She Wore Trousers and Rode Bareback: The Surprising History of the Word "Tomboy"

Since I’ve been sitting down to write about my heroine Kita McDade — a nineteen-year-old lumberjack’s daughter who rides horses bareback before dawn, wears trousers to work in her mother's bakery, and heads fearlessly into danger to help catch a band of stagecoach robbers — I knew exactly what kind of young woman she's going to be.

She is a tomboy.

And as I’m discovering while researching Kita’s world in 1896 Fort Jones, California, I know I can use this term, because it carried a very particular and rather brilliant meaning in her time.

Where Did the Word Come From?

The word "tomboy" has a long and surprising history.

It first appeared in the English language around 1533, when it was used to describe — of all things — a rude or boisterous boy. "Tom" was a common generic nickname for an ordinary man (hence "Tom, Dick, and Harry"), and a "tomboy" was simply a rough-and-tumble lad.

By the 1570s the term had shifted, and not entirely flatteringly, to describe bold or immodest women. But by the late 1590s and early 1600s it had settled into its most enduring and affectionate meaning: a girl who behaves like a spirited or boisterous boy; a wild, romping girl.

That's the definition that carried forward into the nineteenth century — and into Kita's world.

The Tomboy's Moment: Victorian America

By the time Kita McDade was pulling on her trousers and slipping through a barbed wire fence to ride Jacob Bills' horses in the early morning mist of Scott Valley, the tomboy had become something of a celebrated American figure.

The mid-to-late 1800s saw a genuine cultural shift in how Americans thought about active, spirited girls. The old ideal of the "Cult of True Womanhood" — which prized emotional fragility, domestic submissiveness, and physical delicacy — was giving way to something heartier and more practical. Economic pressures, the aftermath of the Civil War, and the beginnings of the first wave of feminism all pushed toward a new appreciation for physically capable, independent-minded young women.

In literature, the tomboy was everywhere. Capitola Black in E.D.E.N. Southworth's wildly popular 1859 novel The Hidden Hand — often cited as America's first bestseller — was a mischievous, daring orphan girl who dressed as a boy to survive. In 1868, Louisa May Alcott gave the world Jo March in Little Women, and girls across the country recognized themselves in her ink-stained fingers and her refusal to sit quietly and be decorative.

By 1896, the year my story is set, the tomboy was not a scandalous figure. She was, in many circles, an admirable one.

A Term of Endearment

In my novel, Kita's mother Trinity calls her something that has been rattling around in my heart since before I began writing this book: "my little independe-pants."

It's a play on "tomboy" and "independent" and the very literal fact that Kita insists on wearing trousers. The nickname “independe-pants” is also a tribute to my own mother, who called me exactly that when I was small. As I’m writing this into my story, I know it belongs here. I was never actually a tomboy but I admired them when I was young. A tomboy, at her best, is a girl so full of life and will and spirit that society’s boundaries cannot contain her.

Kita's World: Fort Jones, California, 1896

Fort Jones sits in the Scott Valley of Siskiyou County, at the foot of the Marble Mountains. In 1896 it was a small, close-knit community of ranchers, farmers, merchants, and miners — the kind of town where everyone knew everyone else's business, where the stagecoach still ran the California-Oregon Road, and where a young woman who wore trousers and rode horses bareback would be noticed.

But she also lives in a time when the word for what she is — tomboy — is being spoken with something very close to admiration. When the country is beginning to understand that a girl who can ride a horse, work hard, and make her own decisions might be exactly the kind of woman the world needs.

I think she'd agree. I think you’ll agree when you read more about Kita in my book!

My new novel, set in Fort Jones, California in 1896, follows Kita McDade — horsewoman, daughter of hardworking parents in the lumber and baking industries, and accidental member of a U.S. Marshal's posse — and the mysterious elderly injured mountain man who saved her life in a muddy street and can’t help eavesdropping when Kita thinks he’s unconscious.

More news coming soon…

Abate, Michelle Ann. Tomboys: A Literary and Cultural History. Temple University Press, 2008.

Harper, Douglas. "Etymology of Tomboy." Online Etymology Dictionary. Accessed May 2026. https://www.etymonline.com/word/tomboy

King, Elizabeth. "A Short History of the Tomboy." Bunk History. Accessed May 2026. https://www.bunkhistory.org/resources/a-short-history-of-the-tomboy

Nel, Philip. "Tomboy." Keywords for Children's Literature. NYU Press, 2021. https://keywords.nyupress.org/childrens-literature/essay/tomboy/

Oxford English Dictionary. "Tomboy, n. & adj." Oxford University Press. Updated March 2026. https://www.oed.com/dictionary/tomboy_n

Wikipedia contributors. "Tomboy." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Accessed May 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomboy