girls and boys
In the last couple of weeks, so many people have found my profile on Facebook. People from high school. People from bible college. People from elementary school. People who I last saw in grade 8 and who now look so much like adults. It's making me feel old. So many of my friends have babies!
I don't ever feel like an adult. I usually refer to myself (aloud or in my head) as a 'girl', rather than as a 'woman', and to Christopher as a 'boy' rather than as a 'man', because he is the boy I love. I catch myself referring to my friends' husbands as their boyfriends*. I still feel too young to be interested in 'men' because I think of men as males who are older than me, more around my father's age. And yet we own a condo together and sometimes discuss procreation and marriage (or the lack thereof), and those are certainly adult things.
When my friends and I talk about our dating lives, we talk about 'a new boy on the scene' and if he is appropriate, we say he is a 'nice boy', and if not, we decide that 'boys' suck. When I think of a 'nice man', I think of a doctor or an elderly man, not a potential dating partner.
My Language and Gender professor was very surprised by this. She expected any female over 16 (18?) to consider herself a 'woman' and to be insulted by a phrase like 'the girl in the next office'. She thought that male office workers were referred to as 'men' and female office workers were referred to as 'girls' and this was a sign of disrespect (infantilization). I think the analog to 'girl' in that situation is 'guy', and thus there isn't any disrespect. I would be rather surprised to be referred to as 'the woman in the next office', simply because I expect that person to be women like my professors (older than me, possessing PhDs), not women like myself.
*This slip-up may have more to do with the fact that my relationship with Christopher doesn't function all that differently than my friends' relationships with their husbands, so if he's my boyfriend, their partners are functionally equivalent, and I mess up the terms.
posted by Heather Ann @ 10:53 PM
5 Comments:
hmmm. i don't call anyone a 'boy' anymore unless he is under 16. males within four or five years of my age are "guys" and anyone older than that is a "man."
i don't refer to anyone my age as a 'girl' usually, but rather a 'gal' or if it's a group, 'ladies.' as in, "ladies, let's go to a movie"
sometimes, i refer to myself as a woman. which is odd, considering that all the things that make a woman a woman in the circles i am in are : career, confidence, sexually active, married, and motherhood prone. and i am not currently any of those things. yet still, i think of myself as a woman. with girlish insecurities at times. weird.
Oh yeah, and 'guy'! 'Guy' generally applies to males my age who I'm not discussing in terms of romance.
"He's a nice guy." ≠ "He's a nice boy."
These sentences belong in very different conversations.
I never use 'gal', and I only use 'ladies' in a semi-ironic fashion. I think that's where my Language and Gender teacher had the disconnect between my usage and hers, because I use 'girl' where she uses 'gal', and I don't use 'gal' at all.
child → young adult → adult
girl → gal → woman
little girl → girl → woman
And to me, 'woman' doesn't imply marriage or motherhood, since I still consider Linda (hi!) to be one of my girls (member of 'girls night', one of my girlfriends, etc), and she is married and a mother. I consider my mom a woman. I consider my professors and my boss to be women. Maybe it's about a generation gap and authority? I have no idea.
here's a new twist to drop into a conversation this week.
I use the term "son" quite a bit when refering to either gender. As in, "Are you done with those chopsticks, son?" or "Can you call me a cab, son?"
It lends an implied heirarchial air of authority to a statement. Try it out.
Weirdness.
See, I refer to females of any age as girls, both in a group or individually.
I refer to males in a service environment as boys - e.g.
Better take the truck to the boys at the body shop to get that dent fixed.
Or perhaps - the masked man stole the diamonds so we called the boys in blue.
(Maybe that one is a cultural thing?)
David
you can't take a truck to the body shop. The body shop is for people.
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