I think active little girls are called "active little girls" these days, but that the bother of getting all frilled up is pretty much the same as it always has been, as that cute face on your niece attests. She's very generous to let you publish her photo with those rollers in her hair, so you better be really nice to her for the rest of the day.

I think my granddaughters get the blow dry and curling iron treatment for "special occasions." No less annoying, probably, but I know I prefer it to those awful rollers on which it is nearly impossible to sleep.

A couple more years and the girls won't let you see them in dishabille...glad you caught these charmers on camera now.

I think it's great that girls are encouraged toward physical activity...in my day it was considered unladylike and yes, if they really enjoyed and were good at sports. they were called tomboys. So many of us grew up not wanting to get our hair wet at the beach or heaven forbid we perspire playing some sport...LOL An occasional game of golf or tennis was about the extent of it ...sad, really. I doubt I'd ever have been a real outdoor sports type but I'm sure some who didn't prefer books to balls were somewhat stifled by the prevailing attitudes. josh

Title IX was worth it's weight in gold.

Still is....

OMG those rollers! I didn't know they made them anymore. Don't know if they call active little girl's Tomboys anymore, but I was one - always trying to keep up with a neighborhood full of boys & learning to climb trees & navigate the roofs of garages with the best of them, much to my mother's consternation. Never curled my hair though until much later. It was either short or in a ponytail.

Remember the hair curlers called spoolies? They were soft pink rubbery things that you wrapped your hair around and then turned them inside out. They were not as uncomfortable to sleep on. Mom would put my hair up for picture day. I looked like the Peanuts character that talked about her naturally curly hair. Parted in middle straight to about ear level, and then a mass of curls. Not a good look for a girl in pointy glasses.

I didn't think those rollers were to be had these days either.

My mother put my hair into rags that turned it into ringlets. I loved it because I always wanted to have curly hair. What a fond memory that is.

I agree with josh - girls have always wanted to run fast and jump high and climb trees...and some are very good at it. We are, thank goodness, long past the days when it was "unladylike". I think most young women today are who they are and proud of it, my hat is off to them.

Well said Michael - thank goodness for Title IX.

Oh yes Spoolies! In fact, I just saw them advertised in the Vermont Country Store catalog the other day. They really took curls to a new level didn't they. When I was in college, the rage was to use empty orange juice cans as curlers. LOL, big hair was in!

First off, they are beautiful girls and the expressions are priceless. Uncle Dorph has every reason to be proud.

My mother used to send me out of the house to school in freshly ironed dresses with the ties bowed in back, hair plaited in braids with ribbons twined right in and socks she'd scrub snow white on a washboard. I don't think I ever owned a dress what wasn't ripped out at the waist seams where I'd tear the bow clear out of it. The shoes always "ate" my socks and I'd walk around half the day on cotton lumps, and by lunchtime the hair was unbraided and at least one ribbon lost. My mother lived with a needle and thread tacked to a kitchen curtain as my mending was endless.

My daughter experienced the same phenomenon. I sent her off to school from a bandbox, and she came home a disaster zone. One teacher even sent a note home with her to that effect. Alls I could do was send a note back telling the teacher I delivered her neat as a pin, and it was HER ballgame from there on out. LOL.

It's refreshing that little girls can now attend school in garments suitable for activity and play, instead of being constrained by a wardrobe. I never let clothes interfere with activity in my life and still don't.

Ditto thinking Title IX was a blessing. I enjoy watching gals particpate in school sports as much, and in some cases more than the boy's sports. Sports are a wonderful outlet for teenaged energy, and learning teamwork and balancing work/play issues. The only down side I can think of is that anymore just as many girls suffer sports related joint injuries as guys. My DD was an excellent athlete. Her shot put record still stands after two decades.

In retrospect, it's such a pity something so obvious had to be legislated. When I was in freshman year of school, I was denied access to a drafting class because it "was for boys". I had to teach myself just to keep up when I ended up in an engineering school, because the rest of the class already had mastered it before they enrolled.

Tomboy. I wonder exactly how that term came about?

From the Online Entymology Dictionary:
tomboy
1553, "rude, boisterous boy," from Tom + boy; meaning "bold or immodest woman" is attested from 1579; that of "girl who acts like a spirited boy" is first recorded 1592.

And, yes, Michael, I thought too of the Title IX legislation. Women's Lib was about far more than bra-burning...LOL josh

I find it humourous that one generation burnt their bras for equality and whilst the subsequent generation invented the sports bra to continue theirs.......

It is humorous come to think of it. I guess you go without so your children can have.

Something I think is kind of interesting is that just about everyone I know ( female) when the discussion of tomboys comes up,thinks of themselves as having been one,including myself. You notice how we always say it with pride as if it's something positive and the same for our daughters? But why isn't that the case when our sons like doing female activities? Little girls climbing trees with the guys is great. Little boys playing dolls or dress up with the girls isn't. We are only half way there.

I agree they are great photos and beautiful girls.

I never thought of Tomboy as negative and I agree with Marda, I considered myself one too! I guess the negative would be in the evolvement of the term tomboy. Initially a 'wild, boyish girl, which I'm sure was a BIG negative, it turned into meaning a free-spirited, strong, confident and physically assured girl. Traits considered stereotypically female (neatness, politeness, quiet demeanor, playing with dolls, dresses, etc...) are turned into a negative -prissiness.

Not everyone has a problem with boys dressing up Marda. We pretty much let our kids be whatever they want to be...

Note who's wearing the pillbox and who's wearing the cowboy hat!

Dress Up

Pillbox

Adults who get all bent out of shape about this kind of stuff do more harm than good, IMO. I was a tomboy, but the boy next door when I was a kid always wanted to play with my doll house. Thank God neither of our parents made a fuss about it.

Amen. My son can cook, preserve food, and sew. I made sure he left my house with those skills. My daughter and I renovated a house by ourselves.....she with the saw, me with the electricals and in unison with the plastering and painting. My father, the combat infantryman, was the parent who could roll my fine white hair up and in fact gave me my first perm and his cakes were to die for. My two hundred and fifty pound hulk of a husband can needlepoint me under the table. My mother was the one who always parked my parent's big truck and camping trailor and got up on the roof to clean gutters. And I am the one in my household who can shoot a fly off a fence thirty yards away and usually end up installing things like ovens and ceiling fans.

Although I sometimes claim the world is going to lleh in a handbasket, the loosening of the gender sterotypes to allow people to pursue what interests them without eyebrows raising is a "good thing" as Martha would say.

It's empowering to both genders.

When my son was a teenager shop was a requirement for girls and home ec for boys and it's been that way for a long long time.That was back in the early 80s. It's good to see that there is no such thing as a tomboy anymore. Wonder when that word will be excluded from the dictionary? Every year Webster's comes out with a list of new and deleted words. It's also good to see that people here would be comfortable if their son or grandson preferred playing with dolls or dressing up in mom's clothes and was happier playing with little girls than with little boys. I think many would still be uncomfortable with that even today.

I think they called it life skills at my kids' high school. Unisex and designed to introduce them to know where the knobs were on the stove. IOW they wouldn't starve to death if they couldn't afford McD's and everyone knew how to sew four seams together to make a gym bag and which side of a hammer was the handle. I know they offered a shop class, but I don't think home ec as it existed in the previous generation even exists as a subject anymore. Ergo, if you wanted your kids to really know how to cook, make jellies, preserve foods or mend clothes you had to teach them. I'd like to see a real life skills class integrated into every year of the curriculum from middle school up. Balancing check books, money management, how to shop for groceries, doing a laundry without everything coming out pink, checking the oil in your car, and understanding how city hall works.

Yikes..your school system sounds pretty bad. My son's experience in shop and home arts was entirely different. I can't remember it all but the kids had to plan,shop for and cook a family meal for a week incorporating the basic food groups and we had to sign a paper saying they had done this. In shop the kids,both boys and girls pretty much put together an automobile. They still have home arts in the schools but it's much more sophisticated than it used to be and in shop with computers some of the stuff they do is amazing at least that's my grandson tells me.

I remember taking home ec and wood shop in middle school. We had a power failure one day and the teacher had had a flat tire on his way in, so we spent that class learning how to change a tire - that has come in really handy. I signed up for "Creative Foods" in HS that was supposed to be making breads and jams, but so many people who had signed up didn't know how to do basic measurement conversions that they made it into a basic cooking class. Hated it - I wanted bread! Both of my girls had to take an industrial arts class which combined wood and metal shop and a home ec type of class that covered basic kitchen safety and following a recipe. They also did Young Ameritown where everybody had a job for a week, had to balance a checkbook and manage a budget. Only one of the girls ever wants to help out in the kitchen, but even that's only when we're making candy or bread.

Tomboy til the end,
Dafy

Reading these threads always makes me appreciate the school system I attended way back when. When I was in Junior High everyone, both boys & girls, had to take shop (woodworking) and home ec. (cooking & sewing). It was called "unified arts" back then (around 1959 - 1960). In shop I remember making a box & using the miter saw & a cutting board shaped like a fish that involved using the jigsaw.

Cooking class was mainly baking & making breakfast & for years when I'd make a big breakfast of eggs, bacon, etc. I'd call it a Mrs. Hermann breakfast after the name of the home ec teacher.

Sewing was a little different for boys vs. girls. The girls made skirts while the boys, I think made shop aprons. Many of the boys were much better at manipulating the Singer sewing machines than I was.

Once I got to high school I avoided home ec like the plague. LOL! I was going to be a career woman & I figured (probably from watching those old Doris Day movies) that I'd hire someone to do the daily tasks for me - more fool I.

I think that home ec has more or less disappeared from most h.s. curriculums, although given the popularity of celebrity chefs & cooking shows, perhaps it's lingering out there under another name?