Tomboy with a Girly Streak

Even the least girly of all girls love their stuffed animals.

"Why's everybody look so surprised when they find out I can sew? Yeah, I got a hobby! So what?!"

— Vanessa, Dragalia Lost

Most Tomboys in fiction tend to dislike "girly" things and being associated with them, but sometimes something sneaks through. It may turn out that she likes the color pink, has a thing for frilly and girly dresses, is easily enamored by cute things, or is a surprisingly good cook and has neat domestic skills. She may be a Bruiser with a Soft Center. In other words, this character may have a tomboyish physical appearance, but her interests will tend to be a mixture of tomboyish and girly interests, and her personality can swing either way.

Reactions to this trait may vary. The tomboy in question, particularly if she still has a tomboyish personality, might be ashamed of her girly lapse and try to hide it, at least at the start, or she might actually be proud of it and be ready to give a hard smack to anybody who teases her about it. Usually, her peers will be surprised due to her usual boyish wear and outward attitude, or vice versa, where she looks girly but acts boyish, and those who tease will pay. However, if she has a girly personality, she is more likely to be open about her girly side, and not be ashamed of it, and other than correcting other people by saying that she's not exactly a tomboy, she will usually not get angry when other people call her a tomboy (unless they say something really bad about it, usually by calling her unfeminine, in which case she will punish them for it), although nonetheless, she will accept compliments for cleaning up nicely. In some cases, these characters may even object to being called tomboys, despite their somewhat tomboyish outer physical appearance, because of their girly personality and their girly interests, even if they also have tomboyish interests as well.

The inversion (and normal Foil) is Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak.

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Example subpages:

• Anime & Manga
• Literature
• Live-Action Films
• Live-Action TV
• Video Games
• Western Animation

Other examples:

Comic Books

• Archie Comics:
  • Betty became this around the 1960s after a Tomboyness Up Grade. She is a Wrench Wench who wears a Tomboyish Ponytail and plays a lot of different sports, such as baseball and basketball. She also likes wearing pretty dresses, is sweet, kind, and caring, and has great domestic skills.
  • Midge has Boyish Short Hair and plays for the school's softball team, and unlike Betty, she isn't known for her domestic talents—but she does enjoy wearing pretty dresses and shopping with her friends.
• Black Canary: Dinah Laurel Lance, the modern-age Black Canary. She's an Action Girl who loves cars, bikes, getting drunk, getting laid, getting into fights, and her dress sense is very much a Short Tank. She's also a Cool Big Sis and Team Mom to any young hero she meets (having started off her heroics quite young herself), and her personality is very heart-on-sleeves emotional and loving. She can rock pretty dresses, and she likes wearing make-up. She's also prone to making very obscene jokes and remarks, in case she's ever too feminine. Her fellow Birds of Prey field agent Helena Bertinelli is an inversion of this mould.
• Crossed: Elisa from the Wish You Were Here arc is a self-taught Cold Sniper with lots of facial piercings who seems comfortable doing outdoor work, but a lot of her shirts are pink or purple and her hair seems like she puts a decent effort into combing and brushing it.
• The Inhumans: Medusa was introduced this way. One of the most fearsome warriors of Attilan, but she loved the flowers that grew in the Himalayas where Attilan was originally located.
• My Little Pony Micro Series: In issue #2 Rainbow Dash's vision of a Cool Bike includes "streamers and a boss pink basket on the front".
• Wonder Girl: When she was introduced in Wonder Woman (1987), Cassie Sandsmark was a tomboy who wore baggy clothes and kept her hair cropped short, but she was interested in some stereotypical teenage girly things especially her taste in music. Her reviled Teen Titans incarnation dropped all the tomboy elements to make her a vapid girly girl who was completely obsessed with her boyfriend.
• Wonder Woman: Later continuities invokes this. On one hand, she happily decapitates monsters and loves showing off her Amazon strength in battle. On the other hand, however, she adores children, likes wearing fancy dresses, is actually a very good secretary, and often plays Team Mom to her teammates.
• X-Men:
  • Rogue is a blatant example. She's a fiery Mississippi tomboy who can bench press a truck and tries to avoid dressing more femininely due to her Touch of Death. Conversely Rogue herself actually dreams of being a Scarlet O'Hara type and she does look beautiful in a dress (as Gambit is quick to note). Rogue also loves reading romance books, cooks a wonderful pie, and has gotten upset at being unable to get cozy with a “cute guy”. During Jean and Scott's wedding, Rogue excitedly used her Flight to catch the bridal bouquet in mid-air before the rest of the X-Women could even react.
  • Jubilee is even more tomboyish than Rogue but she's more girly than she lets on, having some A-Cup Angst, and is pretty fashion conscious. Storm notes amused that despite her being bored at the wedding Jubilee was still suspiciously quick to line up for the aforementioned bouquet throwing and was very ticked off when Rogue "cheated".
  • X-23's younger sister Gabby. She's a trained killer equipped with body armor...which she decorates with flowers and hearts.

Comic Strips

• Dennis the Menace (US): Gina shares similar interests with Dennis since she loves sports, but she also has long hair and usually wears a dress. When Dennis introduces her to a new kid in the neighborhood, he comments, "She doesn't look like a tomboy to me." She then slugged Dennis for calling her a tomboy.

Eastern Animation

• In Flowering Heart, Sunwoo loves sports and other activities but uses eyeshadow and blush to transform.
• In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, Jonie is physically the strongest of the goats and is quite talkative, serving as the tomboy to Tibbie's fashionista girly girl, but she is also kind-hearted and likes pink.

Fan Works

• In The Bridge, Rainbow Dash is highly competitive and tomboyish, not afraid to challenge someone to a race nor divebomb a dragon attacking a campground and dropkick it in the face. That said she has no aversion to some dress-up and trying out feminine clothes, explained by her mother being a fashion designer and Rarity's mentor so she naturally tried on a lot of clothes growing up.
• Child of the Storm has Carol Danvers as a Deadpan Snarker Action Girl who's usually most at home in scruffy jeans and a t-shirt, loves captaining her school's ladies football (soccer) team, and wants to be a fighter pilot when she grows up. She is also quite comfortable being her uncle's plus one at fancy parties after his divorce (since said uncle is Jack O'Neill, this is mainly to give him someone to talk to that he won't want to strangle) - indeed, this is how Harry first meets her - and actively enjoys both wearing fancy dresses from time to time, and dancing (though, granted, the dancing is mostly with Harry, her Best Friend, after most of two books of mutual UST and they've just sealed a Relationship Upgrade). She pretends not to, however, because she's reacting against her father, whose Stay in the Kitchen attitude has him trying to make her be a Proper Lady.
• In the semi-genderbent Sword Art Online fanfiction story The Kirita Chronicles, Kirigaya Kazuta (the genderbent counterpart of the main character Kirigaya Kazuto/Kirito) has taken karate classes and has admitted to herself she finds it easier to beat up boys than to talk to them. She prefers to be a male character in video games, she enjoys fighting in virtual reality games, and she was the best Beta Tester for Sword Art Online. However, she is proud of her long hair, and she enjoys cooking.
• In Life Ore Death, the protagonist Ferris is a strong and brutal melee fighter who prefers to keep her legs free while fighting. Outside of the battlefield, she wears skirts and blouses, is noted to be subtly vain, can cook well enough, is very fond of cuddling, and often has emotional conversations with her friends.
• Linka Loud in One Girl with Ten Brothers, as a result of growing up with so many brothers. One snobby female classmate ridicules her for not being very girly, which makes Linka realize that even her own room is more girly than her. This prompts her to join a beauty pageant, though she ultimately decides she'd rather be a tomboy with her brothers' support and love than worry about what a snob says about her.
• Pokémon: Clefairy Tales has Misty, who is referred to on her Gym's signpost as "the tomboyish mermaid" and is indeed a Shorttank and ironic Fiery Redhead like her anime counterpart. However, she's a quite bit more graceful than her girly counterpart Leaf, and she's fairly skilled at gymnastics and mentions having studied ballet under the Squirtle Scouts. Being a '90s girl, she also happens to be a huge fan of Sailor Moon, as she readily admits to Leaf in chapter 11.
• Pokémon Crossing has the main lead Holly. After coming out as a girl, she's a hotblooded trainer who loves Pokémon battling and is eager to learn how to make a molotov cocktail. She also wears a huge flower hairclip with a pair of low pigtails and is into magical girl series like Pretty Refresh.
• The Story of Apollo, Daphne and Luca: An Italian Tragedy: Giulia is a brash and outspoken Fiery Redhead who loves action and adventures and has an aversion to cheesy and mushy romance, but doesn't mind wearing a cute yellow dress at the School Festival (making Vincenzo, the most popular boy in school who developed a crush on her because of her brave and adventurous nature, stare in awe).
• Played for drama in Sword Art Online Abridged. Suguha in this treatment is a foul-mouthed Little Sister Bully who abuses her brother Kazuto both physically and verbally, and as in canon is a skilled kendo practitioner. But when she logs into Alfheim Online it's to roleplay (badly) as "Princess Leafa," and she's more worried that her brother will find out she once baked her "friend" Shinichi some cupcakes than she is that he'll learn what she and Shinichi have been up to in the school supply closet. Suguha suffers from Internalized Categorism over her affection for "girly shit," to the extent that she assumes her brother's entered ALO solely to mock her for playing a game about fairies, which Yui speculates is due to some traumatic childhood event that made Suguha hate her own femininity as a sign of weakness. Episode 17 reveals that after her brother dropped out of kendo, their grandfather, who favored Kazuto as his successor, put Suguha through Training from Hell in an effort to make her quit, forcing her to "man up" in Suguha's words.
• In The Legend of Zelda fanfic Tangled In Time, Tetra is tough as nails, assertive, and worked as a ranch-hand for seven years after the Royal Family was overthrown by Ganondorf. However, she enjoys wearing pretty dresses and ecstatic when Link manages to get one for her.
• Too Much Too Much: Vallea Endrizzi is a plucky and spunky young girl who likes to discover ancient Italian archeology, playing sports, being outdoors and reading comic books and her two closest friends are boys, but also enjoys ballroom dancing, has a sweet and gentle personality and acts quite flirty and coy towards Luca.
• The Harry Potter fanfic Weasley Girl depicts an Alternate Universe in which Ron Weasley was born a girl. As you might expect from a girl with five older brothers, Veronica "Ronnie" Weasley is pretty tomboyish; she's brash, physical, Quidditch-obsessed, temperamental and an occasionally insensitive Deadpan Snarker who really likes to swear, much like her canon male counterpart. However, she's also rather cuddly and is almost always the one initializing hugs between Potter's Gang, she coos and fawns over animals (who adore her in return), she wears pink pajamas (which are said to clash horribly with her hair) and judging by her vision in the Mirror of Erised, she wouldn't mind being prettier, and if Fred and George are to be believed, she also used to hold tea parties for her dolls when she was younger. At one point, she claims she wishes she was a boy — though it's more because she's tired of Percy, Fred and George being overprotective than of any actual dislike of traditionally girly things, and she changes her mind when she realizes that boys her age (at least Harry and Neville) are awkward about hugging and showing affection in public.
• In Voyages of the Wild Sea Horse, Miriam is an Amazonian Beauty shipwright who when introduced wears nothing but a crude bikini and has an almost thuggish personality. She actually likes pretty dresses, it's just hard to get enough cloth for one at her size; she likes wearing her hair long, but older kids used to pull it to bully her; and she loves cheesy drama stories.
• In the RWBY fanfic Weiss Reacts, Blake is depicted as badass and manly as all heck, taking notes from none other than Kamina. However, her favourite anime is Cardcaptor Sakura and she softens a lot when her father is around.

Films — Animated

• Anastasia: The titular character is gutsy, outspoken, not afraid to get her hands dirty, and happy to throw down grappling hooks and set gun powder alight when the need calls for it. However, she's also thrilled to go dress shopping in Paris and enjoys ballroom dancing.
• Atlantis: The Lost Empire is packed with these. First, there is Helga, the Femme Fatale slash Action Girl. Kida, the romantic lead, is a fierce warrior and very outdoorsy and ballsy, but also sexy and in touch with her feminine intuition. The older example is Cool Old Lady Ms. Packard, the no-nonsense Communications Officer. She is a Deadpan Snarker Ms. Fan Disservice with a touch of Action Girl but is very gossipy and surprisingly compassionate. Averted with Wrench Wench Audrey, who is a hardcore tomboy through and through... well at least until the end where she kisses Milo on the cheek and wears an elegant dress in the epilogue.
• Barbie and the Three Musketeers: Corrine practices fencing, often wears pants and has a Hot-Blooded, fearless and adventurous personality. However, she also enjoys dancing and doesn't mind wearing a lovely pink ballgown when sneaking, along with Aramina, Renee and Viveca, at Prince Louis' ball in order to save him from being murdered by his cousin Philippe.
• Batman: Bad Blood: Kate Kane/Batwoman is a superhero and former military cadet who sometimes wears a leather jacket when she's not fighting crime. She also enjoys sketching and has a set of pink shopping bags and lots of pink and purple clothes.
• The Boxtrolls: Winifred "Winnie" Portley-Rind is outspoken, a Little Miss Badass, and a Nightmare Fetishist. She also wears a pink dress and likes to dance.
• Despicable Me: Edith is interested in Gru's cool high-tech gadgets, thinks its cool that her bed is a hollowed-out bomb, was excited about Gru shaping her pancakes like a "dead guy", is violent to grown-ups she doesn't like and has a generally gross sense of humor. However, she is in the same ballet class as her sisters and is always seen wearing pink (and almost nothing else), especially her pink sherpa hat.
• Encanto: Luisa Madrigal has a powerfully muscular build and is proud of her strength and muscles. She shares the same garb as Mirabel and Dolores, including earrings and a hair ribbon. When she sings "Surface Pressure", she fantastizes about relaxing with adorable unicorn donkeys.
• Frozen: Anna is very much a Tomboy Princess, especially compared to her more prim sister, and she's rambunctious and willing to pick fights, but she's also very romantic and dreams of falling in love in her "I Want" Song.
• Astrid in How to Train Your Dragon is an axe-happy Action Girl but she has a timorous girly side that Hiccup brings out and she still wears a skirt most of 90% of the time.
• Inside Out: Riley is a pre-teen girl who plays hockey, which is known for being a very rough sport, and she tends to wear pants rather than skirts or dresses. However, she eventually gains an interest in Boy Bands, fashion, and "tragic vampire romance" novels offscreen. As a little girl, she also liked Cutie Pie Princess dolls and could remember the names of each one.
• The Little Mermaid (1989): Ariel, an adventurous and rebellious Fiery Redhead, is more of a Tomboy Princess when compared to her sisters, but despite her tomboyish traits, her default personality is giddy, playful, bubbly and sensitive, and falling in love with Eric reveals that she can be very flirty and hopelessly romantic.
  • The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea: Ariel's daughter Melody is more unfeminine than Ariel was as a teen, and headstrong and daring just like both her parents. But despite being tomboyish, she has a princess canopy bed and a girlish styled bedroom.
• Mulan's titular heroine is quite unconventional and struggles to fit into the strict gender roles in Imperial China. However she does like the makeover she gets to prepare for the Matchmaker, had actually struggled with fitting in amongst the other soldiers (and even complained that she didn't want to smell like a man), and she finds comfort in a simpler (but no less lovely) blue dress in the finale. Her girly streak grows longer in the sequel, as while Mulan is as badass as ever and pretty tomboyish when compared to the princesses, she's revealed to have a romantic side, which is best shown by how happy she was with marrying Shang and how ecstatic she was when the princesses get together with Yao, Ling and Chien Po.
• Space Jam: Lola Bunny. On one hand, she's a sassy, no-nonsense woman who is good at basketball and hates being called "doll". On the other, she acts like the typical seductive Femme Fatale and her sex appeal is anything but masculine. In The Looney Tunes Show she has a Girliness Upgrade.
• Strange Magic: When she becomes a Tomboy Princess as a result of her Cynicism Catalyst, Marianne adopts a lot of tomboy traits like wearing pants and learning to wield the sword. However, she also starts putting on eyeliner, showing that she isn't completely unfeminine.
• In Turning Red, Miriam is described as a bit of a tomboy, having the most masculine fashion sense of the four friends and carrying a skateboard at the beginning of the film, yet she's also the Team Mom in her circle of friends, and is head over heels over 4*Town like the rest of them.
• Zootopia: Officer Judy Hopps has an unwavering dream of being a real cop, wants to be the center of the action, is strong-willed, and feels most comfortable as a leader, but she also shows an interest in fashion and cute things, wears a pink shirt during the third act, and shows her emotions readily.

Mythology & Religion

• In Classical Mythology, Athena is mostly remembered as the goddess of wisdom and war; she can canonically take Ares in a fight and was literally born wearing armor. However, she's also the patron of feminine art forms like weaving. She can also be rather vain: The Trojan War began when she competed in a beauty contest with Hera and Aphrodite, and she gave up playing the flute (which she invented) because she thought that she looked ugly with her cheeks puffed out. There's also a very late, obscure legend where she turned Medusa into a monster for claiming to be more beautiful than her.

Professional Wrestling

• Aja Kong, the delinquent haired, war painting, sumo training nunchuck wielding backfisting Wrestling Monster randomly showed up in Future Of Wrestling as "Erika", a kiss-blowing cuddle bug. The gimmick was resurrected in Fighting Opera Hustle, with the addition of heart symboled blush stickers, a tutu, flowers to give to the fans, and her W Kong Tag Team partner Amazing Kong as the similarly suddenly girly Margaret. Also, baby face!Awesome Kong started wearing flower print apparel under her Lady Legionnaire Wear after her Wardrobe Malfunction in TNA.
• The butch, boxing basket ball player Jazz has an unashamed weakness for moderately expensive hair weaves, especially if it's Brazilian.
• Sara Del Rey has the heart of a goofy, fashion-loving girl who likes a little makeup. She so often appears as an unkempt hard-ass, in angular masks or in war paint because she's upset pro wrestling is not more respected and women's pro wrestling, in particular, is routinely disrespected in her home country. Still, every once and while she allows herself to be happy. Then some "girly" attributes shine through. During her active career, she was the Tomboy to Daizee Haze, who started her career in Gateway Championship Wrestling in her native Missouri as a New-Age Retro Hippie/The Stoner.
• "Sexy" Lexi Lane, captain of the track team, powerlifter, commonly dresses in sweats, has two days of the week dedicated to training with the boys, also served as a cheerleader for at least four years and participated in a pageant. She's still the least girly member of The Beautiful People but she took to the Mean Girls Porn Star Sorority mashup surprisingly well before TNA made her a Beauty Queen Call Girl hybrid.
• Ivelisse Vélez, an "anti diva", looks back on her time wearing jewelry and bustiers for the FCW revival and WWE NXT with shame, saying it was just for a paycheck. She admits, however, to enjoying cheerleading practices.
• Mercedes Martinez, loath as she is to admit it, has gradually let out hints that this is the case over her wrestling career, such as the build-up to a Shine event where she was supposed to be hyping her match Kimberly Maddox but started trying to remember how many thing dolls Kimberly had.
• Bella Twins: Nikki is presented as the Tomboy of the two, opting for a Tomboyish Baseball Cap and ring gear that resembles a soccer kit. She also wrestles with more power moves. Outside the ring, she was a Gamer Chick growing up and is also a Big Eater. However she's the one more likely to be shown dressed to the nines when she's not wrestling - and in fact, has more pink outfits than her sister. Total Divas shows that she's The Fashionista with a huge love for designer shoes and bags.
• Kaitlyn eventually started calling herself "The Hybrid Diva" in reference to this trope. According to her, she was once told that she was a combination of the Amazonian Beauty and the Girl Next Door. She was definitely The Lad-ette but also had a love for cute animals and didn't mind putting on a nice outfit when the occasion called for it. After she left wrestling, she started a clothing line - of women's workout clothes.
• Natalya Neidhart is a 3rd generation Diva who eats, sleeps, and breathes wrestling. She's the only woman to come out of her family's Hart Dungeon. She's also The Fashionista as well as being a self-admitted Crazy Cat Lady.
• Paige likewise comes from a wrestling dynasty and has been doing it since she was thirteen. She's also a Perky Goth, wears plenty of make-up, and adores cats. She also admitted to being a huge fan of Britney Spears when she was younger.
• Liv Morgan of NXT is a Joisey Lad-ette who wears a Tomboyish Baseball Cap to the ring. But she's also a glamorous blonde who was a model before wrestling and does a few She-Fu moves in the ring.
• Mattel and WWE have teamed up to make a new toy line called WWE Superstars. It consists of 12-inch fashion dolls based on Nikki and Brie Bella, Sasha Banks, Natalya, Charlotte Flair, Becky Lynch, Alicia Fox, and Eva Marie. Each figure comes with both a wrestling outfit and a dress suitable for the Red Carpet.
• Sonya Deville is a tough, rough, and tumble Action Girl with an MMA background and started off looking rather unfeminine, with the Tomboyish Ponytail and Braids of Action look. Not to mention, she had a very deep voice and an intense, confrontational in-your-attitude. As time went on, she became slightly more girly in terms of looks, having long, straight hair, more make-up and eyeliner, and a somewhat more feminine appearance in general, even wearing some colourful short skirts, etc. In addition, she hangs around with the more feminine Mandy Rose and the two often form a little duo that goes around acting like bullies towards Babyfaces and does things like try and sell girly magazines to other women on the roster.
• Becky Lynch is "The Man" and is probably the least feminine of all the women on the roster, but she still has a few notable if subtle girly traits. She does wear a little bit of make-up and usually comes out to the ring with straight, long, bright coloured hair. She also occasionally wears a little bit of feminine clothing like a skirt, dress, or skimpy wrestling attire (though still less revealing than most other women's outfits), though she mostly wears shirts, pants, and masculine clothes as of her current gimmick.
• While ODB is usually an One of the Boys Lad-ette Hard-Drinking Party Girl, this picture is of her dressed in Pink and cuddling a Teddy Bear and looking forward to Valentine's Day. It's quite a different look for her, and it works.

Puppet Shows

• Ojo on Bear in the Big Blue House is rather sporty, holds her own well with the boys, and likes to pretend to be various professions such as detective or doctor that aren't traditionally known for being female. She also is quite attached to her snowbear, enjoys playing tea party and dressing up in girly costumes and accessories.
• Zoe on Sesame Street is a tomboy who rides around in her "Zoe Mobile," and owns a Pet Rock named "Rocco." However, she also loves ballet and generally wears a tutu and barrettes in her hair.
• Bella on Tweenies is a loud, outspoken, and argumentative tomboy who will fight with anyone if she doesn't agree with something and likes to play sports with the boys. She also enjoys playing girly games with her best friend, the girly Fizz, and dressing up as a queen or a fairy.

Visual Novels

• Athena Cykes from Ace Attorney is an outspoken, reckless, playful tomboy. Yet at the wedding in the ending of the DLC case of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice, she wears a pretty yellow dress and is very determined to catch the bridal bouquet.
• CLANNAD:
  • Kyou Fujibayashi is aggressive, loud, athletic, and violent, but she's very good at cooking and is very proud of her long hair.
  • Tomoyo Sakagami also qualifies. Despite being rather masculine in her behavior and her insane fighting ability, she was genuinely upset when told that Sunohara suspected that she was a boy in disguise, and proved to be a rather decent cook when she prepared Tomoya's meals.
  • Ushio Okazaki likes toys for boys and plays baseball with her grandfather, but she does like cute things like the Dango Daikazoku and wears pretty dresses.
• Naomi Nakashima from Corpse Party is a bright, boisterous tomboy who has Boyish Short Hair and takes the lead often, but behind this demeanor is a more girlish side that likes shopping and grooming as much as other average girls.
• Aoi Asahina from Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is a Passionate Sports Girl who is skilled at every sport that exists to some degree and is a Big Eater, but she also often talks about keeping in touch with her girl side, with her final Free Time Event revealing that she's often nervous of not being enough of a girl, with her trying to act as a stereotypical girlfriend.
• Morgan from Double Homework, who is tough and mechanically inclined, also has a soft side.
• Saber from Fate/stay night is a stoic female warrior who, due to the circumstances of her life before the Grail War, has trouble thinking of herself as a woman, and indeed has a rather masculine self-identity. However, those circumstances no longer apply in the modern era, allowing her to explore her femininity: she keeps her hair in a Prim and Proper Bun kept in place with a ribbon, habitually wears dresses (like the long skirt/blouse combo given to her by Rin, and a Battle Ballgown when fighting) and loves stuffed animals.
• Forte Stollen in Galaxy Angel is a Gun Nut with a huge collection of firearms, but she's still in touch with her feminine side, enjoying dressing up nicely for a party ball. Ranpha Franboise also counts, since she's an athletic and competitive martial artist, but also loves romantic movies, fortune telling and shopping.
• Emi Ibarazaki, the outgoing, flirtatious Passionate Sports Girl from Katawa Shoujo - who is a nigh obsessively dedicated runner and whose secret dream is to be a pirate, also happens to be an excellent cook and afraid of lightning. (On the other hand, she herself claims people are always surprised to hear that her favorite color is blue, rather than pink.)
• When They Cry:
  • Mion Sonozaki from Higurashi: When They Cry is a very boisterous Genki Girl who seems like a tomboy, so much so that Keiichi assumes she wouldn't enjoy the gift of a doll, which he gives to Rena instead, thus inadvertently triggering feelings of jealousy in Shion and causing a tragedy. Later, we learn that Mion is actually really girly and that she really wanted the doll. She gets it in the Massacre Arc. In addition, Satoko is more boyish than the girly Rika, but she is a decent cook and has occasional Damsel in Distress moments.
  • Jessica Ushiromiya from Umineko: When They Cry has less of a girly side than Mion, but she's still very interested in romance and secretly wants a boyfriend.

Web Animation

• Hello Kitty and Friends Supercute Adventures: Kuromi may like riding around on her scooter, dressing in black, and all things Halloween, but she also loves hot pink, has a pair of bat plushies, and loves a sugary sweet romance novel.
• The Most Popular Girls in School: Deandra is a snarky, brusque Lad-ette who's a Big Eater of truly epic proportions and eventually joins the football team. However, she wears a dress most days, is Not So Above It All when it comes to winning prom queen, and is revealed to be a registered midwife (though she's incredibly blase about the gross stuff, as opposed to Trisha 2, who just about faints).
• RWBY: Yang Xiao Long is a loud, tough, aggressive, and rather crude Blood Knight who rides a motorcycle; in Volume 8, she is briefly shown to have enough skill as a mechanic to know how to fix a hoverbike model she's only had access to for a few hours. However, she also adds impractical girly twists to her outfits such as a fine, frilly half-skirt to her main outfit and huge delicate bows to her secondary outfit. From Volume 4, the girly twists disappear and her outfits become entirely practical, but her love of her cascading, golden hair is life-long.
  • Her sister Ruby is a lover of battle and weapons with short cropped hair and a huge weapon like scythe that doubles as a sniper rifle she carries around. She’s not shy about hopping into fights to defend others and is a fierce protector of all her friends and tends to be a Defiant Captive. She even fumbles a curtsy when greeting Weiss’s sister and annoys Weiss by picking her nose in volume 1. She isn’t interesting in romance or is clueless to it and likes comic books. She also has a motif of roses to the point they follow her around when she uses her super speed and wears mostly “combat skirts”. She also uses corsets and her volume 4 outfit is very feminine looking. She doesn’t fumble a curtsy when greeting a wooden prince in volume 9.

Webcomics

• Barnet Travoria from Dominic Deegan. She's a highly skilled hand-to-hand combatant and known for physically bullying her younger sister since Barnet was the only one in the family born without magic. However, when delving into her memories during an interrogation, Dominic finds an image of her humming happily about the dress she's wearing. Barnet quickly starts answering his questions out of embarrassment in order to make him stop.
• Darcy from Ennui GO! is an incredibly butch woman (as she's an Expy of Darkseid), but she secretly enjoys cosplaying as magical girls.
• Violetta from Girl Genius may be a kickass Smoke Knight, but what she really wants is to attend a fancy party in a pretty dress. If anything she becomes even more badass once she has the promise of a pretty dress to fight for.
• Nepeta Leijon of Homestuck hunts wild animals and dresses in a rather tomboyish way, but she's also unabashedly interested in romance and cute things. Her dreamself is also seen to be wearing a dress.
  • Vriska Serket also seems to fall under this as well with the fact that she participates in FLARPing but also wears a fairy dress at one point and also has a dreamself sporting a dress.
• Tiger from Nerd & Jock is a beefy, quick to anger, tough and incredibly strong tomboy with a brash, thuggish and aggressive demeanor towards anyone who does as little as looking at her wrong. She also has a soft spot for cute things (case in point the impossibly adorable Nerd, for whom she harbors a massive crush), blushes and gets embarrassed quite easily and seems to be an avid reader of romance manga, apparently always carrying some around in her purse.
• Millie from Ozy and Millie doesn't always play with dolls, but when she does it's as part of a "space commander" game, or she's making them do political protests.
• Taffe Torbern of Pacificators wears a pair of pegasus hairpins (she likes them quite a bit), and... she gets regularly mistaken for a boy because she really looks a lot like a boy.

Web Original

• This voice acting exercise sums up the trope very well. FemScout of Team Fortress 2 is bought some clothes from her mother. She goes crazy about the hat, declaring she's going to paint it pink, but when offered a dress she gets very annoyed and complains loudly about it. She's fine with skirts because she can still run in them, but hates every second in the dress.
• Dreamscape: Anjren's a finicky tomboy almost to the point of being a Tsundere, and she's also prone to being super-sweet and acting like a "dainty young lady".
• Golgotha from Noob is basically a Boisterous Bruiser that happens to be female and seems to be perceived as One of the Boys by the cast misogynist. The web series and comic, however, show her wearing clothing fairly normal for a woman in her twenties in real life and even hair decorations in early installments. The web series gave her a mage avatar that she admits to choosing for the "dressing up in nice clothes" potential in what comes off as an Out-of-Character Moment.

Real Life

• Truth in Television: Due to societal or natural construction, or certain other factors, people are too complex for mere binary labels, and thus, many real-life tomboys will sometimes act girly or having feminine interests, out of curiosity or conforming to societies' norms:
  • This◊ samurai woman was proud to pose with her armor and helmet, but also had her hair styled with flowers.
  • Cristina Sanchez, the first female bullfighter, collects stuffed toys and occasionally wore a pink traje des luces.
  • A lot of the Night Witches spent their downtime embroidering or having song and dance contests.
  • By the standards of The Roaring '20s, The Flapper was this in spades. In many cases, she would smoke or drink or speak casually about sex. She also cut her hair short, but she typically wore a dress that just barely covered the knees, and she wore make-up.

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