Feminine tomboy style can just as easily be called femme tomboy, tomboy, or soft butch. The style sense is quite similar, if not the same, in many ways. However, feminine tomboy style is a more flexible term for people who identify with a range of sexualities, while terms like femme tomboy and soft butch are used more heavily in the lesbian sector of the LGBTQ+ community.
That being said, style is accessible to everyone. No matter how you identify, you have every right to play with gender expression and to mix and match more femme or more butch aesthetics to your heart’s content. What we put on our bodies is just an array of costumes and performance paints, and fashion is here for you to have fun.
The right accessories can take you from tomboy to feminine tomboy style, or from ultra-femme to feminine tomboy style. In the look below, queer fashion icon, Brittenelle, layers delicate, gold necklaces and adds an equally delicate, gold bracelet to match. These shiny objects read as femme, however, the style of the shirt is more of a tomboy cut, and Brittenelle is likely to be wearing some tomboy trousers as well, though we can’t see for sure. Think balance.
Unbuttoning a button-up like this one to create a deep V also helps to femme up your look if your body type errs on the femme side, or if you have some sweet cleavage to show off! Winged eyeliner, glossy, pink lips, and pink tones in an outfit also tend to help feminize a look.
In this excellent example of feminine tomboy style, a work jacket and loafers pair with cropped, tapered pants and a hairstyle that reminds us all (if only subconsciously) of Rosie the Riveter. There is a non-nonsense practicality here that tends to epitomize feminine tomboy style and a perfect balance of femme and tomboy. The pastel tone of the jacket also softens the tomboy-ness of this look, but the real heavyweight is the hair.
Hair is soft, so generally speaking, the more hair you have, the softer your look will come across. Softness is correlated with femme-ness, so having long hair will often help to make a feminine tomboy style ensemble look balanced even if the look itself is more butch. Feel how you will about this one, but for now, that’s just how hair reads. You might have to work a little harder to femme up your look if you have a shorter haircut. Jewelry always helps.
As men have historically been the wearers of suits, there is an inherent tomboy-ness that comes with wearing one of these matching sets. Wearing a suit casually is such a style staple of feminine tomboys that you can really go in any direction you want. As the person below might appear more femme, likely due to our associations with long hair, it was easy to maintain feminine tomboy style while adding a beanie, t-shirt, and Converse sneakers, which are items that weigh heavier on the tomboy end of the spectrum.
If this person had a more butch haircut, the tapered, cropped pants still would have added a femme flair to the look, in addition to the nail polish and this particular style of sunglasses that generally read as femme.
Perfect grooming is (sadly) a femme thing, especially when it comes to the brows. Although it is more common for more masculine people to choose ‘cuter’ imagery these days, opting for a shirt with a cat on it also just tends to give off a femme vibe. It is what it is: that pussy. In an otherwise very butch look that includes a hoodie, a beanie, a lumberjack plaid overcoat, and the strong contrast of red and black, these small details help to femme up a look that is unquestionable of tomboy style.
The most notable thing here is the attitude. The kind of flirtatious look that is happening here is sexy in a way that only a person in touch with their feminine side could serve. Your attitude, no matter what it is, entirely defines your outfit.
This look is very dapper from the waist up, and hi femme from the waist down. There is no rule that says “thou must not wear skirts in feminine tomboy style.” Thus, wear those skirts!
It’s the graphic tee, beaded bracelets, and fedora that steer towards tomboy here, but the pixie cut really helps to keep it there. Just like it’s easier to wear a hyper-tomboy outfit and still come off femme with longer hairs, it’s easier to wear more femme looks when you have shorter hairs and still maintain a tomboy mystique. It’s not impossible to wear skirts while maintaining a tomboy aesthetic with long hair, but definitely more challenging. Opt for tomboy kicks and flowy, collared tops.
That’s it.
In this look, the camera helps to up the tomboy aesthetic by coming in with a crotch shot while Kristen poses in a way that reads as tomboy as well. By styling the hair away from the face, there is a little bit less of that femme ‘softness’ that comes from longer hairs, although the length of Kristin’s hair can be quite a versatile length. Layered tank tops and heart-shaped lockets tend to give a feminine flavor, but there is a ruggedness about the fabric that comes across as butch.
Since you can’t be Kristen Stewart for real, style your hair away from the face, give off that BDE, and choose more worn fabrics to butch up your look. Get a slightly longer haircut, swipe on some golden eyeshadow plus a peachy lip, and layer up those lockets from when you were younger to give your look a more feminine edge. Bonne chance!
Brittenelle seems to be the sitting regent of queer suiting, but it is rare to see neon pink in that suit repertoire. Sneakers make a great tomboy accessory for a neon pink suit and really reign in that feminine tomboy style sensibility. It’s all about being practical, even when making a strong statement or wearing a suit.
The particular and notorious haircut and style of Brittenelle allows for greater frolicking through the femme fashion closet due to the butch nature of the cut. Keep this in mind, as well as the fact that the opposite is also true. Go for a bold, but more masculine suit if you generally read as more femme!
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