It Goes Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl

I'm more radical than liberal, but there are some "politically correct" lexical constructions that annoy me. (The main one is the, thankfully rare, insistence upon using "go forward" rather than "go straight" when giving driving directions. It's just stupid – you can drive in a tight circle and still "go forward" the whole time, unless the car's in reverse. "Straight" and "forward" mean different things. And context matters.)

The noun "girl" in reference to adult women has proven problematic for feminists, not least because lots of women use it self-referentially; and my impression is that such use has been increasing during my life (from a presumed low in or around the 1970s). The problem is that there's no good substitute for its informal use as the feminine equivalent of "guys". "Gals," the obvious alternative, is too dated, and possibly too brash. "Ladies" has a bit more currency, but has a number of connotations less complimentary than "girl," and I don't hear it as often. Finally, it can seem silly to refer to mid- or late-teenage females as "women" rather than "girls."

The reason I bring this up is the masculine equivalent. For a long time it seemed like there was "man/men" and "guy/guys" (with the occasional "dude/dudes"). More and more, though, it seems that young adults, or at least "girls," are using "boys" in reference to young adult males. I first noticed this maybe ten or twelve years ago (jebus, it doesn't feel that long). It came to mind again when I heard Lady Gaga's single "Boys Boys Boys." I don't have any sense of why this usage might be growing (if it really is); to me it seems ironic, coy, and part of the infantilization of American adulthood, all at the same time. But I do think it's interesting, and maybe it subverts, to some extent, some of the arguments against "girl/girls."

(One construction that makes me shake my head in amazement is the "herstory" variant of "history." I understand the point, but folk etymology seems a bogus basis for making it. "History" is not a compound of "his" and "story," it's a single word of Latin origin [the French is histoire, which happens to be a feminine noun, and "his" is not a French word]. The pronoun "his," on the other hand, is of Germanic origin.)