We could say that tomboyism is tolerated [in the West] as long as the child

remains prepubescent; as soon as puberty begins, however, the full force of

gender conformity descends on the girl…. Female adolescence represents the

crisis of coming of age as a girl in male-dominated society. If adolescence

represents a rite of passage … and an ascension to some version (however

attenuated) of social power, for girls, adolescence is a lesson in restraint,

punishment and repression. It is in the context of female adolescence that the

tomboy instincts of millions of girls are remodeled into compliant forms of

femininity (1998: 6).

Acting [as an otoko-yaku for me] is essentially about deceiving (damasu) the audience” (Matsuo 2000a: 8).

We must emphasize that the “escape” from adult responsibility and reversion to
childhoodness in Takarazuka and sh_jo culture is both temporally and spatially
bounded in order for the viewers to be unbounded from normative expectations