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How did you react to the “#girlblog” title?
Maybe you smiled. Or maybe you thought, “Who is she calling a ‘girl’ … and why?” Or maybe you shrugged and moved on. Your response may well depend on your age. And your familiarity with TikTok.
We’ve seen a wave of #girl the past few months. Girl dinners, random food from the fridge, eaten alone, possibly standing over the sink. Hot girl walks, taken without a companion and without regard to how the walker looks. Even girl rotting, which seems to mean lying around your room doing nothing for hours on end.
Young women have shared images of their girl moments on social media. Eating, walking, or lounging, what they have in common the absence of male participation. Thus #girl.
For many of us, “girl” has long felt insulting or patronizing. As full-grown adult women, we want to be seen as equals to our male counterparts, not children to be patted on the head and indulged. Or dismissed.
This was a huge issue back when I was a relatively rare woman in a radio newsroom. I was (perhaps overly😉) passionate in standing my ground against “girl.” Ditto for “chick.” And don’t get me started on that FBI agent who called the newsroom demanding to speak to “one of the guys.” He wasn’t going trifle with the “girl” who just answered the phone.
There’s another whole way of looking at “girl,” though.
At the New York Times, Anna Marks suggests all this girl play, pink dresses, and the Barbie movie offer a return to that sense of exhilaration from childhood. It’s a way to celebrate the freedom from society’s expectations.
Well. As a Gen Z’er, she clearly had a different childhood than I did. “Our lives then were wide open,” she writes. “We thought that we could become anything.”
I don’t know about you, but I thought I could become a teacher. Or a nurse. Or if I ever had a shape other than round, maybe a stewardess. Imagine growing up in a time when you really believed you could become anything! No wonder young women are harkening back to girlhood and wanting more of it.
Sadly, perhaps, there’s no turning back the hands of time. We can’t really escape the world that exists today. All of us, all grown up. Facing the world as it really is, with some hard work still to do if we want more freedom from society’s expectations, demands, and constraints.
In the end, as much as young women might enjoy those girl walks and girl dinners, Marks suggests we should also be thinking about how to “create a world that means that we don’t need any sort of escape. And all you need to be is the woman that you are.”
I’m all in for being the women we are.
Also, for using language that reflects the women we are. The whole girl dinner, girl walk trend left me cold. And don’t get me started on Girlboss! That sounds patronizing to me, even if it does have an actual Wikipedia page. (“Girlboss is a neologism which denotes a woman ‘whose success is defined in opposition to the masculine business world in which she swims upstream’.”
Forget about being defined in opposition to anything. I’d just as soon be a boss. Period.
And I’m curious how you feel about all this. Even if you’re not a girl, but a boy.
Completely agree. Let’s stake our claim and just be the rockstars that we are. 🙌🏻💪
Ready for rockstardom, Elizabeth.
I have several octogenarian friends (bridge-playing widows, mostly) who say “girls” when addressing their “gal pals”.
It sounds fun and friendly and breezy to me (although I opt for the term “ladies” for my petticoat plural pronoun.)
Seems to me like these senior women say “girls” while people ten or twenty or thirty years younger would not; sort of like Black people (but ONLY Black people) can use the n-word without recrimination.
Thanks for hearing me out, girlfriend!
Yes, Ellen, at a certain age, “girl” can take on an ironic, tongue-in-cheek, even fun tone. I hate to say it, but we may be approaching that age.😉
Fascinating food for thought as always, Catherine! I am the Gen Z-er like the author of the article you referenced. It was interesting to hear that this childhood thought that I could be anything was particular to my generation. Of course I know my mom felt the:same as you, nurse or teacher, having said she’d have been a doctor if anyone had made her believe that was an option. And I have often thought about how I never felt any sense of being ‘less,capable’ of being an architect as a ‘girl’ all through childhood and even all through college. It wasn’t until I actually started working as an architect that I learned how far women still had to go for equal treatment as just plain ‘boss’ in our field. So…the idea of returning to that naïveté does sound appealing as a brief escape. But I’m with you. Let’s stay in the real world and just be bosses!
Very interesting Catherine, as always.
I’m so old and out of that world, I didn’t even know #Girl was a thing! I Googled my age group, expecting to find baby boomers, and was horrified when the first thing that popped up was: “ people from 65 to 74 are usually considered elderly … ” But yes, I am a boomer and indeed I grew up with all that limiting programming. I still remember a well-meaning dentist, telling me that I had such beautiful teeth, I should consider becoming a hygienist. Of course, he didn’t suggest that I become a dentist! Sadly, I did not overcome those low expectations in my working life but was lucky to end up in a happy place.
My opinion of the women you wrote about is that they need your coaching! I wish I’d had it when I was young.
Oh, that is horrifying, Linda. Get this. I posted on Facebook the other day about the ad following me around urging me to buy a bra specially designed for elderly women. Who are they calling “elderly”?!? A lot of us, as it turned out. Dozens of women said they’re getting the same pitch, and many of those woman are a lot younger than you and me. “Elderly” starts early in the minds of lingerie makers.
Your story about your mom reminded me of my friend Carol, Kim. She DID become a doctor … in spite of our high school guidance counselor, who told her she had to be a nurse instead. I, on the other hand, set out to be a nurse. Until the nursing faculty at Valparaiso told me to go do something else. They were right, as it happened. I went and did radio, and it turned out fine for me.
There were also hurdles in broadcasting, gender-related ones among them. I can imagine that, even years later, you still ran into some as a female architect. This is one of the reasons it’s good to be our own boss.
SO spot on!
Oh boy!!!! I don’t really know where to start! I’ll try to make this quick! The high school counselor told my folks don’t waste your money on her. She’s not college material so I screwed off the next three years in high school, got married, got divorced very young!!! screwed up some more and finally got my act together but only after I got married again had two kids divorced again then went back got my degree …now a masters degree and I am a boss for real and I get paid boss money. I am the boss now and a damn good one who is really very nice!!
Those high school counselors did some damage, didn’t they, Cynthia?
Here’s to making that boss money! And to being a damn good boss who’s really very nice.
Bachelor Father was on the tv when I turned it on the other day. He was explaining to Kelly how she should be responding to a funny story he had just told her – “Men like to have their egos stroked. They want to know that a woman thinks they are funny and smart.” I cringed and changed the channel. But I immediately realized that it was a very different time and a very different set of rules for how men and women dealt with and perceived each other. I am of your generation. My mom drilled it into me that I should be a teacher to “have something to fall back on”. Which is why I became a lawyer – haha! The changes we have seen – the changes you and I fought for, although we had no real sense of what impact we would ultimately have – I think are all for the better. I saw my mom hunger for the sense of freedom, autonomy, and education that her daughters had, of which she, herself, was deprived because her job was to raise her daughters. And she taught us to be strong, intelligent, and capable members of society. It’s what I tried to do for my kids – without limitations as to what their job categories should be. There really is a difference between the way men and women address things. The #girl could well be nostalgia for the time when a woman was supposed to stroke a man’s ego in order to be liked, instead of having to be like him.
Bachelor Father!!! I remember that — I can’t believe it’s still on television, Erica. And yes, that was a very different time and a VERY different set of rules about men and women and the interactions between us. Also about ethnic stereotypes and the “houseboy” … but that’s another story.
Thanks for chiming in here.
Your musings got me to thinking about the times when I was leading conferences with small groups. Inevitably, when a woman made a statement that needed some clarification, a man at the table would say, “I think what she means is…”. As leader, my response was, “No mansplaining at this table. Everyone can speak for themselves.”
Ah yes, Jeannie. We love it when those guys take over to tell everyone what we really meant, don’t we? That’s been known to happen even when our statements didn’t need any clarification at all! Good for you, putting a stop to that.
My mom was a mother of nine, eldest of ten, Greatest Generation who was the boss in the 1970s after my dad, a military officer, retired. She ran the video production dept at Bendix Corp and then owned the first female production company out of Detroit producing industrials. My dad brought me up. My parents encouraged all of us to be the boss and to push boundaries. In sixth grade I was the first string guard on a bud basketball league … the only girl. My dad stopped calling me ‘young lady’ in third grade and I still have to call men out from calling me that and I’m turning 60 this year. I don’t need the VP, President, Owner or Boss titles but they are there to show respect for professional experience and entrepreneurship. The ‘girl’ part is just….girly….and that’s not me even though I’ll show up in a skirt suit all dolled up, but I don’t need to be reminded or validated as a female. So why call myself a ‘girl boss?’ It just sounds lightweight….and working in the federal marketplace as I do, it’s the big leagues with heavy hitters and I find myself, once again among a pioneering group of women in an industry that’s dominated by men. Keep the ‘girl boss’ title on TikTok thank you very much.
I’m with you on “Girl boss,” Eileen. And don’t get me started on the people who call us “young lady” when we’re quite grown up. It sounds even more patronizing and insulting than it did when I was young.
I have just one more followup statement. I’m the youngest of 9 and I have six older brothers and two sisters ten and eleven years older than me. My sister Cecilia is a nurse and a badass. She’s a retired Col in the US Army Reserves, a PhD cardiac intensive care nurse who still teaches at 70 yrs old. She has seen it all and originally retired from Hosp Administration 5 years ago … the BOSS. She’s 5 ft and 110 lbs wet. She would call all of us… lightweights in business because she’s fought so many health care issues and her role as Admin was to encourage nurses in her hospital and help them get advanced degrees so the hospital could get the coveted Magnet (sp?) ranking. She’s no girl boss. She’s all boss.
My other sister, Raphaelle, has been running a spiritual healing business and training and couldn’t be more ‘girly’ but she, too, is a boss as she’s been highly regarded and known in her area of expertise for about 40 years. They would take a pass on the ‘girl boss’ title too. We’re Martha’s daughters and we follow in her leadership high heel footprints. We vote: Boss.