Hell, *brandy* doesn't "go to my head like brandy" ...

[d_aulnoy]

You know, I've been thinking about that moronic "I Enjoy Being A Girl" song all day, because, today, I haven't so much enjoyed being a girl.

But.

I very much do enjoy being a girl, generally speaking.  Just, the kind of a girl who uses a blowtorch past midnight, and would likely kick anyone who compared her to a filly, whose teeth are probably unfortunately a bit more like old ivory then they are pearl as a result of too many cigarettes and too much tea, and who really, really means it when she glowers, or growls, as the case may be. [On a side note: when I was twelve years old, I encountered a stray dog.  It growled at me: I growled at it.  It slunk away.  But afterwards, I realized that I had been somehow dissatisfied with the ... quality ... of my growl, despite its efficacy, so I practiced until I got it right.  I also managed to pick up hissing from my bad-tempered cat, Sebastian, and can be seen hissing at unexpected guests and errant pool-balls pretty much unconsciously, and, frankly, you should all be grateful that a) this "essay" is, in fact, about an adjective commonly applied to humans, and, b) that I didn't spend much time with the reptiles.]

The word "girl" has come in for some problematic deconstruction lately: gone are the days when any unmarried woman qualified, when, as Anne Fadiman put it when referencing her courtly father's habits:

"For as long as anyone can remember, my father has called every woman who is more then ten years his junior a girl.  Since he is now 91, that covers a lot of women.  He would never call a man over the age of 18 a boy.  I have tried to persuade him to mend his ways, but the word is ingrained, and he means it gallantly.  He truly believes that inside every stout, white-haired woman of eighty there is the glimmer of a fresh and lisson thing, a girl."*

Except for the part about men somehow not qualifying for comensurate treatment, that's an application of "girl" that I can get behind (I know a lot of boyish men).  That's how my father uses it: in his head, everybody who's young enough to potentially be the fruit of his loins is nothing but a whippersnapper.  This is occasionally personally frustrating, as it practically results in my having to point out the whole "capability" factor with a terrifying regularity, and partially amusing, because there's nothing like meeting "Young Sam" and realizing that "Young Sam" is, in fact, pushing fifty.

I've heard people argue that "girl", when applied to anyone who's passed their majority, is inappropriate and condescending.  I disagree.  There are times when I am mature and there are times when I am not, and while "grrl" might somehow be more appropriate to who I was then and who I am now, occasionally, then "girl" ever was, it's a usage that's come into being since I passed my own majority, and I can't apply it retroactively: I can think of myself as a fan-grrl, since the period that I came into my own as a geek parallels the period at which the word was commonly adopted, but at 7?  I missed the boat.

At that age, I knew I was, technically, clinically, and biologically, a girl.  But I didn't identify that way.  Aside from my one year of nauseatingly stereotypical femininity when I nagged at my mother to give me a pink bedroom and snuck make-up to school with me, and, ironically, achieved the full status of being "one of the boys", which I then struggled against, mainly by kicking a lot of ass (that was the year I broke my leg the first time: not because of anyone's deliberate action, but because I was brawling with two boys at once, and the chubby one fell on the skinny one, and they both landed on my ankle), I self-identified as a tomboy.  Girls were icky.  I sure as hell didn't want to be one ...

And on days like today, deep in the throes of self-pity, I still don't.  But, guess what?  Tomboys grow up.  And they get cramps.  Damnit.

And, me, I'd like to find a way to own that, all of that, without repudiating either The Tough, or The Girl.

My take on this is thus: we're reclaiming the good words.  The out there words.  The profane, emphatic, irreverant, bitches and cunts and dykes and whores, and these are all necessary projects.  But somewhere, somewhen, we also need to be able to reclaim the boring words, the stiff words, the staid words, the words stiff with starch and currently being wrapped in acid-free paper and laid-down tenderly in drawers with lavender sachets, because out there, there are little girls using our hand-me-downs and cast-offs, listening to that goddamn song, and thinking, "Girls?  Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww."  And someday, that's going to make the cramps, and the bras, and the body issues, and the nervousness associated with walking down dark alleys alone so much worse ... 

Hi, I'm Helen.  And I would very much enjoy a definition of "girl" that fit.  Because, while no one can make me feel inferior without my consent?  "Age of" is one that ties in to that one rather distressingly ...

And, P.S. - Someone needs to rewrite the lyrics to that goddamn song.

*From the last paragraphs of "The His'er Problem," an essay from The Common Reader which I have managed to sneak onto every single syllabus that I have ever taught.