Gen Z is reclaiming the word 'girl' after years of reckoning over people using the term to infantilize women

• TikTok has been awash with "girl"-based social media trends over the past few years.
• They range from "gorgeous gorgeous girls" to "girlrotting" or "girl dinner."

The girlies are busy.

They are "girlrotting" on their couches. They are making plates of "girl dinner." They are "gorgeous gorgeous girls" who love bowls of soup. They are on their "real hot girl shit."

The girls are, in many cases, also not technically girls. Megan Thee Stallion was 24 years old when she launched hot girl summer in 2019. There are adult women with jobs trying to finish their work so they can get around to "girlrotting." "Girl dinner," a term coined by a 28-year-old, is now a TikTok juggernaut, per the New York Times. And could an actual girl hold down a "lazy girl job?"

The fact that women are using the term "girl" represents a cultural reclamation, conscious or not, after years of reckoning over the term's sexist use.

Being called a girl, especially in hierarchical settings like the workplace, can be unintentionally patronizing at best and demeaning at worst.

"I'm a manager, but to my boss and colleagues, I'm a 'girl,'" one 30-year-old woman wrote to The Washington Post's workplace advice columnist in 2019. Forbes Coaches Council member Susan Madsen wrote in 2021 that referring to adult women as "girls" was sexist, arguing that it can influence women's perceptions of themselves and impact their careers.

But the past few years of "girl"-based trends, as Kate Lindsay noted in internet culture newsletter Embedded earlier this week, have shifted. While women were once girlbossing, they are now talking about "rotting" in their bedrooms. As Lindsay writes, these types of trends are a counterpoint to the idealized girl aesthetic of the early 2020s — and in the process, they've plucked and pulled apart the concept of girlhood through internet memes. Despite some of these trends being pretty mundane, that's actually important — reducing being a girl to a series of increasingly feral behaviors removes some of the term's baggage.

Being a "girl," at least for a generation of young women on TikTok, isn't something that's inherently infantilizing, pejorative, or empowering. That being said, don't leap towards calling your female colleagues or friends "girls" unprompted — let them claim it for themselves.