Girl trouble

Talking to someone in her mid-twenties recently, I mentioned someone else of the same age. ‘She’s a really talented girl,’ I said. Then I checked myself. ‘Sorry… er… woman.’ Sara smiled. ‘It’s OK,’ she replied. ‘That’s what I call myself. I’m a self-identifying “girl”.’

Fair enough. But the exchange stayed with me. It brought back the episode of Have I Got News For You which featured the ‘Michael Fallon touched Julia Hartley–Brewer’s knee’ story. Quentin Letts offered the opinion that Fallon had been brave, on the grounds that Hartley-Brewer is a ‘big strong girl’. ‘She’s not a girl,’ responded the presenter Jo Brand. ‘She’s a woman.’ The line got a laugh, and indeed a round of applause.

Again, fair enough. You can see why, with that audience and against that opponent, that presenter would say what she did. There is indeed something about the word ‘girl’ that sounds demeaning, even though it isn’t meant that way.