Being the Twin Tomboy

Valerie Magdaleno

1--17

Essay Unit 2

Being the Twin Tomboy

I remember, as a young girl growing up, I had always hated playing with girl toys or doing anything that involved being girly but my twin sister was the complete opposite. We pretty much had the same everything, the same gray eyes, long nose, black hair and even the same birthmark on our shoulders. It was truly like we were looking into a mirror. Yet, we were so much different. Everyone who knew us thought it was the funniest thing but my parents were less than amused by it. For this reason, I was treated differently by them and I had to cope in ways that would allow me to really be myself and not what anyone else expected me to be.

In my household growing up, it was only me and my sister, no brothers, which meant my parents expected us to act like “young sophisticated ladies” and that posed as a bit of a challenge for me since I was a downright tomboy. That was one of the reasons why my parents were harder on me than my sister. They initially thought I would grow out of it, that it was just a ‘phase’ I was going through so they were not too concerned about it but still, they would always try to get me to do girly stuff with my twin sister.  Me and my twin sister were never close though. She loved playing with her Barbie’s and putting on makeup while I loved playing with hot wheels and climbing trees with the boys in my neighborhood. My parents despised when I would do those things and usually shake their head and tell me to “stop being silly and start acting like a girl and do girl things instead”. It hurt my feelings to hear but I would of course listen and pretend follow along with just to please them. So for birthday parties, family gatherings, school and really just anywhere in public, I had to wear dresses and girly clothes and pretty much act the way a young girl is “supposed to act like”. It was all fake and made me miserable to be honest. Although, my sister would almost always help me out and cover for me whenever my mom or dad tried making me do anything girly that I didn’t want to do. That’s what I loved about her, we may have had different personalities but we always had each other backs. “You know how mom and dad are but I hate to see you fake who you really are for them, don’t let them change you sissy”. She would say whenever my parents tried to make me feel bad about being a tomboy. Her words honestly stuck with me and she was completely right. I was who I was and even though I loved my parents dearly, I don’t think they realized that this was not a phase or stage I was going through, I was just being who I really was.