Lou O’ Bedlam’s Friday Feature: Meaghan O’ Connell

By Lou Noble on March 5th, 2010

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Meaghan is both very smart and an excellent writer. This makes conversations with her, most of which take place over IM, quite fun. During one of these fun conversations, we hit on the idea of using the word “girl” when referencing a woman. Basically, it bothers me.

Lots of things bother me, but this is one that comes up pretty much every day. Because every day I have to refer to women, somehow. And, up until not too long ago, in both writing and speech, I’d just say something like “oh, she’s a wicked smart girl,” or, “I got a girl we can use for that photo shoot.”

I’m not sure when it was that I realized the weight of that word, but I decided I didn’t like the fact that, at least among the people I read, see and talk to, the most commonly-used term to refer to a female was (and is) “girl.” I don’t consider myself some great feminist, but I think it’s the least I could do toward equality to refer to women by terms that don’t automatically frame them as children.

And then I start thinking and realizing that little things like that, like the every day use of the word “girl,” occur all the time. That in dozens of ways, we daily frame people in ways that limit them, that demean them, often with the people involved complicit.

I talked about all this with Meaghan, because she’s not just smart and a writer, she’s also a woman (SURPRISE). A woman with a blog that lots of other women read. So when Meaghan calls other women (or herself) a girl, folks listen. And then it continues.

I don’t try to make big changes in my own life. I’m all about incremental improvements. And I don’t expect to with a single article change the world, or even anyone’s mind. But I think it’s worth considering, what does it mean when you call women, “girls”? How does that affect people?

Labels, it comes down to labeling, I suppose. And I’ve been giving a lot of thought to labels, recently. To categorization. How is a relationship defined? How do people categorize themselves? Naturally, one or two or three words can’t sum up a single person. But the brain tends toward categorization, stereotyping situations and people in order to more quickly assess the world. And so “girls” becomes a clever catch-all for all women. But it comes with a myriad of connotations, many of which serve to frame a woman in a Less Than context.

This issue is probably beyond me in a lot of ways. And I’m far from having figured out where the discussion goes, definitely no idea where it ends. But it should at least start with a consideration of the words we use to describe people, should start with taking the time to think about what we’re saying when we say what we say.