While working on an assignment this semester for my third wave feminism class I found myself immersed in this issue of girl vs. woman. Jennifer Baumgardener and Amy Richards published an article entitled "Feminism and Femininity: Or How We Learned to Stop Worrying About the Thong" and in this article they discuss the idea of femininity within feminism. The bulk of their argument is that feminism should accept femininity, which is acceptable there is nothing wrong with that. However, what is wrong is the fact that they are calling this a "girlie" feminism.
I have always had a strong issue against calling grown women, over the age of twenty “girls” rather than calling them women. I believe that when you call a woman a girl, you are diminishing her worth, you are eliminating her power. If we look at music, from any genre, we have grown men lusting after grown women, but they choose to call them “girl” or “baby”, why is that? Would a grown woman lusting after a man resort to calling him “boy”? I don’t think so; if she did she would be diminishing his power as a man. Also, when we want to describe a strong man we use terms such as “macho-man” not “macho-boy” because man is more powerful than boy.
My personal stand on this topic is this: are all females to remain girls for the remainder of their lives, or do we not grow and become women? I see the use of “girl” as a form of violence, it diminishes a woman, and it infantilizes her and creates an image of woman as the weaker sex. I refuse to identify myself as girl, I am twenty-one year old woman, and I am no longer the girl from my childhood days. What is so wrong with identifying with the term woman? Absolutely nothing, the term woman to me emits power, and the term girlie feeds into men’s fantasies, why should we feed them what they want?
Resources:
Baumgardener, J. & Richards, A. (2004) “Feminism and Femininity: Or How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Thong” in All About the Girl: Culture, Power, and Identity, (Eds.) Anita Harris & Michelle Fine. Routledge, pp.59-67. 
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