Young little girls

As an editor, there are many, many things I'd like to change about the way English speakers and writers use language. As a woman, there are many, many more. As a feminist editor, I would be content if I could bring about a more mindful use of the phrases little girl and young girl in today's writers and speakers.

Leaving aside questions of gender and trans-sexual identification, a girl, legally defined, is a female person under the age of majority — in Canada, eighteen. A female infant is a baby girl, or a girl baby.

In journalistic writing and fiction, I increasingly see the term little girl or young girl applied to girls in their teens and even women in their early twenties. As a feminist, I find this usage troubling, and I'm working with the authors I edit to stop it.

For me, a little girl is a girl who is no longer an infant and who has not yet started school. After that, a girl is a girl; she might be described as a young girl. Once she hits her teens, she's a teenage girl or a young woman (as many feminists will assert). But a teenager is not a little girl (affection-laden sobriquets notwithstanding).

Men may call teenage girls, young women, and women over eighteen little girls and/or young girls for a number of reasons. In our culture, however, I think we should consider the current pressures on men to take up space — socially, physically, economically — and on women NOT to take up space. Being diminished as little suggests a young woman is cute, inoffensive, and insignificant. (Think of the language that surround girls and women who threaten boys and men; think of how language is used to discredit, undercut, and devalue these girls and women.) And I think there's just something dangerous about the idea of a "young" girl.

So, please think before you describe a person as a little girl or a young girl. If she's five years old, then go ahead. Otherwise, think again.