Erin Yarwood is a journalism junior and opinion columnist for Mustang News. The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Mustang Media Group.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt as blissful about being a woman as I did this summer and onward. I feel as if there was some sort of shift in celebrating girlhood that caused me to start to recognize all the beauty in it, beauty that I was aware of before but didn’t focus on. Maybe it came with “Barbie” or montages of women interacting in joyful, emotional interactions with the word “girlhood” typed over it. Maybe it came with my own personal maturing and acceptance of being a woman. However it came about, I have felt a shift.
Girl has always been either an insult, or an attempt to be the opposite, to be empowering. I remember watching an advertisement my teacher showed our class in middle school which told me that “throwing like a girl was a good thing.” The advertisement was met by snickers from every boy in class.
As soon as I became an adult, I noticed “girl” used in a harmful sense I didn’t experience before. I saw it as a way for men to refer to adult women in order to demean and belittle them. To make them seem less capable and mature than their male counterparts.
But, “girl” is being revamped, reused, changed in its meaning. In many ways “girl” is being reclaimed. And with that shift, what I associate the word girl with has also changed. I no longer hear “girl” and react with batting definitions in my head: one I’ve heard for what seems like forever that means weak or worse, versus a definition I’ve heard from women in my life that means strong and powerful.
Instead of hearing my male boss at my first job refer to me as the little girl behind the counter, a title that assumed I was incapable of doing anything but smiling and welcoming in customers, despite running the shop while he was gone, I get to use the word in my own self-description. In an ironic sense, I get to sarcastically trivialize my capabilities with the word. “I’m just a girl,” I’ll say when I make a dumb mistake or am attempting to avoid completing a task that requires slightly more effort than I’m willing to give.
Today when I hear girl, I equate it to my friends and me. I hear “girl” and I think of the ways that women support each other. I hear “girl” and I think of the way a friend will grab my hand to lead me through a crowd so we don’t lose one another. Using “girl math” as an inviting way to authorize an unnecessary purchase. I hear the word girl and I think of sharing tampons, hair ties, and befriending each other in a crowded bathroom. Getting ready to go out with my roommates while we help each other pick out our outfits.
There’s a sense of pride that comes with thinking about girlhood. A thought that not everyone gets to engage in these interactions, I so luckily do. A sense of gratitude that I get to automatically be part of something beautiful just by being alive and identifying with it.
I also began to observe a sense of emotional maturity, particularly an ability to communicate their emotions, that women exude that is not established in all people. This observation has sparked a sense of “they don’t get it like we do” in me. Women have created a culture around the use of the word girl that most definitely did not exist even a few years ago, or if it did was not as widely celebrated.
At least from my view, describing something as girly isn’t an insult anymore. If something is girly it’s special, feminine, happy, hopeful. The use of the words “girl” and “girlhood” are creating a culture around a sex, making “girl” good.