Girls Vs. Young Women

MaryLennox

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I am currently working on a YA fantasy novel where the main character is 16. She lives in a home for "girls", but the ages of the girls where she lives range from about fourteen to adulthood. Most of the adults are in leadership/teacher positions. But I'm having trouble deciding what is best to use when talking about the mc and her group. I keep using girls because it feels more natural, but they are teens. Sometimes I feel that the word girls makes people think of young children. Would it be better to use young women? But then I feel that it gets tiresome sounding. The group is also in-training, so I often switch up "the girls did this" to "the trainees did this" so I'm not overusing the word girls. If it is already established that the group is teenagers, is it okay to just keep referring to them as girls?? And if I use 'girls', should I just completely stay away from interchanging with the use of 'young women'?
 

starrystorm

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I think using "girls" is fine. "Young women" is kind of tiresome, not to mention twice as long as "girls."

It doesn't remind me of a younger age at all. Keep on writing.
 

purpleflowergirl

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I think there is a much bigger meaning when you use "girls" and depending if you want the young women in this home to feel lower than the adults and stuck in this situation then girls is the perfect word to use, it is not just used for young children. Also, I would not interchange them as it would seem as if something is changing in the character. What is natural for you is natural for your reader most likely as well. All the best!
 

mccardey

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I suspect this is one of those things where you scribble an unmissable note to yourself about having a look at it later, and just push on. You're not unaware of the issues involved, and you can probably trust yourself to go on being aware of them in all the complexity of the book - but for the moment it's a bit dangerous to let yourself get too tripped up on a use-by-use basis.

Do that in edits, if you feel you need to. (Would be my advice.)
 

MaryLennox

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Thanks for the help! Yes, it is definitely not something I have to settle on now (but will most likely just stick with girls). Just one of those things I get curious about while writing!
 

Debbie V

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I think there is a much bigger meaning when you use "girls" and depending if you want the young women in this home to feel lower than the adults and stuck in this situation then girls is the perfect word to use, it is not just used for young children. Also, I would not interchange them as it would seem as if something is changing in the character. What is natural for you is natural for your reader most likely as well. All the best!

I think it's a good idea to look at POV here. If the narrator is first person or close third, than what word would they use? One of the teens might not refer to the other girls as girls. But an omniscient narrator could or the term could be what the teen uses because it's what society uses. I know adult women who refer to their friends as "the girls." What is the term loaded with in the society you've created?
 

MaeZe

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Sometimes I feel guilty using 'girls', I'm not doing my part to move the ball forward. So I'll use 'gals'. Then I give in because 'gals' doesn't cut it and I remind myself 'girls' does refer to women of all ages not necessarily with the connotation we are 'lesser' beings.

I go round and round and have yet to get off the carousel.
 

neandermagnon

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Why not "ladies"? In my experience this issue comes up a lot in women's sport, in particular what terms are preferred for coaches - male coaches in particular - to use to address the team so as not to come across as patronising. In my rugby club, it's frowned upon for coaches to refer to the senior ladies team collectively as "girls", so they refer to us as "ladies" as in "okay ladies, they're a strong team, we have to..." (blah team strategies blah). Most of the players don't actually care that much about this and it seems to be something that's come through coach training/best practice from above. In any case, there's nothing bad about being referred to as "ladies".

In the ice hockey team I used to play for, the preference was to be referred to as "guys" which was considered a gender neutral term and it was considered very annoying when coaches, match officials etc tried to gender swap terms, e.g. "okay guys... err, err, I mean... women..." or changing "defenceman" to "defence person" and the worst one was once I got a double minor penalty for "roughing and unladylike conduct" which though hilarious was also just wrong on so many levels. The gender neutral term's supposed to be "unsporting conduct" but none of us had a problem with "unsportsmanlike conduct" which is the original name of the penalty, or any other terms like "man of the match" "man on" (seriously, you've got time in an ice hockey game to go the extra syllable and shout "woman on"?) "defenceman" etc etc etc. It's also worth noting that originally "man" was a gender neutral term.

There is no consensus on any of these things and that means when writing a story, there's always someone that's going to be annoyed by it. Personally, I don't see anything wrong with referring to a group of female teenagers as "girls" - going back to my rugby club, the girls' section which includes age groups from under 13s to under 18s is referred to as the girls' section (though their current coach will address them as "ladies" rather than "girls") and at my daughter's school which is an all girls school that's age 11-18, the name of the school includes that it's a school for girls and all the literature produced by the school refers to them as girls, e.g. school discipline policy saying things like "any girl who persistently doesn't do her homework..." etc. I would imagine that when teachers address them as a group, particularly in the 6th form (year 12 and 13/ age 16-18) they'll address them as "young ladies" or whatever but on the whole "girls" is considered a fine and appropriate term.

Having said all that, I'm not a fan of switching up "the girls did this" for "the trainees did this" to avoid overuse of "girls" - this can get annoying and doesn't address the overuse issue. You need to consider if you're overusing that particular sentence structure, or why there are so many times when they all do the same thing or you're referring to a whole group doing something rather than a particular individual. Would it be more appropriate to describe what the POV character is doing in a context where it's clear that the rest of the group will be doing the same thing? If you're already doing this and have sufficient variety of sentence structure then you probably don't have an overuse of the word "girls" problem. Has someone picked up that "girls" is overused or is it something only you are conscious of? Some words get used a lot in stories. If the story's about a group of girls then you can expect the word "girls" to be used a lot.
 
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MaryLennox

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Those are some great points.

Debbie V - I'm writing in close third. The mc would definitely think of her peers and herself as girls and not have any issues with it.

Neandermagnon - I tend to use trainees if they are doing some sort of actual training and girls for everything else. It's definitely something I'll be thinking more about and tweaking when I start final drafts. I will also make sure to make it a point to ask beta readers. It's still in the first draft stage, but it was bugging me already. lol

I think a lot of it is stemming from a friend sharing the Mayim Bialik video where she states that using "girl" implies being inferior to men. I don't agree with this at all and think some people are just WAY too sensitive about these things. I think this article sums it up pretty well: https://nypost.com/2017/04/09/no-the-word-girl-is-not-an-anti-woman/

It just got me thinking about using the word girl so much in my own writing.
 

Tazlima

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I think a lot of it is stemming from a friend sharing the Mayim Bialik video where she states that using "girl" implies being inferior to men. I don't agree with this at all and think some people are just WAY too sensitive about these things. I think this article sums it up pretty well: https://nypost.com/2017/04/09/no-the-word-girl-is-not-an-anti-woman/

Eh, I think the article is a bit disingenuious to use song lyrics as its examples (particularly song lyrics where "girls" are matched with "boys," as there's a logical parity there).

I"m not going to waste my energy on a long rant with all the details, but I currently work in an office where the mysogyny runs as thick as molasses (and yes, I'm seeking other employment).

Every morning, our head of maintenance comes into the office for a cup of coffee. And every morning, he says, "Morning, girls." to the women in the main office (and he can say it to ALL the women in the office, because we're all clumped together in one central area, while literally EVERY man in the company has his own office space).

It IS demeaning. If I walked into a roomful of grown-ass, professional men every damned day and said, "Morning, boys" ... well, I'd probably sound like an old-timey hooker ... but it would also come across as condescending.

He could say, "good morning everybody," or "good morning all" or even just plain, "Good morning," and it would be fine, but he chooses to go with "girls," because he doesn't think of us as equals worthy of respect. (I have far more evidence of this than simple word choice, but going into detail would completely derail the thread). He's basically bulletproof, he's been here forever and the owner seems blind to his faults, so there's no point in actually addressing the issue, but when the hateful "girls" is tacked onto his morning greeting, I make it a point to not respond.

I have no issues with actual "girls" being called "girls," and teenage girls are still girls, so for the purposes of your story, I think you're fine. (I also wouldn't bat an eye at teenage boys being called "boys"). I just wanted to point out that calling women "girls" can absolutely be belittling in a professional environment, and checking for parity is a good test to see if it's appropriate. If your characters were gender-swapped, would you be comfortable referring to them as "boys?" If so, I'd say go ahead and use "girls." If not, consider a different term.

(It's not always an age-related thing, either. I wouldn't bat an eye at the term "girls night out," because the male counterpart is a "boys night out.")

Sorry for the ramble. It's a more complicated issue than it seems on the surface.
 

MaryLennox

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Tazlima - Yes, in that situation where it is purposefully done over and over it becomes very patronising and sexist.

Also, with the examples of the female sports teams - if the team openly addressed the issue and stated that they wanted to be called ladies or women and someone continued to purposely call them girls, that would also be extremely annoying.

Mostly, I think when it's a stranger and something is said in passing and there's no real connotations attached to it and people still get upset - that's a more accurate example of people being overly sensitive.

This is definitely a subject that can be debated more in depth, but for the purpose of the story, the mc, and their age group, I'm thinking 'girls' works fine.