I was born in the late 70s and was always a tomboy. My parents describe how when I was a toddler my aunts gave me a set of dolls and I lined them up like skittles and threw balls at them to knock them over. I played football, "bmx" (none of us had an actual bmx but we used to make ramps with bricks and planks of wood and ride over them on whatever bike we had), climbed trees, collected tadpoles, read comics and watched The A-team with the boys in my neighbourhood. But I never wanted to be a boy. I also had friends who were girls even if I wasn't that interested in a lot of their play. I quite liked baby dolls and playing at being a mother but I never liked fashion dolls like Barbie. I used to think I was lucky to enjoy the best of both worlds and I figured out very young that it was easier for girls to like boyish things than it was for boys to like girlish things.

Funnily enough, at Christmas a local community group posted up photographs of kids visiting Santa at the community Christmas party in the mid-70s. And the boys and girls looked much more gender neutral than anything you see now. The boys mostly had longish hair past their ears, while around half of the girls had bobs that were only slightly longer. Very few of the girls wore dresses. Literally one girl out of about 50 was wearing pink. Most of the kids were wearing green or red, which I guess could have been because they are Christmassy colours, but while it was normal to get new clothes to wear for Christmas, people didn't normally have special 'Christmas themed' clothing. So I'm guessing they were just the colours most in fashion at the time. It genuinely stood out how much more subtle the differences between boys and girls fashions were compared to now.