Lead plaintiff Rikki Held testifies during a hearing in the climate change lawsuit, Held vs. Montana, at the Lewis and Clark County Courthouse on June 12, 2023. Photo: Thom Bridge, Independent Record (Montana).
I wasn’t surprised to learn according to the “Newspaper Of Record” that “On the Internet, Everyone Wants to be a Girl.” This is part of the slide in language, mirrored in behavior, that causes a group of women to be called “guys”—and women are doing this, too— and individual women to be referred to as “ladies.”
It matters because it’s hard to imagine a woman over twenty benefitting from thinking of herself as a girl—or as a lady. Girls are sometimes pretty, sometimes charming, often gifted but they pull no weight in this culture except with the promoters of Barbie. “Ladies” are sidelined except when tea is poured.
But as we know too well, if we assume authority, there will be consequences and few of them are pleasant. Speaking above a whisper, championing unpopular causes, standing up at meetings to make a point, writing from subversive points of view all bring powerful backlash and may lead to being ostracized. That is why it is so important that we take the risk. The size of the negative reaction defines the importance of the effort.
Some young women are leading the way, and I doubt that they would relish being called girls, or presenting themselves as girls, on the internet or anywhere else. The two teenagers in Montana, one of them a young woman, who are suing their state government for failing to address climate change, are an example. But for every motivated teenager, there are hundreds, if not millions of young women who are still seduced by propaganda about the all-curing nature of Love. I doubt that many young men fall in that trap but young women have been speeded along the way for generations by cosmetic ads and romance novels. Now a well-known columnist is advising us to put marriage first, ignoring the fifty percent failure rate of marriages today or the unhappiness of women chained to a restricted role. “Womanhood”—an honorable title, never used—is supposed to be defined by a lack of “playfulness” and a terrible preoccupation with serious matters, like the climate crisis we are all facing. Could it be that we are more aware of what is happening? The soft wool of white male privilege may delay the arrival of unwelcome truths.
In the California desert, a driven man has used time and money to construct a sort of decapitated pyramid, emblazoned with the word LOVE. Would a woman ever have time, resources and faith enough to construct such a thing?
Probably not. But a girl might.
The phrase, “You go girl,” is maybe worth mentioning in the context of punctuation. Wiktionary has a comma in the phrase, after the first two words, and does not have any punctuation at the end. (“You go,girl”) Many other online commentaries either do not have such a comma or have an ending exclamation point or period. Not sure how I would resolve these minor issues.