The War on Tomboys: How the Right & the Left are Threatening a Beloved American Archetype

In this thought-provoking episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins explore the growing threats to the tomboy archetype from both the political left and right. They discuss how the left's push for gender conformity through the trans movement is leading to the medicalization and erasure of tomboyish girls, while the right's embrace of a narrow, hyper-feminine ideal is alienating those who don't fit the mold. The couple also delves into the cultural roots of American tomboy femininity, contrasting it with the more prissy and fragile ideals found in Eastern European and Muslim cultures. Throughout the conversation, Malcolm and Simone highlight the value of strong, industrious women and the importance of preserving the tomboy spirit in the face of mounting pressures.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] So both the left and the right have in their own way declared war on tomboys. So the left has done this in the trans movement. So the trans movement says, if you are a girl, but you like a boy, like things like dressing like a boy and you like, you're not a tomboy.

You're a boy.

Good morning, y'all. Quick update on the house, because I've been pretty terrible about giving y'all these. This went viral on Twitter with the caption, This accent needs to be illegal, and women should be banned from doing manual labor like this. Lebanese women are literally perfect. And they're actually feminine, unlike estrogen deficient American women who hold the record for the highest testosterone levels in the world.

Malcolm Collins: Which is interesting because it shows that she doesn't seem to understand what testosterone does in women. They're there, the rate to which they are sexually interested.

It increases how prominent their cheekbones are. It decreases their weight. Pretty much everything that your average American man finds attractive in a woman. You're not like a guy, like [00:01:00] high cheekbones, get rid of those cheekbones.

I like a girl with a formless doughy face. But so this woman is explicitly arguing for a, Eastern European slash Muslim iteration of femininity, which is very different from the form of femininity, which is traditional within American culture.

Some people look down on me, but I don't give a rep. I stand there footed in my own front yard with a baby on my back.

Cause I'm

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: So we're doing the tomboy episode right now, right? And the tomboy apocalypse that our species is currently facing.

What? We'll talk about the tomboy apocalypse. Tomboy. So for people who don't know this term, it's a, it's an American term. It means a girl who is predisposed to acting like a guy and dressing like a guy. So in my generation, it's a [00:02:00] bit different from this generation because now most Tom girls have been depleted and we'll explain what happened there.

Tomboys. Tomboys. But in my generation, this would have been the girl with the, ponytail through the baseball cap, who was a little bit sporty. Yeah. The freckles from being out in the sun a little too much like hunting, like fishing playing outdoors a lot. And it was a little more masculine than other girls, like to wear when my thing, Oh God.

And I just drool over this when I see it, like my classic tomboy trope is when they go out And they would go swimming with us. There was one that I had a big crush on. , the board shorts was bikini. Oh, I did that.

Maybe you would have liked me. Oh, I would have. Oh, that was so cute. You did the board shorts cause the bikini, come on, that is peak hot. Tom girl was the, oh, and I've seen your body back then. You were pretty

Simone Collins: ripped. It was nice. No, I looked terrible. Like a linebacker sometimes. But

Malcolm Collins: as a linebacker and not like a tomboy, come on that is.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I would. Yeah. [00:03:00] To simply define tomboyism. It is for a young woman to show a higher than average number. of male gender dimorphic behavioral traits. So playing sports, being more physically active, being more physically aggressive, being more assertive, those were all tomboy traits and often more dressing like a boy.

So I had some friends when I was little who weren't actually that tomboyish in behavior, but they were often seen as a tomboy because they had older siblings that were all boys. So of course they were tomboyish. Male clothing as a hand me down kind of thing. So they came across as tomboys like in, in there's this picture of me with one of my friends on our first day of kindergarten, and she's wearing this like old pair of overalls.

She has her hair in a ponytail. It's got like a shirt and I'm wearing the frilliest dress you have ever seen. And we look completely mismatched. So I think that's something that also comes up to outfit choices and who's dressing you can influence whether or not you're perceived as a tomboy.

But what's this apocalypse or are we running out of [00:04:00] tomboys? I didn't think. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: yes. In a huge way. So both the left and the right have in their own way declared war on tomboys. So the left has done this in the trans movement. So the trans movement says, if you are a girl, but you like a boy, like things like dressing like a boy and you like, you're not a tomboy.

You're a boy. You're a girl. Your boy. Yeah. Yeah. Because they're gender essentialists, right? So they look at these girls who prefer, playing video games and doing boy like hobbies, their anime and stuff like that. And they go you're not a girl. You're a boy that explains why you like boy like things.

Simone Collins: Essentially. So people in especially certain circles of society are not being allowed.

Malcolm Collins: I don't know if you say allowed if you're talking about permanently chemically castrated, having their breasts removed surgically while they are preteens [00:05:00] and yeah, sorry, it's a bit more than allowed like they are Surgically mutilating tomboys because they do not gender conform to the left's binary gender ideology.

And if you're going to say here, nobody ever transitions because they were socially pressured to, this is just an obviously untrue statement. Otherwise, D transitioners wouldn't exist. Or I guess you could say all D transitioners or faking it. You can invalidate somebody's lived experience when it goes against your ideology, but you must affirm it.

If it goes along with your ideology, instead of admitting that maybe both sides are true, maybe there are real trans people, but there are also people who are socially pressured to transition when it.

wasn't the right decision for them. And what I can tell you is every young tomboy girl I have met. In the past, maybe five years or so has confided in me that they have [00:06:00] felt enormous social pressure to transition. And some have even reported incidences to me, of individuals calling them transphobic for presenting masculine traits, but not transitioning or not adopting. , male, gender pronouns. Or at least non binary gender pronouns.

And if you think I am. Exaggerating here are the comments under that random image of a tomboy. I found the very top one.

Is encouraging them to think of themselves as gender non-binary or trans and letting them know that they will receive social affirmation. If they do that.

Simone Collins: Doesn't this mean that I would be a really wonderful dystopian national leader? Because I just have so many diplomatic ways to word things.

Malcolm Collins: What do you mean by that?

Simone Collins: That I, I don't say things like that. I'm just like they're not allowed to be tomboys.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah allow, what a pleasant way to say that they underwent surgery, that there is no, [00:07:00] because this is one of the things that's often talked about in the trans community is that it's quite easy or not quite easy, but much easier for male to female trans individuals to do transition than female to male people to D transition.

And then it's often not told to female to male transitioners how difficult it is to de transition. Especially if you, this is especially the case if you've under, only undergone chemical transition instead of surgical transition. Because a lot of this stuff is framed as being completely temporary.

And this is, this has actually been seen in some of the recent stuff that's come out, but it's not just the left that's creating this phenomenon. And I wanna call out right anti tomboy because anti

Simone Collins: tomboy.

Malcolm Collins: Interesting. Our boys are gonna need to date spunky young girls who like boyish stuff.

I would be so excited, but I don't know where they're gonna find tomboys anymore. But I'm gonna play a video right now that's from one of my. long term favorite YouTubers who I have reached out to multiple times. It's never gotten back to me. I guess I wasn't famous enough yet [00:08:00] or something like that.

Maybe eventually, but a short fat Otaku and I don't want to give our chin, but I really respect him as an intellectual. And I think he has really sophisticated takes on things. Even if he produces so much content now that it's watered down his very best takes and sometimes I feel like we're doing that, but then I'm like, but I'd have less interesting takes if I produce less content, like the number of interesting takes I have is not based on, so like I have a certain number a week, it's, I have a certain number per content I create, and then I can condense them into a Book eventually, so I'll have another book that'll just be interesting takes.

But with the, this video

Good morning, y'all. Quick update on the house, because I've been pretty terrible about giving y'all these.

We took a little break for noodling season and to put out boxes. Now that it's dried in, we can do it at our own pace, but here she is. We're gonna stain all that wood a darker brown This went viral on Twitter with the caption, This accent needs to be illegal, and women should be banned from doing manual labor like this. There is nothing feminine about [00:09:00] American women. American women are literally men. The person giving this white hot take is Samira Khan.

A quick flip through her online presence shows that she's cut from the same cloth as Ann Coulter. She's very pro Trump, very anti globalist, and very much of the opinion that America's geopolitical enemies, Russia and China, are not actually enemies. Rather, they're authoritarian states that America should emulate.

The real enemy, in her view, are the Democrats at home. She's also very feminine, but in a neo traditionalist way. There's no way this woman would ever be a trad wife, but she's no tomboy either. She seems to have the opinion that being a trophy wife to a high status man is the ultimate accomplishment for a woman.

There's no actual traditionalism here. There's no kids, no wifely duties, nothing like that. But she's also not some sort of progressive, sexually open degenerate either. She seems content with being arm candy. And that's fine, you do you. I'm just describing where she's coming from. Personally though, I'm not a fan of the plastic look.

Now, Samira Khan got a shit ton of pushback from not only the tomboy lovers out there, but the southern woman lovers. She reacted by calling them all gay. In [00:10:00] her view, the guys that like Hannah Barron can't be straight men because they enjoy masculine women doing masculine things. Samira turned the entire thing into a long thread detailing her position.

Lebanese women are literally perfect. And they're actually feminine, unlike estrogen deficient American women who hold the record for the highest testosterone levels in the world. This post included a couple of videos of a very made up woman, presumably someone Lebanese, getting ready for her wedding.

This might actually be Samira, I can't tell. Doesn't really matter. High value American men should become passport bros. Don't they deserve better than the filth they're limited to in their own country? This post included a video of Hannah in the water showing off a fish that she caught.

Samara then said Melania Trump is the ideal, and posted a poll asking which women are the most physically attractive. When the American women won that poll, because of course they would, she replied by saying, Liberate America from tomboy occupation! All the straight men cooming over her in their replies would be embarrassed to be seen with her in public.

Imagine her being your date to a formal event.

I just love the [00:11:00] delusion of her coming from a different cultural background and not understanding that in most of America, the most American parts of America. You would be God teared to get a woman like that with you at a formal event, in terms of the prestige that would earn you among other men. , a woman who is not only hot, but builds her own stuff who contributes and who can fish and who can throw down with the boys and who likely knows about all the topics that the boys are interested in. Yeah, you really couldn't do better From the perspective of traditional American beauty standards. She is trying to judge American women by Eastern European and Muslim. .Beauty standards because that is her cultural background and we are beginning to see this mindset. Permeate American culture because of Americans looking up to men as [00:12:00] signals of what masculinity should be from different cultural groups with Andrew Tate, being a great example here who has much more of the Eastern European slash Muslim perspective.. Of male, female relationships

one of the Red Pillar men posted a few more Hannah clips with captions in agreement with Samira. Tomboys are not hot. I repeat, tomboys are not hot. Attraction to tomboys is homosexuality, and women shouldn't be working outside. What kind of man lets his woman work outside like a man

Malcolm Collins: And you've seen the video. Yeah. So there's a few things going on in this video. I want to note one is which I absolutely love is the accusation of this girl that American women have the highest testosterone rate of any female population in the world.

Which is interesting because it shows that she doesn't seem to understand what testosterone does in women. So if you do know what testosterone does in your typical straight woman?

Simone Collins: It can make them taller and more assertive and more sexually [00:13:00] Interested, right? Yeah. So

Malcolm Collins: typically they're there, the rate to which they are sexually interested.

It increases how prominent their cheekbones are. It decreases their weight. It makes them more aggressive and it makes them more ambitious. Pretty much everything that I think your average American man finds attractive in a woman. You're not like a guy, like I like a girl with like really like high cheekbones, get rid of those cheekbones.

I like a girl with a formless doughy face. But so this woman is arguing for a, and this is what I find really interesting is she is explicitly arguing for a, Eastern European slash Muslim iteration of femininity, which is very different from the form of femininity, which is traditional within American culture.

And this is something I've talked about in other videos, but it is very interesting how so many people are now identifying with [00:14:00] the conservative movement and they're like being a woman is being like Prissy yeah I'm like, 90s clueless.

Okay, you're probably going, is Oxima commercial or what? Let's do this. Honestly, I actually have a way normal life for a teenage girl. I get up, I brush my teeth, and I pick out my school clothes.

Simone Collins: Yeah. No, like girly. Cause what strikes me is when I watched the video on which short photo taco is commenting, I'm not thinking this is a tomboy actually at all, because she is very styled.

She is very feminine. She has impeccable makeup and hair. I am a tomboy compared to her in my appearance. Most people are because they don't look as gorgeous as she does. So I, because normally I associate

Malcolm Collins: tomboys and she catches fish. Oh

Simone Collins: yeah. But isn't that what's also really, it does make me think a lot about different early colonial American [00:15:00] cultures as profiled in Albion seed, where The definition of optimal femininity did even range so much based on just these small regions of England, where different new colonial groups were coming from.

And the Scots Irish totally wanted women like that. That was the kind of woman. She'd slaughter a cow and then she'd feed you tea and you'd be freaked out if you came from another background. Whereas, in the South, if you're coming from the Cavaliers, you were expected to be in the house and to be very prim and prissy.

You But I, it's, this is, it's just so weird to me because she comes across as so feminine. But

Malcolm Collins: This is what's really interesting to me, right? Is you have moving into conservative circles because you come from a traditional American conservative family, like your family, whether the traditional outdoors,

Simone Collins: definitely more of the Scots Irish. Yeah. Like that women hunt and shoot and go,

Malcolm Collins: These new conservatives are so detached and unmoored for traditional American values. [00:16:00] It's like you've never listened to a country song. Yeah. Yeah. And I think country music does a good job of capturing traditional American values.

Speaking of American values, the reason or one of the reasons while I respect both cultural positions, that position to favor, prissy girls in the position to favor Tom boys, in terms of the types of girls that you. Elevate as good catches for sons in your family. One of the reasons. I err towards the tomboy position, is this attitude towards life.

Make them.

Much less focused on the internal politicking and fighting that you have within feminine women groups, which leads to them being very petty. And mean-spirited like the woman who's attacking her. And instead having a much higher moral character work ethic in view of the world, which I think is something that you often see from Simone in these videos.

And you also see from this girl in her response, Good morning, y'all. I don't have a Twitter. I [00:17:00] did at one point, but my account got removed for whatever reason,

And she even got her Twitter account banned for posting , Nati political opinions. Based as hell. and I just hadn't got around to making another account, but apparently I'm trending on Twitter right now because some girl, hey Merle, some girl said that my accent should be illegal, women shouldn't do manual labor, What else did she say?

American women are basically men and she just said that I was not feminine. And I would tell y'all this girl's name, but I can't remember it because I don't have a clue who she is. So that should tell you how relevant this person is. But I just think it's hilarious because I grew up as the weird kid in high school who hunted and fished too much because back then it wasn't cool for women to.

Hunt or fish or the whole country lifestyle And I'm so proud of all the women in the outdoors now who are making that [00:18:00] more Cool or popular so proud of us. I think we're doing great But I've been helping dad build houses since I was 15 When I was a senior in high school, I taught kids how to wield in ag class So I've done Not manual labor.

When I think of manual labor, I think of what my dad does. I'm nowhere near that. I just help as much as I can and I try. And it's fun. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's a lot of blue collar women out there who are also feminine. And so I just think that you should embrace your own individuality.

You should be yourself. And don't worry about what anybody else said because these folks talking about me and think they're gonna offend me, that ship sailed a long time ago. I don't know. I've been getting picked on my whole life. I grew up around men. So don't be scared to build your own box and don't try to fit in anybody else's.

Be your own person and you'll be happier in the long run because of that. And don't worry about what anybody else has to say. [00:19:00] Hope y'all have a good one. Appreciate y'all.

Malcolm Collins: If you look at the women who are elevated in country songs, they are this tomboy character of woman.

From Brunswick, juicy Georgia peach with a thick southern drawl, sexy swingin waltz, brother she's all

I can't swig that sweet champagne, I'd rather drink beer all night, Some people look down on me, but I don't give a rep. I stand there footed in my own front yard with a baby on my back.

Cause I'm a Victoria's Secret. Well their stuff's real nice. Oh, but I can buy the same damn thing on a Walmart shelf half price. It still looks sexy, I was fishin he was wishin we were kissin I was gettin madder than a [00:20:00] hornet in an he's in love And how it don't get any better than this I said, yeah, it could Boy, if you would shut up

Malcolm Collins: They are the woman who is a tough woman. Who knows how to hunt, who knows how to get dirty, who drinks beer instead of champagne, who kicks it. No it's something that is is regularly sung about in country songs.

And people are like women in country songs are not like Americana women. And it's no. You just judged Americana off of 1980s and 1990s Hollywood, which had no more your best interests than Hollywood of today. And you based your identity and what you thought womanhood was in America off of that.

Instead of understanding what, I have always been told growing up in Texas is that some people would sometimes be like, Oh you want a woman who's prissy or something like that. The standard saying was strong mothers make strong sons. [00:21:00] Yeah. And if you marry, and I'm talking genetically and culturally, if you marry a weak woman, like if you are specifically sorting for weakness in your wife, Then you are going to have weak sons.

And it's just obvious when you think about, and this is one of these things is people misunderstand. They think weakness means submissiveness. Okay. No. You can have a very strong woman. The woman in that video, do you think that she's like the top in her relationships?

I guarantee you, she is not. She is looking for a man who she respects, but she is not looking to top a man. And this is true of tomboys generally, because, I slept around a lot when I was younger. And when I did that, I slept with a lot of tomboys, because that was my preference in, in physical type.

As even like after Simone and I started dating, I was like, she had extremely long hair at the time. And I was like, [00:22:00] Cut your hair short. I don't like this. And for a long time, she had short hair and she started to regrow it for a number of reasons, but for a long time in a relationship, she had short hair.

Cause Brian Kaplan

Simone Collins: said so.

Malcolm Collins: To target your conservative audience, you're going to need longer hair. But what was

Simone Collins: I? You liked Tom girls. You've always liked Tom girls. And it doesn't matter because you don't want to marry a weak, submissive person. You want to marry basically if you use yourself, see yourself as a male leader, for example, you want to marry the equivalent of a very loyal soldier, but a soldier who fights and who goes out there and backs you up on the battlefield.

They don't want to marry some kind of sniveling bureaucrat because that's not going to. Breed great warriors for you,

Malcolm Collins: right? No, exactly. And when I was sleeping, I very, I don't think I ever met a tomboy who is dominant in bed. It is actually very rare. And I think that this is one of those things.

Also, one thing I will never get over, and I don't know if we should do a whole episode on this, but I've thought it [00:23:00] was very funny in this diary entry. When this one episode, we were reading a diary of when Simone and I met and it ends with you saying. I guess a dumb sub relationship in which you were the sub, but what you meant by that is a relationship where the male was the dominant partner and you was the female where the subordinate

Simone Collins: partner.

But we live in a culture in which that must be recontextualized as a kink because otherwise it's weird and abhorrent. It's not acceptable unless it's a kink, Malcolm. All right. I can't have you actually be dominant over me. It has to be for my sexual pleasure.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So I love if you recontextualize like a traditional American marriage, you're like this is a weird dumb sub thing that they're doing.

What is this? Like a 24 seven live in Again,

Simone Collins: that's the only way to make it socially acceptable. If it's just actually a hierarchy, then it's clearly abusive.

Malcolm Collins: Have you heard of radical monogamy? The phenomenon God bless. Yeah, this [00:24:00] is this new phenomenon. I'll put up some articles about it where it is people basically in social context where the dominant relationship subtype is polyamorous who have.

Intentionally chosen monogamy as a relationship format. And it's the new rebellious thing for progressives to try.

Simone Collins: It's the same, I think, to a great extent with tradwifery is these are many in many cases, especially the ones who are performatively showing it off so much people who came from broadly progressive cultures where women, We're brought mostly expected to work and have aggressive careers and get very educated.

They're making it this subversive thing when in the end it's

Malcolm Collins: just a thing. Yeah. This is really interesting. So Simone dressed like this. We went to a conference that was supposed to be for like music, people who work in the music industry. Oh,

Simone Collins: and for those who are just listening, I'm wearing Like 17th century inspired stays over chemise with a big long skirt.

So I'm going feudal here with my dress. She's ultra

Malcolm Collins: trad, medieval [00:25:00] trad. And at the event we often get stopped and asked what religion are we? And stuff like that. Like religious extremists, which I guess we are. But I'm heavily pregnant all the time when she's doing this but we were at this conference for music types and the people who kept complimenting you were these goth and like punk girls.

Because they absolutely loved your stuff because trad ultra trad is a form of cultural subversion, which they could really appreciate. And saw is like this new is trad cultural subversion. So there's that whole element of this conversation, which I find very fascinating, but I also find fascinating the things that are being criticized by the women who are criticizing this woman.

They're like, if your woman was out there building houses, wouldn't you leave her? What? Do these women think their lack of industry and economic productivity is a

Simone Collins: virtue? Yeah, isn't, sorry, isn't Build Me A House like the [00:26:00] ultimate version of Make Me A Sandwich? Yeah!

Malcolm Collins: Go in the woods and build me a house, woman.

Simone Collins: Build me a house, woman. Yes, exactly. It's interesting though, I did not expect you to come into this saying that basically tomboys were being attacked from the political right and the political left. But the more you're talking about this, the more I'm like, shit, they totally are.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the right is defining femininity portions of the right, not all the right.

So it's important to remember that the right has adopted a lot of immigrant populations, which is fine. I appreciate that, right? But we need to remember that Eastern European iterations of femininity and Muslim iterations of femininity are not traditional American iterations of femininity. And I have all four, women like her, these women who are like, Oh, here's I forgot what it was, Persian femininity or something like that.

It's fine. You want to show me your Muslim femininity. I agree. That is a traditional Muslim feminine mindset, which is this ultra. We're like [00:27:00] fragile. Doesn't have a job, stays at home all day, doesn't interact with their environment. Fine. That is within that cultural group, the iteration of femininity that is most lauded by the elite in that society.

And I should note that I don't even think that this was the dominant. strategy of femininity was in most Muslim cultures. It was just that their elites are don't have a duty to act like mainstream members of society in the same way that people of other cultural groups do. So the femininity that the elite shahs and stuff had and stuff like that, that they would have this ultra fragile porcelain women femininity, which is what she's aspiring to.

But I don't think that the average person living in these cultures, those women, if you went to a rural town in these areas, were probably actually pretty tough.

Simone Collins: Here's a theory though, in terms of that view of femininity perhaps the porcelain woman as a feminine ideal, like the way they are and it also makes sense in what you could call harem cultures, where the majority of society is [00:28:00] broadly very subservient.

And then the small number of outlier men get all the women rule, all of society, but then the rest are either like these eunuch style male bureaucrats who never pair off and never marry, or they're very submissive women who are Like, okay, with sharing resources amongst many other women with one man, maybe that's what you're seeing

Malcolm Collins: reflected here.

But even in harem culture, it's only a minority of women, like 20 percent max, end up joining the harems. Most are still in these rural family groups where they would likely be working and they would likely be in, when I talk about society. So I'm An interesting thing about these communities is that the elites in these societies do not need to act like the everyman.

But if you look at traditional Americana society, so George Bush is a good example of this. And in the left media used to always make fun of him going to his ranch and cutting brush. They was like, why is he cutting brush on the range? Because he's awesome. I grew up in Texas. I can tell you why I [00:29:00] grew up in a quote unquote, elite family in Texas.

And I can tell you why he was cutting brush because within elite families in Texas, you are expected to do manual labor to show that you don't think you're above the common man, because that is part of how status is judged, the belief that you are not above the common man. When you start acting above the common

Simone Collins: man, you're part of this effete royalist culture.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They'd say that you were like a thief. Feet are acting French or European. They really would, they'd be like, you're acting French right now or something like stop it. It's seen, it's very like, or you're acting like, the word that they would have used. It's not an appropriate word anymore but like why do you think you're better than other people?

Why do you think you don't, you shouldn't be doing manual labor? You're being a bit of a, but I, even if the words that they used do not work was in modern parlance, I can agree and still feel the sentiment that they feel that to be truly elite from my cultural background, you need to act like the common [00:30:00] man or you need to engage in some of the things that they're engaging in.

And you need to be able to and my family, by the way, was very good friends with the Bush family. He was at my grandmother's funeral actually. So at my grandmother's funeral he said he wanted to have a race and we were at the after party together and he wanted to race his, like one of his elders against one of my elders.

Cause they both had wheelchairs. Which I absolutely loved. He's. I know society back before we realized how controlled the media was by the ultra far lefties, I think a lot of people were convinced that he was actually a bad guy and he really isn't he may have had some bad advisors, but he is a genuinely sweet guy.

But anyway I think that there is some utility to that. And when I think about my own daughters think about the pressure they're gonna feel. The right's gonna say, you're not womanly enough, and the left's gonna say because you're not womanly enough, you're a man, here, come to us and we'll affirm you.

I think about what this causes for [00:31:00] Tom boys, which used to be, 30 percent of women, 40 percent of women. Really? They're growing up. I'd say it's at least 20 percent when we were growing up. Girls who participated in boyish hobbies.

Simone Collins: Here's what I think is different about the schools that I went to.

They were way more ethnically diverse and weirdly, tomboyism seemed to be, it's a white thing. It's not an Asian thing.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. So she was in San Francisco, which would have had a lot more Asian population. You're right. Yeah. I've never seen an Asian tomboy.

Simone Collins: I'm trying. I certainly had friends that like they, they were not girly girls, but they weren't seen as tomboys.

Maybe there's just, it's like a cultural perception

Malcolm Collins: thing. This is actually really interesting, and we'll probably do a separate episode on this, but if you look at MLP, My Little Pony, right? The character who's clearly the tomboy is Applejack, right? And I guess you could argue Rainbow Dash as well, oh, totally, come on. But, applejack representing Americana is representing tomboyism. That is, and what [00:32:00] I say, we might do an episode on it is because I think that every character in that, or I might just lay out this theory here because it's interesting, every character on that represents an iteration. of the ideal feminine from a different cultural group.

The sort of personality that an ideal wife would have within different cultural subsets. And while Applejack represented the Americana cultural subset Fluttershy represented the Muslim Eastern European cultural subset of the extreme level of submission.

Simone Collins: Or the, if we're talking colonial America, the Cavalier.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then you got the rainbow dash is the set that would have been

Simone Collins: sorry no twilight sparkle is the pilgrim Puritan subset. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: the twilight sparkle would have been the pilgrim sort of Calvinist subset, which is different from the, rural subset, which was the what are they called?

The ones who produced the Applejack and that were the lower class version. And then you had the the Pinkie Pie and I've [00:33:00] always seen Pinkie Pie as being very clearly Jewish coded. I think she's the Jewish subset. So it's absolutely the

Simone Collins: gregarious Jews know how to party. That is true. That is true.

They know how to party.

Malcolm Collins: So the gregarious social type, she's got curly hair, she is ultra gregarious, she is a comedian professionally. Could you get more Jewish coded than that? Whereas you are our culture, like both of our cultural backgrounds are a melding of the Calvinist and backwoods people, which would be a melding of the Twilight slash Applejack cultural groups.

But it's interesting, and I think that's part of why it caught on with so many guys, is it represented ideals of a femininity that they were not seeing in their world today. And, without sexualizing it in any way, shape, or form, just, Creating because some often when the guys within these online cultures were engaging with femininity, they were engaging it in a sexualized context without just seeing it for the personality tropes that they felt [00:34:00] were missing from their lives.

Who wouldn't want the country girl in their lives these days? How many of you still know this girl? I grew up around girls like that. They used to be like a thing. thing around me all the time. The country girls, these rough and tumble country girls who would curse and play in the mud and like to fish and hunt.

Where did they go? I don't know if they're in this next generation, right? Can we raise one of those? I bet they'd be pretty high value in the dating market these days. Yeah,

Simone Collins: wow. I think this is a short lived pressure. I think that tomboys are gonna be just fine over the long run. Because, they're the ones who weren't castrated.

Yeah, yeah. I guess it depends on how pervasive all this becomes in, mainstream public and private schools. I just don't know, but yeah, that's scary. Poor tomboys. I wasn't a tomboy. I was just an ugly girl. I don't know how else to say it.

Malcolm Collins: You were [00:35:00] not, you actually, okay. I've seen old pictures of you.

You were not the Let's just say most of the girls I slept with, even just talking about the girls I

Simone Collins: dated and you weren't exactly choosing your early days either. Let's be honest here. So just say,

Malcolm Collins: but I still would, but I still feel bad for the top boys after I got to talking with you and I think you're super hot

Simone Collins: now.

Oh, thank you. And you can thank your mother for teaching me how to use makeup a little bit because that was

Malcolm Collins: mostly just confidence.

Simone Collins: Yeah you gave me confidence and your mother gave me. Makeup years of insistent campaigning, some styling advice. So you all did something and I love you too.

Our kids are great.