Tomgirl by Margaret Albaugh

tomgirl

This word doesn’t get used in popular society because the act of being feminine is looked down on. We do our best to uplift our girls to be equal, or to be the same as, boys. But we do not teach our boys they can be equal or the same as girls, because society looks down on femininity. Until we examine our relationship to gender and femininity, we cannot truly become an equal society. This project reflects on gender constructs and the ways we as parents pass down harmful stereotypes and ideas about gender and beauty. It also examines the pressures of fitting into the gender binary and the damages that causes on young children who are trans or non-binary.

A Boy’s Nails I thoug...he victim and the perpetrator?

A Boy’s Nails

I thought of Matthew Shepard when I created this image. He died at the hands of two homophobic men in Wyoming. I was only a teenager when it happened and sensed homophobia was on the rise but when Matthew Shepard died, I couldn’t understand how people could be so uncomfortable with who he was they would rather inflict harm on him than reflect on their own discomfort.
These nails are the representation of a child’s pain, inflicted by society because they can’t deal with his “different” gender expression. The discomfort people feel when they see a boy with painted nails is so great, they might look the other way when someone inflicts pain, or they might be the assaulter
themselves. As a society, when we look away from people who are suffering, we are implicitly giving our approval of their suffering.
When someone is the victim of a hate crime and we don’t speak up against the hate, what are we saying about the victim and the perpetrator?

Value of a Boy How do we determ...he pedastal just a little bit?

Value of a Boy

How do we determine a child's value? When they've learned the alphabet? Can make us laugh? Can help with chores? Can fit within the labels we assign them - boy/girl, studious, helpful, smart, ambitious, athletic, popular. All things people want for their kids.
Does their value to us or society fluctuate based on these parameters? When they fail to fulfill these labels, do they fall off the pedastal just a little bit?

Color This image was meant to e...olor associations around them.

Color

This image was meant to express the ongoing genderizing of everything. Colors, interests, activities, Scouts, sports. Even sides of a couch.
Historically, pink has been associated with young boys much longer than with girls. But on an evolutionary level, does color have anything to do with gender? Children are not born with an inclination towards one color or another and color preference does not signify hetero- or homosexuality or being
transgender. So we do we as a society value color and gender association so much?

Neither of these children are amused with the color associations around them.

Morning Routine They say as a p...aring down his authentic self.

Morning Routine

They say as a parent, “you have to pick your battles”. There were many battles with each of my children growing up. One battle I regret choosing, but perhaps I had to to learn from in order to feel conviction about our choices and direction as parents, is the battle over clothing.
I remember hearing voices in my head, voices from relatives and made-up voices of society, haunting me when I watched him dress himself. "She's using him for exploitation". "She's making him wear dresses". "He'll be bullied". “Why are you letting him do that?” “Is he confused?”
And even though I knew in my heart clothes didn't matter (or I should say, his clothing choices mattered to him but had no effect on me), I chose to go into battles with him, scared of what people thought of us, of me as a parent, of him and his "odd" choices. While the arguments were anchored in safety choices (weather appropriateness of the dresses or the safety hazard of wearing one of my old torn shirts as a dress), the bonus was that he wouldn't dress as a girl.
In the end, the stress of these arguments were not only not worth it, but caused harm in our relationship. It also caused harm in both of us psychologically, as I was not speaking from my authentic self and I was tearing down his authentic self.

Fantasy Land Children love to p...han a reminder of development.

Fantasy Land

Children love to play in baths. I remember playing in the bath all the time,
pretending to be someone or something I wasn't. My kids love to do this too; they pretend to be dragons, fish, mermaids... the opposite gender.
After the bath, is it time to stop playing? I wanted to blur the lines between
fantasy and reality by making it harder to discern whether the child is fully
underwater or not. When does one end and the other begin? When can one
actually become the other? And where are we truly authentic?
The small growth of under-arm hair is a reminder of how our bodies age and the expectations of us change with it. But as underarm hair occurs in women too, I think it is also a question of is it masculine or feminine? What makes underarm hair unfeminine? Maybe it is more of a challenge of beauty standards rather than a reminder of development.

Bound Feet I wanted to remind v...initions of social constructs.

Bound Feet

I wanted to remind viewers that gender, a social construct, something
influenced by time and place. What did it mean to be a woman in ancient China? What did it mean to be beautiful? Foot binding was considered a
standard beauty practice that took place for centuries in China. There are a few survivors of foot binding even today.
Would it still be considered a feminine act today? I would assume very few people would want to practice it, whether they are cisgender female or transgender female. But if they lived in ancient China, maybe this would be something they practiced, because gender is a social construct. To be part of society meant to adopt common definitions of social constructs.

Waistlines   How far d..., not mentally or spiritually.

Waistlines

How far do we push our beauty standards? When we tell a child he or she looks cute or pretty, we remind them they are for looking at; they become a “something”. We remind them of what is important to us, to our culture, and that is beauty.
I remember being a child and relatives commented on my weight. As a teen, they commented on my skin. While the remarks, words spat out quickly and thoughtlessly, may seem benign and innocent to them, they were hurtful to me. They cemented an idea that my importance lay in what I provided visually for them, not mentally or spiritually.

Initial Consult As a teenager, ... naturally hold more body fat?

Initial Consult

As a teenager, I watched MTV. I remember Spring Break shows with young men showing off their calf implants and Sweet Sixteen shows with young girls
getting breast implants for their birthdays. Their bodies were barely formed and now they were getting surgery to alter them.
I've noticed that clothing has evolved and young children's clothing has really pushed the boundaries of feminine ideals of beauty. They wear high heel boots at at eight years old. Their underwear is thin and when I compare a boy’s pants to girl’s, girl’s pants are made form-fitting. We are priming them for beauty
standards of adults. At what point are we going to say enough is enough? Could plastic surgery for children be that far off?
On that note, why are beauty standards the way they are? Why do women need to be thin when a woman’s body has evolved to naturally hold more body fat?

Tweeze Beauty standards. As wom...ach our children about beauty?

Tweeze

Beauty standards. As women, we endure a lot of pain in the name of beauty. What does this teach our children, explicitly and implicitly, about the
importance of beauty, of our comfort, and of what others think of us?
In fifth grade, my friends started shaving their legs. By sixth grade, they were tweezing their eyebrows and wearing eyeliner and lipstick. Male counterparts were playing sports, studying, being outdoors.
Beauty and aesthetics will always be part of a culture’s narrative, as it is a form of self-expression and a strong ritual in our friendships and courtships. My question is, to what end should we pursue beauty? What should we teach our children about beauty?

Shoes As I walked through Targ...not attached to gender itself?

Shoes

As I walked through Target with my kids, I wondered how people from other centuries and cultures, either in the past or in the future, would respond to our fashion sense. Maybe our shoes would look progressive; maybe they would look ill-fitting and impractical, maybe even painful.
Beauty standards fluctuate, but for the most part, require some amount of pain. How do societies choose to repeat and encourage harmful beauty practices?
In terms of gender, how do we continue to define gender based on clothing? And as we reflect on the changing gender expressions, can we accept that gender expression is a matter of time and place and not attached to gender itself?

Toxic Femininity When I was pre...image itself is a composite.**

Toxic Femininity

When I was pregnant, I said if I had a girl, pink would be banished. I envisioned daughters that were rugged and outspoken. I wanted to raise females that were athletic, understood cars, were interested in engineering; all attributes
characteristic of boys. I thought I was being a feminist.
But is that feminist? What is wrong with being "girly"? What is wrong with being sensitive, liking pink, and wanting to be pretty? My ideas of feminism were challenged once I had children. In order to be a true feminist, I had to
embrace femininity. Encouraging masculinity in females is not feminism. It's another form of societal pressure. Authenticity, whether expressed as feminine or masculine, should be embraced. In order to be a true supporter of the trans and non-binary community, I had to look at my own biases regarding femininity.
This image is also a challenge to our society - how we nurture bullying in any form. Every generation has its scapegoat; its victim. As we’ve become more
accepting of homosexuality, the bigotry has shifted towards those who are transgender.

**The comments were taken from a real thread by parents at a school with a trans girl. The image itself is a composite.**

Bathrooms

Reset How much do we want to di...utton? What do we really want?

Reset

How much do we want to dictate the lives of our children? How much do we want our children to just do what we say? How important is their gender to us? How important are their choices? Is it important enough to want a switch so we could choose their gender? Is it important enough we would want a reset button?
What do we really want?

A Mountaintop   Under...r how others adorn themselves?

A Mountaintop

Underneath this child lies a mountain of clothing given to them by
well-meaning relatives. Their hopes are that if particular clothes are given, then the gender identity will follow.
I think they know who they are is more than just clothes. Why do we attribute so much importance to how we adorn ourselves? Or how others adorn
themselves?

Margaret Albaugh

Also by Margaret Albaugh —

Where I End and You Begin

MeiMei JieJie

Portfolio

Enamel

Indivisible

What Are You

Love and Life in Hospice

The Whimsical Imagination of the Albaugh Girls

14,000 Miles

14,000 Miles