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Two girls smiling

A girl is a female child, as opposed to a boy, a male child. The age at which a female person transitions from girl to woman varies in different societies; typically the transition from adolescence to maturity is taken to occur in the late teens. The English word (first documented in 1290) originally designated a child of either gender. To designate between the two genders, a female child was called a gay girl, while a male child was called a knave girl.^[1] During the 14th century its sense was narrowed to specifically female children. Subsequently, it was extended to refer also to mature but unmarried young women since the 1530s. Usage in the sense of (romantic) "sweetheart" arose in the 17th century.

Usage of the term

A smiling Iraqi girl.

By the 18th century, there was a difference in some uses of the word between England and the Americas. In England, a girl was often a serving girl, while in the United States a girl was often a sweetheart or girlfriend, for example, in the lyrics of the popular song "The Girl I Left Behind Me". In England, the word girl was also used as a euphemism for prostitute, as for example by Richard Steele in The Spectator.

In the United States today, the word girl is often used as an intended compliment or used humorously. A woman of a certain age might be called a girl to suggest that she looks younger than she is, or a group of women might speak of themselves as "us girls", though all are well over the age of maidenhood. Adult women will sometimes refer to themselves as "girls", as in "We're having a girls' night out" or "It's a girl thing". But social shifts generally permit only the female gender group themselves to use such terminology without giving offense.

Some feminists consider the use of girl applied to any adult female to be offensive. They claim that the word is used to insinuate a lower social status compared to adult males. Others feel the word is used to indicate low morals, weakness, or homosexuality. Other women consider the word as merely a courtesy term, similar to the way that lady is used to indicate females, even those which are not the wife of a Lord. There is a parallel objection to use of the word boy to describe a male over the age of puberty.

Using the word girl to refer to a male is usually meant to be insulting, such as "You throw like a girl". The more insulting girly-boy, which originated in 1589 as girle-boy, is used to indicate a weak or "sissy" male. Calling a male a girl often serves as a provocation to fight (see fighting words). While outsiders might use girl s a pejorative to refer to a gay male, within the gay community it is used as a term of endearment.

In American gay male vernacular, the world girl may be used by some as a greeting for either sex.

The word girl has many synonyms, including belle, chick, doll, girly, gal, lass or lassie, maiden, and miss. The slang word gal, as in "Buffalo gals won't you come out tonight", is a variant pronunciation of girl.

Art and literature

Portrayals of girls may reflect their standing in the artists' culture, and a brief overview of different views of girls in different art periods gives a sense of girls' roles in societies around the world and at different points in time.

The White Girl, Whistler (1862)

Portrait of a Young Girl, de Flandes

Egyptian murals included sympathetic portraits of young girls of royal descent.

Ancient Greek classical art and literature paid scant attention to female children, though there are many poems about boys. Only Sappho's poetry includes love poems addressed to girls.

In European art, some early paintings to feature girls are Petrus Christus' Portrait of a Young Girl, circa 1460, Juan de Flandes' Portrait of a Young Girl, circa 1500–1510 (shown at left); Frans Hals' Die Amme mit dem Kind in 1620; Diego Velázquez' Las Meninas in 1656; Jan Steen's The Feast of St. Nicolas, circa 1660; and Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring and Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window. Later paintings of girls include Albert Anker's portrait of a Girl with a Domino Tower and Camille Pissarro's 1883 Portrait of a Felix Daughter.

In American art, paintings that feature girls include Mary Cassatt's 1884 Children on the Beach and Whistler's Harmony in Gray and Green: Miss Cicely Alexander and The White Girl (shown at right).

As in art, portrayals of girls in literature can reflect the social norms of the time at which they were written. Many novels begin with the childhood of their heroine. Examples include the titular protagonist of Jane Eyre, who suffers ill treatment; and Natasha in War and Peace, who is sentimentalized. Other novels include Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, which has a young girl as protagonist; and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, a controversial book about the relationship between a girl and a grown man. Memoirs of a Geisha was written by Caucasian American Arthur Golden. However, it has been deemed an accurate representation of geisha life in the early 20th century Japan. The book starts as the female main character and her sister are dropped into the pleasure district after being separated from their family.

Most early children's stories focused on boys, with the notable exception of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, whose photographs of little girls are part of the history of photographic art.

Popular culture

European fairy tales include some memorable stories about girls, including Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Rapunzel, Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl, The Little Mermaid, and The Princess and the Pea, the Brothers Grimm's Little Red Riding Hood, and others.

Children's books about girls include Little House on the Prairie, Alice in Wonderland, Pippi Longstocking, Dragonsong, and A Wrinkle in Time. Books which have both boy and girl protagonists tend to focus on the boys, but important girl characters appear in Knight's Castle, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Book of Three, and the Harry Potter series.

There have been many American comic books and comic strips featuring a girl as the main character, such as Little Lulu, Little Orphan Annie, Girl Genius, and Amelia Rules. In superhero comic books, an early girl character was Etta Candy, one of Wonder Woman's sidekicks. In the Peanuts series (by Charles Schulz), girl characters include Peppermint Patty, Lucy van Pelt, and Sally Brown.

In Japanese animated cartoons and comic books, girls are often protagonists. Most of the animated films of Hayao Miyazaki feature a young girl as the hero, as in Majo no takkyūbin (Kiki's Delivery Service). There are many other stories with girls as protagonists in the Shōjo style of manga, which is targeted to girls as an audience. Examples include The Wallflower, Ceres, Celestial Legend, Tokyo Mew Mew and Full Moon o Sagashite. Other genres of Japanese cartoons often feature sexualized and objectified portrayals of girls.

Sexualization of young girls in art and entertainment is a common theme across all eras and mediums. However it is especially prominent, or at least more explicitly visible, in modern cinema and television. Some famous examples of this include Taxi Driver, The Blue Lagoon, Léon: The Professional, and Pretty Baby - films dealing with young girls in adult situations, typically under extraordinary circumstances. An older, and perhaps most notorious example is a book by Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955) , that centers around a complex romantic relationship between a scholar and a young girl as they travel across the United States.

See also

Look up girl in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Lady
• Female infanticide
• Girl group
• Girl Guides
• Girl Power
• Boy

References