There weren’t any lesbians in the books I read growing up. I have my suspicions about George from Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series, but – generally speaking – all that queer girls had to identify with in the 1990s and early 2000s were “tomboys”. These were girls who – like me – hated wearing dresses. They weren’t afraid of mud, and sometimes even had short hair. The archetype goes back centuries (think of the cross-dressing Viola in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night), if not millennia. It’s impossible to know whether any of these characters – many of whom are children – are supposed to be read as gay, but as a micro-dyke engaged in a total boycott of the colour pink, I knew I related to them on a profound level.
Blyton’s George is the first tomboy who comes to mind. I remember being read the Famous Five novels by my mum and knowing that George’s hatred of anything “girly” was not only entirely relatable, but also may have had something to do with my budding attraction to other girls. Instinctively, I knew the two things were linked. George and I could have been friends, I suppose. And hey, once we both hit puberty, maybe more. Then there was Roald Dahl’s Matilda