Tomboy Magazine by Tomboy Magazine

TOMBOY AGYNESS DEYN

November 2014

CONTENTS 01

TOMBOY

Life & Style

Features Agyness Deyn

Fashion’s Tomboy Queen

Blurred Lines:

Androgyny & Creativity

Just Ridiculously Good Looking November’s Top 3 Picks

Wildfang, Portland

The History of Flannel

Facebook

Ellen Page’s

Androgyny’s official brand

It’s that time of year!

Taking Steps with Gender

Human Rights Campaign Speech

STYLE

The History of Flannel

Wild Fang, PO The shopping day was no different from any other. Emma McIlroy and Julia Parsley rushed past the women’s department, up the stairs to the men’s. McIlroy wanted a T-shirt. Parsley had her eye on a blazer. Parsley -- wild-haired and petite, boyish-looking but with a feminine figure -- slipped on the jacket. The blazer hung loose off the arms, but was too tight to button. She sighed. “Why don’t they make these for women?” she asked McIlroy. They had good jobs then, the kind of jobs hundreds of college students are dreaming about right now. But on that ordinary shopping trip, engulfed in yet another set of ill-fitting clothes, McIlroy, 29, and Parsley, 32, decided: We’ll have to do it ourselves. Three years later they are. This week, they’ll launch an online clothing store whose 30 brands offer masculine-inspired but woman-sized blazers, bow ties and boots. They call themselves Wildfang, German for “tomboy.” “For many of us, clothes are an important way that we express ourselves,” McIlroy said. “They show the world who you are and who you want to be. For our girl that hasn’t always been easy.” Last year’s runways and this year’s ready-to-wear shops are

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built on androgyny. J. Crew’s “boy” shirt for women may be a trend, but the tomboy is as old as time. For Wildfang, “tomboy” is a spectrum, from a preppy type who prefers her boyfriend’s button-downs to the sporty woman looking for a T-shirt. She’s Scout in “To Kill a Mocking Bird.” Patti Smith on the cover of “Horses.” Audrey Hepburn in “Roman Holiday.” Diane Keaton anywhere. McIlroy had promised herself she would never go into retail. Her father ran a shop in Ireland. He worked weekends, nights, holidays. She believed there was a need, but she didn’t want to leave Nike, where she worked in digital sports marketing, unless she could prove it. So they started with questions. Does the consumer really exist? Is it just us? Is it just women in Portland? What do tomboys have in common? What differentiates them? The company, which now employs 22 people in its Old Town headquarters, had a builtin focus group. Though all the women considered themselves tomboys, that meant something different for each. Recieving input from many different women varying on the “tomboy” spectrum is how Wild Fang carefully put together their collection of the perfect Tomboy expression.

How’s the weather where you are? Indianapolis is still going through some warm days and cooler days, but every morning when I wake up I’m wishing for a solid forecast of fall breezes and clear skies. WThis time of year is made for apple cider, popcorn, goofy nights in with your girls, and the coziest of all clothing: flannel shirts. A little rustic, a little soft in the sleeves, and packed with easy-tothrow-on comfort, flannels are the epitome of casual yet cute fall attire. Below, I’ve compiled a history of flannel as a fabric for apparel, with a focus on flannel shirts in particular. According to this fashion dictionary, flannel fabric was originally made from either carded wool or worsted yarn. Modern day flannels are usually made with cotton, wool, or synthetic fibers. Flannel can be traced back to 17th century Wales, where farmers wore flannel shirts to protect themselves from the elements. This tradition would continue for other blue collar workers as the prevalence of flannel grew. One man who is often credited for popularizing the flannel shirt in the United States is Hamilton Carhartt. He founded his namesake company in 1889. Wanting his clothes to be specially made for the working class, he visited railroad workers all over the country to determine the best tactics for creating top-notch utility products, including flannel shirts. He sought to set a standard of excellence, which he believed was reflected in every article he produced. A few of you may be wondering, what’s the difference between flannel and plaid shirts? At its most basic, plaid is a pattern which is believed to have originated in Scotland, whereas

flannel is a fabric, as we’ve learned. So why the confusion? As tartan plaid looks so at home on flannel, the the print and fabric were often used together and quickly became synonymous in discussion. The perfect example of this is the stereotype of the lumberjack, who in 20th century popular culture was always depicted with a pair of boots and the ubiquitous plaid flannel shirt. Some associate flannel with the grunge look of the 1990s, but this article from T Magazine, the style mag of the New York Times, disagrees. It argues that by the time flannel was introduced as “grunge,” the look was a watereddown version of its original self. Flannel shirts today are often linked to hipster culture. TIME notes, “Everything about them is exactingly constructed to give off the vibe that they just don’t care.” While hipsters may pretend not to care, I know that if they’re rocking flannel, they understand the true significance of comfort and style, something we can all appreciate.

AGYNESS DEYN

* The rise of fashion’s new It girl has broken all the rules. She is the face of this, the body of that and the spirit of the other. No glamorous event is complete without her. She is adorable, unstoppable and every inch her own fresh, maverick woman. She has achieved all this, in shocking defiance of the rules of female beauty - with short hair. It ‘s a fashion industry miracle. Finally.

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Fashion’s New Tomboy Queen Deborah Orr

or those innocents among us who are not A-star students of fashionmedia hype, Agyness Deyn is not quite yet a silly name they have learnt through osmosis to pronounce and spell. Actually, the former is no problem, as you just ignore the tortured spelling and say, “Agnes Dean”. The latter, if you are interested in spurious etymology as well as tortured spelling, can even be gilded with a footnote. It explains that young Laura Hollins chose Agnes Dean as her going-to-be-famous name, while her mother, Lorraine, somehow conjured the look of the name - its styling, if you will - by applying some of the wisdom she has gained through being a master of reiki healing. Or after reading an article about numerology in a magazine. Depending on what you prefer to believe. Anyway, it is not whimsical, this name, it is serious and somehow spiritual. And edgy. Or something. Sadly, the whys and wherefores of this process of name transformation are currently inaccessible, as Lorraine has told the media: “I’m very proud of her but I have been advised by someone acting on her behalf not to speak about her and I’m not even prepared to say who.” This is just as well, for already the truth has proved irksome to the fragile myth of Agyness Deyn. The business of fashion myth is greedy and even though Deyn is only 24 now, it is alleged that her model card claims she is 21, and that in an interview she said she was 18, provoking a gaggle of schoolfriends to point

Deyn’s idiosyncrasy lies only in the way she continues to dress like a style-conscious girl on a budget.

out that she used to be the same age as them. Maybe it was thought that the younger Deyn could be, the better, as far as filling those Topshop rails was concerned. It seems a bit of a shame when 24 is considered not a desirably young enough age for international stardom but nobody ever said that fashion wasn’t youth-oriented. The hype world, also, prefers the idea that she was talent-spotted while working in a chip shop in Stubbins, Lancashire, to the rather more believable alternative, which is that she was spotted by a subject-hungry photographer in the rather less unlikely venue of a hip vintage store in London’s Kentish Town, dressed in all the finery that a style-conscious young beauty on the lookout for opportunity could be expected to muster. Deyn did work in a chip shop but while she was at school studying drama and music and already modelling locally with some success. She was already interested in fashion, already the winner of a local modelling prize and already planning to storm the London scene with her friend, the fashion designer Henry Holland. Holland is described as a childhood friend but again the truth is slightly less primal: he ran into her when she was in her mid-teens at the venerated chip shop and they recognised a kindred spirit when they saw one. Now the two of them are projected as wide-eyed little ragamuffins, stumbling innocently towards London in the manner of Dick Whittington and his cat, and brave enough to say goodbye to the chip shop and face outrageous fortune because they had each other. Again, it’s a nice romantic story but the truth, as we know, is that the Manchester area is extremely far from being a youth-cultural desert. Somehow, in the rush to mythologise Deyn, it is more convenient to pretend that it is. It is strange, this desire to believe that Agyness Deyn is the young and naive creation of the fickle finger of fate, because what has been clear from the first stirrings of fashion-media interest is that she is a confident young woman with a highly developed sense of her own likes and dislikes. Deyn’s style, anyway, is “idiosyncratic” in a way that has been familiar to followers of street fashion since the ‘70s. Jaunty trilbys, stripy socks, braces and rockgig T-shirts are hardly items of clothing invented by her.

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Deyn’s idiosyncrasy lies only in the way she continues to dress like a style-conscious girl on a budget, instead of going belly-up before the blandishments of the designers who would very much like to dress her for absolutely nothing. (Not that she turns her nose up at a nice dress for the red carpet.) Her look is, in that respect, shrewd because it marks her out as “normal” in a business that is more comfortable with abnormal. That’s what got her spotted and that’s what got her work and attention. Are these minor confabulations important, even though they are far from new? I’m inclined to think that they are. There’s something rather pathetic about the widespread desire to believe that Deyn is the passive recipient of her success, rather than the active architect of her career. The idea that nice girls don’t want to have huge careers but instead have them thrust upon them really ought to have been consigned to history by now. Deyn is reported by all who know her to be down-to-earth and straightforward, fun and decent. There’s something of an implication, in the attitudes shown towards her back story, that an acknowledged desire for success would run counter to these attributes, in just the same way as going to private school or having an uncle in the business is considered to be the sine qua non of cheating corruption, however talented you may be. Certainly, Deyn herself is in no hurry to challenge the way she has been packaged. The little she says in interviews is very much in the traditional vein of self-deprecation. She claims not to varnish her toenails because: “I’ve got really bad feet - they’re so bad they’re good.” She also likes to go along with the idea that she “is not sexy”, as if the divide between glamour models and fashion models never existed before she came along, and as if the triumph of a tall and willowy blonde with perfect skin somehow rewrites the story of 21st-century female pulchritude. Anyway, the vulgar T-shirts of her chum Holland, saying “Flick yer bean for Agyness Deyn”, appear to find buyers, even though no one is supposed to find her remotely fanciable. Deyn is aware that her championship of street style is a part of her image that brings in lavish contracts with luxury firms and is not above whispering

such lines from the PR handbook as: “I love Burberry and it’s special to work for a British label.” She flogs the British angle like mad, posting a photograph of her heroine, the Queen, on her website and flying a little Union flag off the back of her bicycle. All this adoration of England, must, of course, go down a storm in her adopted home of New York, where being as English as fish and chips, and even having served them, is even more of a novelty than it is in England. There can be no doubt that Deyn is poised to become famous and rich. There can be little doubt, either, that Deyn is happy at the prospect of such an outcome. I’m inclined to think that her keen desire to go along with the idea that all this is just something that was thrust upon her, is itself evidence of just how well she understands how popular culture works and how much the luxury market relies on its association with youthful street styles in order to make its elitist pile. Deyn would never be crass enough to say that she wants to be massively wealthy. But she’s laying the foundations of empire. I’d be surprised if Deyn turned out to be the doomed kind of It girl rather than the savvy kind. Part of her compliance in going along with the media game appears to come from the understanding that, if you play your cards right, you can live in front of the cameras and still keep your private life private, as long as you follow the rules. Deyn turns up at the parties fashion throws but she is never seen staggering out of them. She is always working, except when she is behind closed doors, and she shows every sign of being able to keep it that way. There will be no profile-reviving reality shows for her and no florid brushes with tabloid scandal. The real story of Agyness Deyn is that she understands just what she wants and just what is required of her if she wants to get it. So far, all her dreams and plans are coming together nicely. There is no reason to imagine that she will ever stop rising without trace or ever regret her very deliberate choices.

The real story of Agyness Deyn is she understands just what she wants and how to get it. 09

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Blurred Lines Androgyny & Creativity Scott Kaufman

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According to the The Rev. Jefferis Kent Peterson, the first half of the the 1984 Grammy Awards ‘underscored a dramatic shift in the cultural consciousness that has took place in the past twenty years.

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ighly androgynous musicians Boy George and Annie Lennox competed for the best new artist spot and Michael Jackson cleaned up with seven awards. According to Peterson, the nominations “became a celebration of androgyny and sexual ambiguity. Of course, let’s not forget important female androgynous entertainers such as Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, and Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics. These women had an enormous influence on the youth of that generation. In January 1985, Lauper was named one of the women of the year in Ms. magazine, “For taking feminism beyond conformity to individuality, rebellion and freedom.” Artist Andy Warhol also rode the androgyny wave. According to The Getty Museum, he often dressed in drag at parties and admired “the boys who spend their lives trying to be complete girls.” In 1981, he collaborated on a set of pictures of himself in drag. But here’s the thing: physical androgyny was creative in the 80s because it was actually innovative. It did challenge gender stereotypes. It got people to think differently about stereotypical male and female roles. It wasn’t the superficial physical aspects of androgyny that made it so creative, it was the psychological aspects that it represented. Modern day performers who have been directly influenced by the androgyny of the 80s, such as Lady Gaga, seem to get this point. Gaga’s androgyny and gender blending seems to stand for something. As Gaga told Ellen DeGeneres, she wants her fans to know that “It’s OK” to be a “freak”: “I didn’t fit in in high school, and I felt like a freak. So I like to create this atmosphere for my fans where they feel like they have a freak in me to hang out with and they don’t feel alone.. This is really who I am, and it took a long time to be OK with that…Maybe in high school you, Ellen, you feel discriminated against. Like you don’t fit in and you want to be like everyone else but not really, and in the inside you want to be like Boy George–well, I did anyway. So I want my fans to know that it’s OK. Sometimes in life you don’t always feel like a winner, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a winner. You want to be like yourself… I want my fans to know it’s OK.” Unfortunately, the psychological aspects of androgyny seem to have been lost on many performers in this generation, who think they are being

Psychological Androgyny work-play, and maturity-childishness (also see “After In the 70s, psychologist Sandra Bem argued that the Show: The Many Faces of the Creative Performer“). psychological androgyny–the extent to which a person In reality, these so-called opposites, like stereotypically crosses sex-typed standards of desirable behavior– has masculine and feminine traits, can be viewed as two important consequences. (Note that sexual preference points on a single dimension and can be experienced isn’t a criteria for psychological androgyny.) Bem in the same person at different stages of the creative believed that traditionally, society has not encouraged process. the development of both masculine and feminine In 1980, Weinstein and Bobko found that above characteristics within the same individual but that an IQ of about 115, IQ was no longer correlated psychological androgyny can expand the range of with creativity as measured by a test of the ability to behaviors available to everyone. form remote associations and a measure of the ability Research studies have shown associations between to generate associative uses. What was related to androgyny and a wide range of positive outcomes such creativity? Androgyny. as self-esteem, satisfaction with life, marital satisfaction, The authors suggest a reason for this association: subjective feelings of well-being, ego identity, parental In being androgynous, especially in a sex-stereotyped effectiveness, perceived competence, achievement society, a person would need to be open to experience, motivation, cognitive complexity when evaluating flexible, accepting of apparent opposites, unconcerned careers, cognitive flexibility, and behavioral flexibility. about social norms, and self-reliant– exactly those Kelly and Worrell (1976) found that androgynous traits identified with creative persons.” individuals were raised by parents who stressed They also acknowledge that “androgyny and cognitive independence, curiosity, and competence. creativity are not necessarily linked in a direct, causal What about creativity? Freud speculated when way. Rather they are two concepts embedded in a writing about Leonardo da Vinci that creative network of personality variables and environmental people possess greater cross-sex identification than others. McKinnon (1962) found that creative men and women have attitudes and interests In being androgynous, a person needs to considered typical for the opposite sex. The famous creativity researcher Ellis Paul be open to experience, flexible, accepting Torrance published a paper in 1963 showing of apparent opposites, unconcerned about that creative boys possess more feminine characteristics than their peers, and creative social norms, and self-reliant– exactly those girls are perceived as more masculine than other traits identified with creative persons. girls. Torrance said “creativity, by its very nature, requires both sensitivity and independence.” histories In 1981, Harrington and Anderson found Helson (1967) found that the more creative the that participants defined as masculine or androgynous female mathematician, the more she displayed a scored higher on a measure of creative self-concept combination of the following traits: “individualism, and the ability to come up with alternate uses for an originality, concentration, artistry, complexity, object (when instructed to “be creative”) than those courage, emotion, fascination, and self-orientation.” conventionally defined as “feminine” or “unclassifiable” Clearly a mix of both traditionally “masculine” and (low in both masculinity and femininity). traditionally “feminine” traits. Interestingly, psychological masculinity was correlated Abraham Maslow remarked how creative people tend positively with these creative measures in both men to often display a healthy balance of what appear to be and women but psychological femininity had negative opposites: selfishness-unselfishness, thinking-feeling,

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associations with creativity for both men and women. The authors discuss this intriguing finding: “Potentially creative women may be struggling against and suffering from the very social conceptions and traditions about what is and is not ‘sex-appropriate’ that men find sustaining and supportive in their creative self-conceptions and endeavors. It remains to be seen whether current social trends permitting greater flexibility for both sexes will make it easier for men and, especially, women to develop creative selfconcepts and to behave creatively.” More recently, Jonsson and Carlsson (2001) found that participants high in both feminity and masculinity (androgynous) and low on both scales (undifferentiated) scored higher on a measure of creativity than stereotypically female and stereotypically male participants. Interestingly, and similar to the Harrington and Anderson study, they found that men alone accounted for this interaction. In other words, increased masculinity in creative women was weaker than increased femininity in men. Norlander, Erixon, and Archer (2000) found that an androgynous group scored higher on a measure of creativity, creative attitude, optimism, and graffiti/ scrawling than the stereotypic, midmost, and undifferentiated types. Interestingly, the androgynous group didn’t score higher in creativity compared to the “retrotypic” group (men and women displaying anti-stereotypic behaviors). The researchers raise the intriguing suggestion that retrotypic men and women might “possess similar penchants to their androgynic counterparts to cross the boundaries of traditional gender-roles, thereby accumulating experiential material with elevated flexibility and creativity as a consequence.” There is a trend now for researchers to align instrumentality with masculinity and expressiveness with femininity, although researchers such as Alice Eagly prefer to think of the distinction as “agenic” and “communal”. And there are other criticisms of the masculine/feminine distinction, such that the distinction strengthens gender stereotypes, and that the distinction should be abandoned altogether in

favor of just using the instrumentality/expressiveness distinction. In 2002 Hittner and Daniels looked at a wide range of creative behaviors. They found that androgynous individuals (those reporting high levels of instrumentality and expressive characteristics) tended to report more creative accomplishments in literature, theater, and video-photography than nonandrogynous indviduals. Regarding literature, Virgina Woolf wrote in A Room of One’s Own, that to be an ideal writer, one ought to be “woman-manly or man-womanly… Some collaboration has to take place in the mind between the woman and the man before the art of creation can be accomplished. Some marriage of opposites has to be consummated.” In the essay, she praised a number of famous androgynous writers, including Shakespeare, Keats, Sterne, Cowper, Lamb, and Coleridge. She was unsure, however of the brilliance of Milton and Jonson, Worsworth and Tolstoy, saying that they had “a dash too much of the male”, and Proust, since he was “a little too much of a woman.” Interestingly, when Hittner and Daniels controlled for creative theatre achievement, the researchers didn’t find an association between androgyny and creative music achievement. This suggests to me that a crucial factor that determines the androgyny/music link is the extent to which the musical performance is theatrical. It would be interesting to see whether androgyny is as related to cello and flute performance as it is to rock star performance. Also interestingly, the researchers found that instrumentality was positively related to business venture creativity as well as a flexible cognitive style, whereas androgyny was not related to business venture creativity (but androgyny was marginally related to cognitive flexibility). The researchers note: “In order tWo obtain comparable levels of power and status, women who work within maledominated environments typically have to suppress their expressiveness and demonstrate high levels of instrumentality.”

The researchers quote Lorber (1998) in saying: “in order to get support from senior men, a senior woman may end up in the paradoxical position of making a stand for women by proving that she is just like a man.” Their findings are certainly thought provoking and suggest that, due to societal expectations, it might be easier for an androgynous woman to display her creativity in more “artistic” domains than in more business-oriented domains. All of this research suggests that psychological androgyny is associated with positive outcomes, including outcomes relating to the ability to maintain social relationships (e..g, marital satisfaction), psychological well-being, life satisfaction, optimism, a secure sense of identity, and creativity. Although the precise direction of causality is not always clear in these studies (perhaps androgynous people have a higher creative drive, or engagement in creativity increases androgyny). Nevertheless, there’s little doubt that the more we allow people to express their unique selves, and mentally and physically cross stereotypical gender boundaries, the more creativity we will get out of them. Also, this research suggests that we may well be limiting the full potential of members of society, such as the case of androgynous women working in fields where it is frowned upon for women to exhibit stereotypically masculine traits. But all of this will only become obvious if we look past the superficial shock value of the physical to the underlying psychological realities and take our cues from the greats of the 80s.

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just ridiculously good looking 17

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novemberâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s top three picks 18

elliot sailors 19

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Elliott Sailors decided to make her career as a male model by wrapping her breasts and playing up her androgynous side. While she did lose her womenswear clients after switching over to male modeling, Sailors discovered that she could extend her career in this new gender role, rather than try to extend her tenure in the youth-obsessed female modeling world. Once she committed, she chopped off her long hair into a masculine haircut and hoped for the best, understanding that she would certainly take a pay cut as a male model (per the industry standard).-“I’ve never identified as a male, but I’ve always described myself as a guy,” explaining that the career shift is not just a “phase.” Thanks to gender-bending models like Andrej Pejić, who Sailor considers a “total inspiration,” and Casey Legler, another female model who exclusively models menswear, it seems that Sailor is contributing to a growing industry-wide conversation about self-expression and the roles of men and women in fashion.

ericka linder 21

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Erika Linder is the new star of a recent campaign from the Swedish label,Crocker by JC Jeans Company. She came to prominence after appearing in Katy Perry’s “Unconditionally” video last fall, and works as both a mens- and womenswear model. (Her Twitter bio aptly reads, “I have too much imagination to just be one gender.”) By now, of course, we’ve realized that both the “male” and “female” models are one and the same. Linder transitions between roles so seamlessly that her double appearance could be easily missed if it weren’t spelled out for us. The moment her on-screen transformations begin, the star becomes far more compelling than your average model. “By starring Erika as the model for both male and female styles, we want this collection to inspire creativity and confidence as we set out to break new boundaries within the fashion industry,” the brand says. Sweden is very progressive when it comes to gender equality, having even added the gender-neutral pronoun “hen” to the country’s National Encyclopedia.

ari fritz 23

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Ari Fitz, formerly Arielle Patrice Scott, is a filmmaker, model, media personality and recent star on MTV’s “Real World Ex-Plosion”. Named by SF Weekly as “one of the most compelling cast members” to hit the iconic reality series since well… its inception, Ari continues to wow her rapidly growing audience (known affectionately as her MISFITZ) through fashion, film and entertainment. Ari did not begin her career in entertainment, however. After receiving a full scholarship to University of California Berkeley, she immediately began a successful career in “tech” at the young age of 18. A few years later, she sold her first company, GenJuice, and spend the next few yeaWrs working in the technology-startup space holding director positions in marketing and business development. At 24, a photographer discovered Ari at a local festival and introduced her to a top San Francisco-based modeling agency, where she immediately attracted major clients such as Levi’s, Sprint, Neiman Marcus, Michael Kors. and Macy’s.

LIFE

Ellen Page’s HRC Speech

Facebook: Taking Steps with Gender Facebook is making some changes towards a more inclusive community for users with the addition of gender-neutral options for family member identification. Previously the social networking site had announced the addition of customizable gender options for its U.S. users along with three pronoun choices: him, her or them. The change was meant to give people more ways to describe themselves, “such as androgynous, bi-gender, intersex, gender fluid or transsexual,” the Associated Press reported. Now, Facebook is expanding its gender-neutral options to include family members, the Advocate noted. The new additions include sibling (gender neutral), parent (gender neutral), grandchild (gender neutral) and more. The Advocate reports that not all U.S. users’ profiles have the update yet. Facebook has not

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issued a public statement on the changes and a media representative was not immediately available for comment. Back in February, Facebook software engineer Brielle Harrison, a transgender woman, expressed her thoughts on the project. “There’s going to be a lot of people for whom this is going to mean nothing, but for the few it does impact, it means the world,” she said, via the AP, adding, “All too often transgender people like myself and other gender nonconforming people are given this binary option, do you want to be male or female? What is your gender? And it’s kind of disheartening because none of those let us tell others who we really are. This really changes that, and for the first time I get to go to the site and specify to all the people I know what my gender is.”

The star of the upcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past made the announcement in a moving and deeply personal speech delivered before several hundred attendees at Time to Thrive, a conference to promote the welfare of LGBT youth held at Bally’s Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nev. “I’m here today because I am gay,” Page, 26, told the audience, “and because maybe I can make a difference, to help others have an easier and more hopeful time. Regardless, for me, I feel a personal obligation and a social responsibility. I am tired of hiding and I am tired of lying by omission,” Page proudly and defiantly declared. “I suffered for years because I was scared to be out. My spirit suffered, my mental health suffered and my relationships suffered. And I’m standing here today, with all of you, on the other side of all that pain.” Page first shared the inner turmoil she’s felt since she was thrust into the Hollywood limelight following the blockbuster success of 2007’s Juno. “It’s weird because here I am, an actress, representing - at least in some sense - an industry that places crushing standards on all of us,” Page said. “Not just young people, but everyone. Standards of beauty, of a good life, of success -- standards that, I hate to admit, have affected me. “You have ideas planted in your head, thoughts you never had before that tell you how you have to act, how you have to dress and who you have to be. I have been trying to push back, to be authentic, to follow my heart, but it can be hard,” she admitted. Page, who paused frequently to collect herself as her emotions swelled, added that reading about herself in the tabloids can be a

trying ordeal. She mentioned one article, accompanied by a paparazzi photo of her wearing sweatpants on the way to the gym, that asked, “Why does this petite beauty insist upon dressing like a massive man?” (The answer: “Because I like to be comfortable,” a line that drew laughter and applause.) That kind of gender stereotyping serves “no one,” Page said. She then went on to single out examples of “courage all around us,” naming “football hero Michael Sam,” Orange Is the New Black star Laverne Cox and musicians Tegan and Sara Quin for their contributions to furthering LGBT visibility and pride. A tearful Page concluded her eight-minute speech by wishing the audience a happy Valentine’s Day, sweetly adding, “I love you.” The remarks were met with a rousing standing ovation.

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TOMBOY magazine was created as a mission to shine light on old & modern day androgynous culture. Each monthly issue will feature one new eminent star or personality that falls under the category of “androgynous” or “tomboy.”

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Wildfang, Portland

Blurred Lines:

The History of Flannel

Just Ridiculously Good Looking

Facebook

Fashion’s Tomboy Queen

Androgyny & Creativity 14

November’s Top 3

Androgynyn’s official brand

It’s that time of year!

Taking Steps with Gender

Ellen Page’s

Human Rights Campaign Speech

AGYNESS DEYN

November 2014

Blurred Lines

They also acknowledge that “androgyny and creativity are not necessarily linked in a direct, causal way. Rather they are two concepts embedded in a network of personality variables and environmental

Androgyny & Creativity

histories In 1981, Harrington and Anderson found that participants defined as masculine or androgynous scored higher on a measure of creative self-concept and the ability to come up with alternate uses for an object (when instructed to “be creative”) than those conventionally defined as “feminine” or “unclassifiable” (low in both masculinity and femininity).

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Interestingly, psychological masculinity was correlated positively with these creative measures in both men and women but psychological femininity had negative

associations with creativity for both men and women. The authors discuss this intriguing finding: “Potentially creative women may be struggling against and suffering from the very social conceptions and traditions about what is and is not ‘sexappropriate’ that men find sustaining and supportive in their creative self-conceptions and endeavors. It remains to be seen whether current social trends permitting greater flexibility for both sexes will make it easier for men and, especially, women to develop creative self-concepts and to behave creatively.” More recently, Jonsson and Carlsson (2001) found that participants high in both feminity and masculinity (androgynous) and low on both scales (undifferentiated) scored higher on a measure of creativity than stereotypically female and stereotypically male participants. Interestingly, and similar to the Harrington and Anderson study, they found that men alone accounted for this interaction. In other words, increased masculinity in creative women was weaker than increased femininity in men. Norlander, Erixon, and Archer (2000) found that an androgynous group scored higher on a measure of creativity, creative attitude, optimism, and graffiti/ scrawling than the stereotypic, midmost, and undifferentiated types. Interestingly, the androgynous group didn’t score higher in creativity compared to the “retrotypic” group (men and women displaying anti-stereotypic behaviors). The researchers raise the intriguing suggestion that retrotypic men and women might “possess similar penchants to their androgynic counterparts to cross the boundaries of traditional gender-roles, thereby accumulating experiential material with elevated flexibility and creativity as a consequence.” There is a trend now for researchers to align instrumentality with masculinity and expressiveness with femininity, although researchers such as Alice Eagly prefer to think of the distinction as “agenic”

Psychological Androgyny

Scott Kaufman

Clearly a mix of both traditionally “masculine” and In the 70s, psychologist Sandra Bem argued that traditionally “feminine” traits. psychological androgyny–the extent to which a person Abraham Maslow remarked how creative people tend crosses sex-typed standards of desirable behavior– has to often display a healthy balance of what appear to important consequences. (Note that sexual preference be opposites: selfishness-unselfishness, thinkingisn’t a criteria for psychological androgyny.) Bem feeling, work-play, and maturity-childishness (also believed that traditionally, society has not encouraged see “After the Show: The Many Faces of the Creative the development of both masculine and feminine Performer“). In reality, these so-called opposites, like characteristics within the same individual but that stereotypically masculine and feminine traits, can be psychological androgyny can expand the range of viewed as two points on a single dimension and can behaviors available to everyone. be experienced in the same person at different stages Research studies have shown associations between of the creative process. androgyny and a wide range of positive outcomes In 1980, Weinstein and Bobko found that above such as self-esteem, satisfaction with life, marital an IQ of about 115, IQ was no longer correlated satisfaction, subjective feelings of well-being, ego with creativity as measured by a test of the ability identity, parental effectiveness, perceived competence, to form remote associations and a measure of the achievement motivation, cognitive complexity when ability to generate associative uses. What was related evaluating careers, cognitive flexibility, and behavioral flexibility. Kelly and Worrell (1976) found that androgynous individuals were raised by parents who stressed cognitive independence, curiosity, and competence. What about creativity? Freud speculated when writing about Leonardo da Vinci that creative In being androgynous, a person needs to people possess greater cross-sex identification than others. McKinnon be open to experience, flexible, accepting (1962) found that creative men and of apparent opposites, unconcerned about women have attitudes and interests considered typical for the opposite sex. social norms, and self-reliant– exactly those The famous creativity researcher Ellis traits identified with creative persons. Paul Torrance published a paper in 1963 showing that creative boys possess more feminine characteristics than their peers, and creative girls are perceived as more masculine than to creativity? Androgyny. other girls. Torrance said “creativity, by its very The authors suggest a reason for this association: nature, requires both sensitivity and independence.” In being androgynous, especially in a sexHelson (1967) found that the more creative the stereotyped society, a person would need to be open female mathematician, the more she displayed a to experience, flexible, accepting of apparent opposites, combination of the following traits: “individualism, unconcerned about social norms, and self-reliant– originality, concentration, artistry, complexity, exactly those traits identified with creative persons.” courage, emotion, fascination, and self-orientation.”

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Below, I’ve compiled a history of flannel as a fabric for apparel, with a focus on flannel shirts in particular. According to this fashion dictionary, flannel fabric was originally made from either carded wool or worsted yarn. Modern day flannels are usually made with cotton, wool, or synthetic fibers. Flannel can be traced back to 17th century Wales, where farmers wore flannel shirts to protect themselves from the elements. This tradition would continue for other blue collar workers as the prevalence of flannel grew. One man who is often credited for popularizing the flannel shirt in the United States is Hamilton Carhartt. He founded his namesake company in 1889. Wanting his clothes to be specially made for the working class, he visited railroad workers all over the country to determine the best tactics for creating top-notch utility products, including flannel shirts. He sought to set a standard of excellence, which he believed was reflected in every article he produced. A few of you may be wondering, what’s the difference between flannel and plaid shirts? At its most basic, plaid is a pattern which is believed to have originated in Scotland,

AGYNESS DEYN

just ridiculously good looking

Fashion’s New Tomboy Queen Deborah Orr

TOMBOY

Deyn’s idiosyncrasy lies only in the way she continues to dress like a style-conscious girl on a budget, instead of going belly-up before the blandishments of the designers who would very much like to dress her for absolutely nothing. (Not that she turns her nose up at a nice dress for the red carpet.) Her look is, in that respect, shrewd because it marks her out as “normal” in a business that is more comfortable with abnormal. That’s what got her spotted and that’s what got her work and attention. Are these minor confabulations important, even though they are far from new? I’m inclined to think that they are. There’s something rather pathetic about the widespread desire to believe that Deyn is the passive recipient of her success, rather than the active architect of her career. The idea that nice girls don’t want to have huge careers but instead have them thrust upon them really ought to have been consigned to history by now. Deyn is reported by all who know her to be down-to-earth and 02 straightforward, fun and decent. There’s something of an implication, in the attitudes shown towards her back story, that an acknowledged desire for success would run counter to these attributes, in just the same way as going to private school or having an uncle in the business is considered to be the sine qua non of cheating corruption, however talented you may be. Certainly, Deyn herself is in no hurry to challenge the way she has been packaged. The little she says in interviews is very much in the traditional vein of self-deprecation. She claims not to varnish her toenails because: “I’ve got really bad feet - they’re so bad they’re good.” She also likes to go along with the idea that she “is not sexy”, as if the divide between glamour models and fashion models never existed before she came along, and as if the triumph of a tall and willowy blonde with perfect skin somehow rewrites the story of 21st-century female pulchritude. Anyway, the vulgar T-shirts of her chum Holland, saying “Flick yer bean for Agyness Deyn”, appear to find buyers, even though no one is supposed to find her remotely fanciable. Deyn is aware that her championship of street style is a part of her image that brings in lavish contracts with luxury firms and is not above whispering

such lines from the PR handbook as: “I love Burberry and it’s special to work for a British label.” She flogs the British angle like mad, posting a photograph of her heroine, the Queen, on her website and flying a little Union flag off the back of her bicycle. All this adoration of England, must, of course, go down a storm in her adopted home of New York, where being as English as fish and chips, and even having served them, is even more of a novelty than it is in England. There can be no doubt that Deyn is poised to become famous and rich. There can be little doubt, either, that Deyn is happy at the prospect of such an outcome. I’m inclined to think that her keen desire to go along with the idea that all this is just something that was thrust upon her, is itself evidence of just how well she understands how popular culture works and how much T Oluxury M B O Ymarket relies on its association with youthful street styles in order 0 3 the to make its elitist pile. Deyn would never be crass enough to say that she wants to be massively wealthy. But she’s laying the foundations of empire. I’d be surprised if Deyn turned out to be the doomed kind of It girl rather than the savvy kind. Part of her compliance in going along with the media game appears to come from the understanding that, if you play your cards right, you can live in front of the cameras and still keep your private life private, as long as you follow the rules. Deyn turns up at the parties fashion throws but she is never seen staggering out of them. She is always working, except when she is behind closed doors, and she shows every sign of being able to keep it that way. There will be no profile-reviving reality shows for her and no florid brushes with tabloid scandal. The real story of Agyness Deyn is that she understands just what she wants and just what is required of her if she wants to get it. So far, all her dreams and plans are coming together nicely. There is no reason to imagine that she will ever stop rising without trace or ever regret her very deliberate choices.

The real story of Agyness Deyn is she understands just what she wants and how to get it.

november’s top three picks

“In order tWo obtain comparable levels of power

13 TOMBOY

TOMBOY

and “communal”. And there are other criticisms of the masculine/feminine distinction, such that the distinction strengthens gender stereotypes, and that the distinction should be abandoned altogether in favor of just using the instrumentality/expressiveness distinction. In 2002 Hittner and Daniels looked at a wide range of creative behaviors. They found that androgynous individuals (those reporting high levels of instrumentality and expressive characteristics) tended to report more creative accomplishments in literature, theater, and video-photography than nonandrogynous indviduals. Regarding literature, Virgina Woolf wrote in A Room of One’s Own, that to be an ideal writer, one ought to be “woman-manly or man-womanly… Some collaboration has to take place in the mind between the woman and the man before the art of creation can be accomplished. Some marriage of opposites has to be consummated.” In the essay, she praised a number of famous androgynous writers, including Shakespeare, Keats, Sterne, Cowper, Lamb, and Coleridge. She was unsure, however of the brilliance of Milton and Jonson, Worsworth and Tolstoy, saying that they had “a dash too much of the male”, and Proust, since he was “a little too much of a woman.” Interestingly, when Hittner and Daniels controlled for creative theatre achievement, the researchers didn’t find an association between androgyny and creative music achievement. This suggests to me that a crucial factor that determines the androgyny/music link is the extent to which the musical performance is theatrical. It would be interesting to see whether androgyny is as related to cello and flute performance as it is to rock star performance. Also interestingly, the researchers found that instrumentality was positively related to business venture creativity as well as a flexible cognitive style, whereas androgyny was not related to business venture creativity (but androgyny was marginally related to cognitive flexibility). The researchers note:

androgyny. J. Crew’s “boy” shirt for women may be a trend, but the tomboy is as old as time. For Wildfang, “tomboy” is a spectrum, from a preppy type who prefers her boyfriend’s button-downs to the sporty woman looking for a T-shirt. She’s Scout in “To Kill a Mocking Bird.” Patti Smith on the cover of “Horses.” Audrey Hepburn in “Roman Holiday.” Diane Keaton anywhere. McIlroy had promised herself she would never go into retail. Her father ran a shop in Ireland. He worked weekends, nights, holidays. She believed there was a need, but she didn’t want to leave Nike, where she worked in digital sports marketing, unless she could prove it. So they started with questions. Does the consumer really exist? Is it just us? Is it just women in Portland? What do tomboys have in common? What differentiates them? The company, which now employs 22 people in its Old Town headquarters, had a built-in focus group. Though all the women considered themselves tomboys, that meant something different for each. Recieving input from many different women varying on the “tomboy” spectrum is how Wild Fang carefully put together their collection of the perfect Tomboy expression.

whereas flannel is a fabric, as we’ve learned. So why the confusion? As tartan plaid looks so at home on flannel, the the print and fabric were often used together and quickly became synonymous in discussion. The perfect example of this is the stereotype of the lumberjack, who in 20th century popular culture was always depicted with a pair of boots and the ubiquitous plaid flannel shirt. Some associate flannel with the grunge look of the 1990s, but this article from T Magazine, the style mag of the New York Times, disagrees. It argues that by the time flannel was introduced as “grunge,” the look was a watered-down version of its original self. Flannel shirts today are often linked to hipster culture. TIME notes, “Everything about them is exactingly constructed to give off the vibe that they just don’t care.” While hipsters may pretend not to care, I know that if they’re rocking flannel, they understand the true significance of comfort and style, something we can all appreciate.

Ut ex evenis molorerum, siminihitas dolest perum eiunt alicia vendandus eum re volupta velestrum aditaectam volorem fugitas inulpa ipid quo velibus as sim volupta quiandel maximus. Udam ilicto berum id exero magnament invelento tempos idem explibus eicatibus autat. Licilia volupta eribusa nimodit, quo cum voluptur aut omnissit, idit etur sum quam liqui bea secte volupta que pedia plignam laborpo reptas denieni millace rrumentor aritam lit, acepro quae quatatur? Equo bea nonsequia quis deliate nonsedipsam dusdandae dolupta nullauditas estis debitii scimi, utem iliam dolenim agnimporior sit pedit iurio corepuda venia imi, omni con repreperum fugiass equatur, si corehendam a volorum verspie ndunto tetur? Ad qui venisitatus es et elecatibus, officius autemBorepta ium quam inciatempor sequoditate dolo te voleseq uiderch icidipsam imos aut odis volore, omnissimaxim ute prori berro is sinctur? Uptas nimilibus et volupit volo ipissum fugit aut pra cum

ericka linder

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Deyn’s idiosyncrasy lies only in the way she continues to dress like a style-conscious girl on a budget.

The History of Flannel

elliot sailors

CONTENTS

TOMBOY

STYLE W

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TOMBOY

LIFE

Ellen Page’s HRC Speech

ari fritz

Facebook: Taking Steps with Gender

TOMBOY

Facebook is making some changes towards a more inclusive community for users with the addition of gender-neutral options for family member identification. Previously the social networking site had announced the addition of customizable gender options for its U.S. users along with three pronoun choices: him, her or them. The change was meant to give people more ways to describe themselves, “such as androgynous, bi-gender, intersex, gender fluid or transsexual,” the Associated Press reported. Now, Facebook is expanding its gender-neutral options to include family members, the Advocate noted. The new additions include sibling (gender neutral), parent (gender neutral), grandchild (gender neutral) and more. The Advocate reports that not all U.S. users’ profiles have the update

yet. Facebook has not issued a public statement on the changes and a media representative was not immediately available for comment. Back in February, Facebook software engineer Brielle Harrison, a transgender woman, expressed her thoughts on the project. “There’s going to be a lot of people for whom this is going to mean nothing, but for the few it does impact, it means the world,” she said, via the AP, adding, “All too often transgender people like myself and other gender nonconforming people are given this binary option, do you want to be male or female? What is your gender? And it’s kind of disheartening because none of those let us tell others who we really are. This really changes that, and for the first time I get to go to the site and specify to all the people I know what my gender is.”

Shari Heck

Visualizing Language II