Girls

[Spinney]

Many descriptions that have a male and female version are these days often dropping the female one.
e.g. many females who appear on stage/in film are referred to as actors rather than actresses

One that has definitley gone out is 'authoress'

And 'geekette' has a diminuitive connotation as well as a feminine one.
It's like referring to women as 'girls' - it is derogatory in most usage.

 

[Yellow Fang]

I noticed a plaque to an authoress outside my dentists in Reading. It was no one I'd heard of. I think actress is fine because the sex of the actor is important and because it makes me think of glamorous Hollywood actresses. Similarly I think aviatrix is fine when applied to female pilots such as Amy Johnson because it is an out-of-date term that was only used in the early days of aviation, when the sex of the pilot was considered important.
I noticed young, unmarried women are sometimes called bachelorettes rather than spinsters these days - can't think why.

 

[Yellow Fang]

Getting back to small girls, I suppose there are also mother's little helpers (and daddy's girls).

Princess is relatively new. I cannot remember that term being used to describe a type of young girl when I was young.

 

[Spinney]

Getting back to small girls, I suppose there are also mother's little helpers (and daddy's girls).

Princess is relatively new. I cannot remember that term being used to describe a type of young girl when I was young.

mother's little helpers --> being groomed to look after men
Daddy's little girl --> being spoiled, being groomed to be a wannabe WAG
Princess - very similar to Daddy's girl...

 

[Yellow Fang]

mother's little helpers --> being groomed to look after men

I don't see them that way. I imagine them as sweet, little girls who want to help their mothers, and who see domestic science skills as useful in life.

 

[theclaud]

I don't see them that way. I imagine them as sweet, little girls who want to help their mothers, and who see domestic science skills as useful in life.

Which amounts to pretty much the same thing. "Domestic science"?

 

[Fnaar]

I've seen some funny websites where a studious librarian woman lets down her hair by shaking it, then takes her glasses off and chews her pencil and then a plumber comes into the library and then he loses his shirt and then ....

 

[ASC1951]

.... I imagine them as sweet, little girls who want to help their mothers, and who see domestic science skills as useful in life.

Domestic science skills are important in life - what is more useful than being able to identify proper food and knowing how to buy and cook it? But for boys just as much as for girls.

 

[Yellow Fang]

Which amounts to pretty much the same thing. "Domestic science"?

I think it used to be called that when we were forced to do it in the 70s and early 80s during an earlier wave of feminism. I wanted to do something more manly like metalwork or woodwork, or better still, learning how to fix cars.

Still, no reason for skills like cooking or sewing to be denigrated just because traditionally women used to do most of it.

 

[XRHYSX]

paging Fnaa...... Oh

 

[Smurfy]

Getting back to small girls, I suppose there are also mother's little helpers (and daddy's girls).

Princess is relatively new. I cannot remember that term being used to describe a type of young girl when I was young.

Goody Two-Shoes?

 

[theclaud]

I think it used to be called that when we were forced to do it in the 70s and early 80s during an earlier wave of feminism. I wanted to do something more manly like metalwork or woodwork, or better still, learning how to fix cars.

Still, no reason for skills like cooking or sewing to be denigrated just because traditionally women used to do most of it.

It was sometimes called that when I was at school too, but it was transparently a euphemism for Learning to Cook and Sew.

I'm not denigrating the skills - but one cannot separate questions of value and prestige from the gendered division of labour.

 

[Ganymede]

but one cannot separate questions of value and prestige from the gendered division of labour.

Here's an interesting consequence of the incidental division of labour. In Soviet Russia, the education of girls was much more equal than in the West. As a result, many more women became medical doctors. Many of these women became GPs. Soon, men began to see general practice as "women's work". Now there is a vast female majority of GPs in Russia, while the prestige upper echelons of medicine are, just as in the West, dominated by men.

Basically, and this is a big generalisation, so apologies to absolutely everyone in the world for making it: if a woman can do something, men lose interest in that thing. Bizarrely, same thing happened with knitting, which used to be a man's trade (apprenticeships etc) in Tudor England. Being such a portable skill, women could do it at the same time as their household duties.... and men, having decided it was women's work, mostly stopped doing it.

I wonder if this trend is less in the "modern world". Lots of chaps doing childcare, and all the better for it.

 

[BigonaBianchi]

Whatever happened to the girl nextdoor?

 

[theclaud]

Whatever happened to the girl nextdoor?

Here she is...