, I really enjoyed this piece. I too had all the same feelings. I ended up becoming a very tough minded, tender hearted individual. I appreciate masculine men and usually to this day enjoy the company of men.

Nancy Kmaxim
Nancy Kmaxim
21 days ago

Young people need permission to say “no thank you “ to risky experiences and situations they’re not ready to navigate. The idea that there’s a cultural norm that dictates surrendering your person against your will to be socially acceptable is quite repugnant. I often wonder where the adults in the room are hiding.

Nicholas Taylor
Nicholas Taylor
21 days ago

Who decides what a woman should be? Spartans and bearded theocrats, Shakespeareans and Bloomsbury artists would have very different ideas. What do any of them know? That’s even before we get into manufactured identity fads.

Deb Grant
Deb Grant
9 days ago

Aren’t those all men?

Jonathan Andrews
Jonathan Andrews
21 days ago

I greatly enjoyed your article. You write very eloquently about the difficulties and fears of a teenage girl but doing so with empathy and affection for boys.
I can’t imagine how it is to be a young woman being aware of her sexuality in adolescence and how scary “that constant awareness of male [sexual] hunger”. I can certainly guess that this is intimidating. But two things occur to me.
Firstly, the boys welcomed you as a friend and an equal. This, I think is much due to your personality and that you liked the boys for themselves but also because boys like girls to be their friends.
Secondly, imagine what it’s like living with that hunger and, quite rightly, the only possibility of easing that is with a girl who chooses you. Of course, disgusting men exist who force themselves on women but, for nearly all of us, that is not what we want. The joy is when she is as keen as you. The power lies very squarely with one sex.
The sexual hunger is constant and powerful and, while certainly no excuse or reason for harming someone, it is very real and urgent, Admittedly, by the age of fifty or so, it eases off a little but I don’t think that women understand how significant a part of our life it is. They don’t realise quite how distracting it is and how it can lead you to the most foolish things.
Forgive me, I hope this doesn’t seem like I’m picking holes in your wonderful writing and, perhaps, because you have produced something so interesting that I feel emboldened to respond.

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
21 days ago

Not sure how to break this to you but riding a bmx and jumping off stuff isn’t male behaviour. I mean it might be, sometimes. And a lot of other times it’s not going along with whatever idjit is doing a hold my beer.

And you probably get stronger from not going along with the group behaviour.

J Dunne
J Dunne
20 days ago

This article (excellent by the way) takes me back to a time when you used to encounter a few women who were happier amongst a group of male friends, and it was a healthy and happy situation.

Women who went to football matches are a good example. They interacted with men on men’s terms, happy to be ‘one of the lads’. They didn’t judge and preach and expect men to conform to their sensibilities, and the men respected them for it and were happy to have them around.

Nowadays we seem to have a situation where women go into a traditionallly male environment and see it as their duty to correct men’s behaviour and express their shock and disgust that men aren’t prepared to act like women.

I wish the latter category of women would #&@! off and just leave men to be themselves.

Jane Awdry
Jane Awdry
20 days ago

As a child of the 60s /70s I felt as if my generation had done the smashing gender stereotypes thing. I was part of a group of young teen girls who called ourselves ‘tomboys’. We didn’t necessarily hang out with that many boys, but we did the sorts of things that boys supposedly did, like climbing trees, wearing jeans & jumpers and being good at sports. At the same time men – especially pop stars – were happily embracing long hair, elaborate colourful outfits, nail varnish & make up. We never thought of them as ‘girly’ and had mad crushes on them. Some may have been gay, many were not. The key thing is that their masculinity was never in doubt. The idea was to be flamboyant and fun and not to be constricted by what was socially accepted as either ‘male’ or ‘female’ presentation. We could all incorporate aspects of both and all be gender non-conforming together.. There’s a great song in the musical ‘Hair’ called ‘My Conviction’ which is sung by a young man lamenting the fact that in the 20th Century women were the ones who wore ‘fine feathers’ while men languished in ‘drab camouflage’, all the while dying to don the ‘gaudy plumage that is the birthright of his sex’ and reminding us that in the rest of the animal kingdom, it’s the male that has the magnificent colours, fur or feathers necessary to attract the attention of the often more drab & unassuming female.
What was different in those times is that there wasn’t a movement to try to convince everyone that being gender non-conforming meant pretending that you had actually become the other sex. And that by so doing you had to re-embrace the stereotype of that sex. But here we are, in the twisted, grotesque & regressive age of ‘trans’. The damage it’s doing to young women is immense and immeasurable and as middle-aged men claim to be women, they embed the very stereotypes that some of us believed – hoped – had been swept away. As well as erasing the very notion of what a woman is.
Now is an even more terrifying time to be a young girl than ever before as ‘male hunger’ for women becomes male hunger to be women.

Fafa Fafa
Fafa Fafa
19 days ago

Not “all” male characteristics are toxic? I read the entire article, but I still don’t know which ones the author believes are.

Liam F
Liam F
19 days ago

Great article. thank you.

Jane Fantom
Jane Fantom
16 days ago

This brilliant essay makes perfect sense of my experiences as a lifelong tomboy. I was actively encouraged by my parents and older brother to participate in what could be viewed as male activities involving a degree of risk alongside males both as a small child and as a teenager competing with young men in racing cycling at a time in the 70s when few women raced.I grew up with a strong sense of self and developed my own particular brand of femininity.As such I never questioned my place as an equal.There was no gender pressure to “become”a boy and no toxic behaviour from male peers though some were confused about what I represented and subjected me to merciless teasing.   In a sense I inhabited two worlds both within and outside sport.Outside of it I struggled to “fit in” with groups of young women who were pre occupied with boys and make up.There was enormous peer pressure to have sex as early as possible in the outside world as a “rite of passage”but positive relationships with male friends in the cycling world provided balance and support.I now see men and women compete with each other emotionally in a destructive way along with confusion about gender identity and roles.There is a climate of hatred out there( both misogyny and increasingly misandry) I am concerned about how young women cope with these pressures in their struggle to negotiate their place in the world as equals whilst establishing their femininity in the true sense of the word as strong individuals with clear sexual boundaries.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
16 days ago

Loved this! I too was a tomboy and I loved doing the things that boys did, still do. The male role models I had were former soldiers and I was fascinated by their stories. Showing no fear when taking risks was generally a male trait back in the 70’s and 80’s and something I admired. I’m not a female mysogynist as my millenial daughter calls me on occasion, but a woman who sees the strength in men and admires their sacrifices. Thanks for writing this article.

Deb Grant
Deb Grant
9 days ago

I did it the other way round. I was a tomboy who hung out with the boys pre-puberty. I rightly thought that boys and men had all the fun back then. I often said that I wished I was a boy. I dread to think what could’ve been suggested to me in the present climate.

Hormones changed all that, and I’ve never been confused about my sexuality – but thank goodness my father explained to me about the male libido! I used to ditch the bad boys before I got hurt.

However, like many tomboys, I did turn out to be a career girl – something unplanned until I actually started work in an excellent company. I still enjoyed the company of platonic men friends, and my ease around men probably helped me in my male dominated earlier career.