Posted on 10/06/2007 5:40:33 PM PDT by khnyny
Here's a question my female friends and I sometimes ask ourselves: Why do our younger colleagues freely call themselves girls?
Unreconstructed '60s feminists we may be, but we insisted on being called women when we were their age -- and were ready to pounce on any guy who didn't go along with us so we could reveal him to be the male chauvinist that he was.
But today, it's "me and the girls," or "I know this girl who," among women as young as 18 and as old as 35.
I wonder if that reflects a greater comfort with youth and femininity, or if they aren't sure what being a woman means. If the latter, I can hardly blame them, because the social culture they're swimming in doesn't know, either. Forty-year-old women get their faces stitched and tummies tucked in an effort to look 18 again. Fashion houses tout the thin-boy look over the curvy female. Last week, NBC rolled out a remade "Bionic Woman," super-intelligent and super-athletic but, let's face it, also a super-cold robot. Yet less than a year ago, the media could not get enough of the "train wreck girls," Britney, Lindsay and Nicole, seemingly so fragile and way too human.
To top it all, the woman who is under the greatest public scrutiny these days, Hillary Rodham Clinton, has been disparaged in her career both for being too masculine and for flaunting her femininity. When she first entered national politics, her mannish suits got everyone going until New York designers fell over themselves to soften her up. Then this summer, she showed a tiny bit of cleavage on the Senate floor, ...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Hillary Clinton boasted at a Democratic Debate in August and I quote:
"For 15 years, I have stood up against the right-wing machine and I've come out stronger," she said. "So if you want a winner who knows how to take them on, I'm your girl."
LOL.
If I’m not married or engaged by 25, but dating someone, I’ll still call them my girlfriend.
Get married then you can soon call them Plaintiff .
From what I understand, this is also a bit of a rebellion against the old-maid feminazis who spell the word as “womyn”.
Increasingly, girls today don’t want to go there.
Because they're not self-hating, dried up old witches with attitude problems?
Just a guess
LOL
You are correct. Also they know for sure that they are not boys.
What boring tripe. My cat refused to even crap on this article.
Because their grammar is crap.
words of wisdom .... even after you are 75, call her your girlfriend / lover / wife as if all three have the same meaning. Tell her it still feels like you are dating.
It will earn you big brownie points.
Uh, because they haven't worked themselves into a tizzy about being female, as you and your feminist friends did when you were their age.
I have always, and still do, call my female friends 'girls', and I'm well into my 50's. Not all of us bought into the feminist carp in the late 60's and into the 70's.
I have a simpler explanation: Woman is two syllables and girl is one syllable. People are lazy speakers, and will naturally choose words that take less time/effort.
Also, the word woman is an awkward sounding word if you think about it. Wuh-Man.
.
It may well be that...
the entire future of all humankind...
may well hinge on,
during this new century,
...our finally freeing all the women of the world...
to be all that they already are in GOD’s Eyes,
and all that they can be while here on the Earth..?
.
I am over that 50 mark too and still my friends and I still say ...going to have a girl’s day.
I may be in my early 20s, but I don’t do brownie points.
I view that as a step in the right direction. “Ms.” is a horrible artificial construction.
What’s really funny is that if you really look at it, it’s a *demotion* for any female who used any of the other titles.
Ms. President
Sheik Barack Obama
Well that's certainly news to me.
I guess for now on, whenever I write a business letter to a lady I'll have to call her first and ask her if she's married.
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