With the television adventures of Supergirl about to return from spring hiatus, I have been thinking about the successes of the series thus far. I am an unabashed fan of the writing, the main actor and the tone, but I’m still vaguely bothered by the fact that the show is about a woman of 27 years or so, who still refers to herself as a girl. Certainly, it’s not a deal-breaker issue for me (she can call herself whatever she wants) and the show actually dealt with it in dialogue, but it remains a questionable title in my mind, leaving to today’s nomenclatural query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) doesn’t like that, most of the time, the answer behind why something is done is “comics tradition”, asking: Are you bothered by a grown woman superhero going by “girl?”
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Never really thought about it before. Doesn’t really help that two of my closest female friends have made their own adult hero characters using the “(something)girl” naming convention, so it just hadn’t really clicked that there might be something off about it.
I suppose it depends. Even on the flip side, I’m not bothered by a grown male calling himself “boy” in many cases, but in others it seems weird.
No.
Yeah, kind of. I mean, people can call themselves whatever they like, but I can’t help but feel it’s a little demeaning. It’s sort of like when random people call me “Sweetie” or “Honey”, if they’re below the age of 75 it just feels a little insulting, regardless of how they mean it.
Usually not. However, I wish there would be some progression and character development in comics, so I wouldn’t mind some characters changing it from “Boy” or “Girl” to “Man” or “Woman” as years go by.