Using the word girl in old-time Phoenix


In my lifetime, the meaning of the word "girl" has undergone changes. I came of age in the era of women's liberation, in the 1970s, and use of the word girl became a term that was inappropriate for a grown woman. Nowadays it really means a little girl, you know, giggling and silly, from the age of a toddler until about high school. But in old-time Phoenix, the word girl would apply to any female person from a toddler to marriageable age, which would be up to about 25.

The image at the top of this post, which is one of my favorites of my collection, is titled "The Girl from Sunny Tennessee", from 1922. She's up on Camelback Mountain, by the way. But this is no child. This is what we would call a woman today, or at least a young woman.

Even in the 1960s, there was a popular song "I'm a Girl Watcher", which nowadays just sounds kinda creepy. The use of the word girl has changed, and as recently as the 1960s it meant a young woman.

The way people use words changes over time, and it can be confusing, and sometimes shocking, to see a vintage photo with a caption and wonder, "What?" And that's part of the reason that so many people are outraged if they don't know the historical background. I'm working on understanding it, and if I met the young woman on the horse on Camelback Mountain in 1922 I'd call her a girl, and she would be fine with that. But not today - today I would call her a young woman.

By the way, in my lifetime I've always seen the word "girl" as a term that elderly women use for each other, such as "playing cards with the girls". And that means that when I hear the girl word I either think of little giggling girls, or elderly women playing cards.

If you liked this article, and would like to see more in the future, please consider becoming a patron of History Adventuring on Patreon. If you're already a patron, thank you! Your pledge makes this happen!

 Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is ...
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the...
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me...
Read more