I’m a woman, not a girl!

Becky Mollenkamp
4 min readAug 17, 2023

A rant about the girl boss movement

I spent this morning catching up on newsletters from the last few days. Over and over and over again, I saw the word girl being used to describe things related to women.

  • The Newsette told me about the latest fitness fad: “Hot girl rollerblading”.” It also shared a travel story that said, “whether you’re a tent girly or a cabin cutie…”
  • The Skimm and CNBC told me about how some women are using “girl math” to justify luxury purchases.
  • All summer I’ve been hearing about “girl dinner” — the trend of women eating snacks as a meal — even from The New York Times.
  • The best, though, was Girlboss Daily unironically sharing that “‘Cute’ catchphrases for working women are just sexist, actually.”

I could go on and on… and I did, in fact, when I greeted my friend for lunch not with a “hello” but with a 5-minute rant about how I am, in fact, a woman and not a girl.

People can use whatever term they prefer to describe themselves. I also understand the desire to “reclaim” certain monikers that have previously been wielded like weapons against women (I’m a fan of bitch for this reason). And still…

The pervasive use of girl as a substitute for woman, particularly in the professional realm, is problematic.

A graphic image of a woman’s body over a blue background

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