Girls

I am the oldest person in my advisor's lab -- a couple of years older than her, at least 15 years older than the other students. Old. It's a little strange to me when they include me in their greetings: "Hi, girls!"

When I was in college, I was rather emphatic about not being a girl anymore. (Was this just part of getting a liberal arts degree in the late 80s/early 90s? Did you have to wax wrathful about the hegemony of the male gaze while the eyes of those around you glazed over? To anyone reading this who knew me then, I'm sorry for being so strident.)

I am no longer emphatic about it, but I still notice: does the babysitter say "a girl in my dorm"? does the student teacher talk about the girls she lives with? I still think the same thing I did in shriller days: if she's legally an adult, I'll call her a woman.

No one has called me a girl in ages. These days the collective noun is usually ladies, as in, "Ladies, where should we go for our night out?" "Ladies, who's got a recipe for mint brownies?" Twenty years ago I disliked "ladies," too -- viewed it as a relic of the days when women were expected to be meek and well-behaved. I've mellowed on that one, I guess.

I'm not sure what I expect the younger women in the lab to do, really. "Hi, girls, and also CJ, you old crone." (No.) "Hi, women." (I don't think that would fly.) "Hi, everybody." I don't know. Tell me what you think.