Pages

▼

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

The Girl Who Grew Up

I’m sad today. We had a chance to elect our first woman President, and we didn’t do it. And to think that we elected this particular man instead is horrifying. As the president-elect himself has said so frequently during his campaign, “It’s a disaster.”

So I’m feeling shivery and shocked and have been pondering the plethora of “Girl” titles of books and films and how we once shed the word “girl” for the word “woman.” This is part backlash, part marketing, and part reclaiming a word, I know. But it’s been on my mind a lot in recent weeks, months, even years.

Here’s a partial list of what’s out there:

The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes
The Girl Who Drank the Moon
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
The Girl Who Played With Fire
The Girl Who Wrote in Silk
The Girl Who Lied
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
The Girl Who Fell to Earth
The Girl Who Stopped Swimming
The Girl Who Ate Death
The Girl Who Bore the Flame Ring
The Girl Who Fought Napoleon
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
The Girl Who Got Out of Bed
The Girl Who is Worth 100 Cows
The Girl Who Knew Too Much
The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden
The Girl Who Had No Enemies
The Girl Who Fell From the Sky
The Girl Who Heard Demons
The Girl Who Could Fly
The Girl Who Sang to the Buffalo
The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die
The Girl Who Chased the Moon
The Girl Who Wouldn’t Brush Her Hair
The Girl Who Owned a City
The Girl Who Stayed
The Girl Who Cried Murder
The Girl Who Escaped ISIS
The Girl Who Stole the Apple
The Girl Who Came Home
The Girl Who Ignored Ghosts
The Girl Who Looked Under Rocks
The Girl Who Slept with God
The Girl Who Came Back
The Girl Who Fell
The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness
The Girl in the Ice
The Girl in the Spider’s Web
The Girl in the Red Coat
The Girl in a Swing
The Girl in the Picture
The Girl in 6E
The Girl on the Train
The Girl on the Mountain
The Girl on the Cliff
The Girl on the Half Shell
The Girl on the Boat
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo
The Girl With Seven Names
The Girl With All the Gifts

Enough already. 

I’m a girl who grew up. 

And voted for Hillary Clinton. 

In a pantsuit.
at

8 comments:

  1. seana grahamNovember 9, 2016 at 2:25 PM

    Thanks, Kathleen. Every time I walk in a bookstore I notice what seems to me this cynical marketing campaign.

    And I voted for Hillary Rodham Clinton too. As, I believe, did the actual majority of people who turned out to vote. So we must not lose faith entirely in the American people. Except for those who didn't bother to vote at all.

    ReplyDelete
  2. jeronimusNovember 9, 2016 at 11:50 PM

    My deepest sympathies. I live in Australia, and almost everyone I know here is horrified by the result. Hope you only have to deal with one term.

    ReplyDelete
  3. KathleenNovember 10, 2016 at 6:16 AM

    Thank you, jeronimus. If we have to leave here, I'd like to move to Australia.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousNovember 14, 2016 at 4:00 PM

    It would seem that if you want a female elected as POTUS your best strategy will be to run Kim Kardashian as your candidate!

    Roscoe

    ReplyDelete
  5. KathleenNovember 14, 2016 at 8:27 PM

    Alas, yes, Roscoe.

    ReplyDelete
  6. KathleenNovember 17, 2016 at 3:49 PM

    The Girl You Left Behind

    Feel free to add, as a blog comment, any "Girl" titles you don't see here.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Bethany ReidJanuary 2, 2018 at 11:09 AM

    Just reread this post. I think I was too shell-shocked at the time to leave a comment, but true, true, and true. Bless you!

    ReplyDelete
  8. KathleenJanuary 2, 2018 at 9:09 PM

    Thanks, Bethany.

    ReplyDelete

Go ahead and comment, and I will publish it after I get an email notification! Thanks!