From within the title of a television show to part of the name of a bronze statue standing before a Wall Street bull in New York City, the term girl is seen everywhere. However, society has granted it a more complex connotation by bestowing upon gender various associations to affect how the identifying factor is perceived.
Girls go with pink, boys with blue. Girls are expected to be pretty and pleasant, boys are expected to be rambunctious and rowdy. Girls are allegedly weak, sensitive, incapable, and unintelligent. Girls have been denied the right to vote, entrance to certain professions, and equal pay. Girls are expected to be dependent on men and fill the role of homemaker. In short, girls are viewed as less than boys.
If someone is a girl, the assumption is that they are inferior. Oftentimes, if someone is called a girl, they are being insulted. Accompanying the feminist movement came the reclamation of the term girl, promoting the ideology that gender does not equate capability. However, true gender equality has yet to prevail and the term girl still has a divided connotation. Some use it to uplift the ideals of feminism while others continue to use it as an insult. The identifying label of girl is simple enough, but it can be used as both a term of degradement and a term of empowerment.
The establishment of girl as a term of empowerment as opposed to degradement is an important component of the equality movement.
When it is a term of degradement, the idea that girls are inferior to boys is continually reasserted. The effects of this inferiority are damaging to the population of people who associate themselves with the label of girl. Gender is a prominent component of identity, but when one gender is regarded as superior to the other, individuals may regard themselves as inferior.
