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Holly Semiloff (Ciotti)
The nuances of lady/woman/girl are too volumnious to toss around in an email, and I'm no language maven --(actually, we are all language mavens; we just don't THINK about langauge we use. It's a tool more than an aesthetic.) When we talk about lady/woman/girl in class it's not for political purposes (I keep those under wraps), but it's to get kids to become more aware of WORD CHOICE, and that doesn't just refer to writing essays (yawn), but to the everyday living, breathing use of language.
I recall , with emabarrassment, a phone call I overheard my mother have, back in 1962 or so. "So, Betty, what are your plans this week? How about Tuesday? Oh, wait, that's the day the girl comes. How's Thursday? What day does your girl come?" (This is historical reconstruction, not a verbatim recollection.) But you get the drift: an African American female schlepped up to Lincolnwood, probably taking 3 buses, to clean our house on Tuesdays, and my mother referred to her as "girl." Your mom, too? 'fess up.
Was my mother a racist?
Lesson #1: all languages change over time. Some change faster than others, but all languages change. Which brings us to slang, the most ephemeral (and delightful) of all language uses. Remember we used to say something was groovy? A many-faceted word, and worth its weight in gold, but ONLY until our parents started using it also. Then, boom, it was passe, gone. Wlhy? Because slang defines a group (cool youthful) and when someone from outside the group has the audacity to use it, it's an outrage! Once my mother said something was "groovy," that was it; I probably never used it again.
So with lady/woman/girl. The nuanced meanings come and go, rise and fall with history, with economics, with geography, with everything that affects language. And today with gender being so, well, fluid in many ways, the ink on this email makes all this OLD before it's in cyberspace.
Used to be, if a female was an doctor, would she be a "lady doctor" or a "woman doctor"? (Fortunately today this wouldn't even come up, but barely 50 years ago, it sure did.)
"Lady" suggests politeness? What about "ladies of the street"? And what was go great about acting "lady-like"? the subtext was to act docile, quiet, sit with legs crossed at the ankles, soft voice, doe-eyes. Oi vey.
But we also have/had the "woman's movement" Woman's liberation, not ladies' liberation. OK, back to Abigail Adam's exhortation to John to "not forget the ladies." That was the historical word at the time. If she had written "not to forget the women," John would have wondered why his cultured wife was being so crass.
Gotta go, time for my morning six-feet-from-anyone walk in the neighborhood.
holly
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