7 Culturess writers on the word ‘girl’

(Image courtesy Buckie Wells)

3. Buckie Wells

I totally get why some adult women don’t like to be called “girl.” I mean, it’s a little juvenile. Of course, I’m in the camp that’s trying to reclaim the word “dude,” too. Maybe it’s because growing up is scary or because I’m a little bit juvenile myself for a 25-year-old, but I don’t typically correct anyone. In fact, I’m the type of person who says, “I’m an adult” ironically multiple times a day. Then again, there’s always a lot of confusion when your name is “Buckie,” so maybe I’m just used to it.

I’ve never actually had someone say “girl” to me like it was a bad thing. Instead, I look around at all my faves, like Batgirl, Supergirl, Wonder Girl, Elastigirl, and I don’t consider them to be lesser superheroes … but I mean, I literally sat down and worked on this while watching The Incredibles and drinking chocolate milk.

I don’t correct people when they call me “girl,” because I often feel childish and I don’t feel like I’ve got everything figured out. But I realize now that this is unfair of me.

Why? Because words matter. I’ve been trying to figure out my relationship to the word “girl” for an entire week, and when I realized that I don’t care, it also hit me that other people do. And that’s what matters. Solidarity. Progression. Equality. If we’re living in the day and age where people put their preferred pronouns in their profile bios and women have to march against the president of the country for equal rights, the very least I could do is respect someone else’s wishes and understand that calling a grown person “girl” can be demeaning.

Women bear and raise children, fight back against oppression, and rise to the occasion in ways that don’t deserve to be overlooked. Girls don’t do that, women do. And if I go around calling grown women “girls” or don’t bother to correct someone when I hear them doing it, I become a part of the problem that is this perpetual cycle of seeing women as less than, which they most certainly are not.

If what you say can affect the way people view an entire gender, and if I’m not doing everything I can support to my sisters then I’ve done something wrong. I pay bills, I take my cat to the vet for $300 worth of booster shots and preventative medicine, and whether I’m ready to accept the responsibility or not, I’m a woman. And until “fanmen” becomes a thing, I can be a woman and a fangirl at the same time, so that about closes the case for me.