The Latest on Slut-Shaming

USA Today reached out to me to ask what I think about terms like “girl math” and "girl dinner.”

I told reporter Alyssa Goldberg that we need to differentiate between calling an adult person a girl as opposed to using “girl” as an adjective.

The first lesson I learned when I arrived at Brown University in August 1987 was to never refer to an adult as a girl. Ever. Fifteen years after Helen Reddy sang “I am woman/hear me roar,” those of us at Brown who identified as women felt strong and invincible as women. We believed that calling a person a "girl" was insulting. And from what I recall, everyone on campus, regardless of gender and identity, respected this rule.

Yet, a few years earlier, Cyndi Lauper’s song “Girls Just Want To Have Fun”had been so happy and catchy, suggesting that adult women, including feminists, were not humorless and strident; we knew how to have a good time, too—and were demanding our right to sexuality without slut-shaming. As girls.

"Girl” as a synonym for adult of any gender has never waned in women’s music, from Beyoncé to Charli XCX. Bikini Killcoined "girl power," inspired by the slogan "Black Power," and the Spice Girls built their entire brand around it. Regardless of ethnicity and race, songwriters identifying as women have used “girl” to evoke playfulness, power, and sexual freedom.

For adult women, it can be exhilarating to remember what it was like to be a girl before our bodily autonomy was taken from us through gendered and racialized dress codes, image-based and other forms of sexual abuse, and slut-shaming.

“Girl” also can evoke a yearning for the time when abortion was a constitutional right in the US. We were so innocent then, were we not, thinking that our right to reproductive and sexual health care was protected?

And, when we were girls, it was unthinkable that a convicted rapist would be elected, and re-elected, president.

Meanwhile, many queer men have embraced “girl” for themselves to take ownership over the femininity that’s used to belittle them.

While college-aged me would never have said so, the me I am today believes that “girl” is an acceptable, sometimes even desirable, synonym for “adult woman,” provided that the speaker is not belittling women. (It goes without saying that “run like a girl,” “throw like a girl,” and the like should never be considered acceptable when they are unambiguously pejorative.)

But what about “girl dinner”—a term popularized on TikTok that refers to eating a snack, with no cooking involved? Theoretically, “girl dinner” could have been a slyly subversive term. It could have signaled refusal to cook well-rounded meals, as women stereotypically are expected to do for others, with a protein, starch, and vegetable.

Unfortunately, “girl dinner” is not a poke at sexism but rather an embrace of the idea that women should eat snacks rather than meals. No thank you.

Likewise, “girl math” also accepts a negative and hurtful stereotype—that women lack mathematical skills and financial acumen. When someone says she’s using “girl math,” she is building on the stereotype to joke that she’s saving money, even though she is spending money.

I ask you to think hard before using these terms. If you want to eat a snack for dinner, go for it—and please call it, well, a snack. If you want to pretend you’re saving money when you’re not, call your calculation “delulu" (slang for "delusional") and leave girls and women out of it. 



ICYMI

Democratic and Republican members of Congress are working together to pressure social media and technology companies to implement safeguards and accountability systems to prevent the circulation of sexually explicit deepfakes. These AI-generated images harm girls, women, and others, inflicting depression, anxiety, job loss, and withdrawal from public life. Read the bipartisan congressional letter spearheaded by Representatives Dingell and Pfluger.

My hot takes on bodily autonomy