7 Culturess writers on the word ‘girl’

Courtesy Gwen Purdom

7. Gwendolyn Purdom

When I was first contemplating my feelings toward the word “girl,” a musical refrain popped into my head. “I enjoy being a girl,” all sweet and twirly in my memory, though I wasn’t even sure what musical the lyric came from and couldn’t for the life of me recall any other words from the song.

Well, I looked it up (Google’s handy that way). “I Enjoy Being a Girl” is from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song. I’ve never seen it, and don’t actually know anything about it (which, for a musical nerd like me, is actually pretty surprising). Though, I can’t say I was shocked to read cringeworthy 1958 lines like:

"“When I hear a complementary whistle That greets my bikini by the sea I turn and I glower and I gristle But I’m happy to know the whistles meant for me”"

or

"I flip when a fellow sends me flowers I drool over dresses made of lace I talk on the telephone for hours with a pound and a half of cream upon my face"

Yikes.

The song’s lyrics, in all their chauvinistic glory, do a good job of capturing what’s so problematic about the word “girl” as we’ve come to know it. It’s a patronizing way to infantilize women; to position them as vapid, and lesser, and helpless without the protection of a good, strong man (we’ll save my thoughts on toxic masculinity for another day).

But then some of the song’s lyrics bring up another idea—one that crosses my mind somewhat frequently and tends to tip me closer to the pro-“girl” camp. If you take away the default “in relation to men” framing, being traditionally “girly” isn’t inherently bad. And the fact that we tend to think it is is problematic in its own ways.

I’m always troubled, for instance, when I hear parents say they have a blanket ban on anything princess-related. Of course parents have the right to do whatever the hell they feel is best for their children and the lore of pop culture princesses is intrinsically tangled with sexist ideas about women’s worth, and needing rescuing, and the like. But I worry that some of that is also a rejection of the color prink, and liking ponies and frilly gowns. If it’s “girly,” it’s automatically thought to be inferior. The shift toward celebrating girls and women that do traditionally masculine things like play sports and get dirty and wear pants in pop culture is so great and important. But there’s also nothing wrong with celebrating girls and women that would rather garden than play basketball, or girls and women that, as the song says, “drool over dresses made of lace.”

Next: The Pirates of the Caribbean ride won’t sell women anymore

Which is all a very long way to say I enjoy being a woman, but I appreciate all the good stuff that comes along with being a girl.