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A girl is any female human from birth through childhood and adolescence to attainment of adulthood. The term may also be used to mean a ''young woman''.

Etymology

The word ''girl'' first appeared during the Middle Ages between 1250 and 1300 CE and came from the Anglo-Saxon words ''gerle'' (also spelled ''girle'' or ''gurle''). ''Girl'' has meant ''any young unmarried woman'' since about 1530. Its first noted meaning for ''sweetheart'' is 1648. The earliest known appearance of ''girl-friend'' is in 1892 and ''girl next door'', meant as a teenaged female or young woman with a kind of wholesome appeal, dates only to 1961.

Usage for adults

The word ''girl'' is sometimes used to refer to an adult female. This usage may be considered derogatory or disrespectful in professional or other formal contexts, just as the term ''boy'' can be considered disparaging when applied to an adult man. Hence, this usage is often deprecative. It can also be used deprecatively when used to discriminate against children ("''you're just a girl''"). In casual context, the word has positive uses, as evidenced by its use in titles of popular music. It has been used playfully for people acting in an energetic fashion (Furtado's "Promiscuous Girl") or as a way of unifying women of all ages on the basis of their once having been girls (McBride's "This One's for the Girls"). In both cases, these positive uses are when the word is used for its capacity to collectively refer to the girls' gender rather than to their age.

Demographics

Slightly more boys are born than girls (in the US this ratio is about 105 boys born for every 100 girls), but girls are slightly less likely to die than boys, during childhood, so that the ratio for under 15 years of age is 104 boys for every 100 girls.

Gender and environment

Biological gender interacts with environment in ways not fully understood. In 2005 Kim Wallen of Emory University noted, "I think the 'nature versus nurture' question is not meaningful, because it treats them as independent factors, whereas in fact everything is nature and nurture." Wallen said gender differences emerge very early and come about through an underlying preference males and females have for their chosen activities. Girls tend to like toys and other objects they can interact with, while boys will more likely prefer "things that they can manipulate and do things to." According to Wallen, expectations will nonetheless play a role in how girls perform academically. For example, if females skilled in math are told a test is "gender neutral" they achieve high scores, but if they are told males outperformed females in the past, the females will do much worse. "What’s strange is," Wallen observed, "according to the research, all one apparently has to do is tell a woman who has a lifetime of socialization of being poor in math that a math test is gender neutral, and all effects of that socialization go away." In England, studies by the National Literacy Trust have shown girls score consistently higher than boys in all scholastic areas from the ages of 7 through 16, with the most striking differences noted in reading and writing skills.

Art and literature

(1657). Egyptian murals included sympathetic portraits of young girls who were daughters of royalty. Sappho's poetry carries love poems addressed to girls. In Europe, some early paintings featuring girls were Petrus Christus' ''Portrait of a Young Girl'' (about 1460), Juan de Flandes' ''Portrait of a Young Girl'' (about 1505), Frans Hals' ''Die Amme mit dem Kind'' in 1620, Diego Velázquez' ''Las Meninas'' in 1656, Jan Steen's ''The Feast of St. Nicolas'' (about 1660) and Johannes Vermeer's ''Girl with a Pearl Earring'' along with ''Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window''. Later paintings of girls include Albert Anker's portrait of a ''Girl with a Domino Tower'' and Camille Pissarro's 1883 ''Portrait of a Felix Daughter''. American paintings featuring girls include Mary Cassatt's 1884 ''Children on the Beach'' and Whistler's ''Harmony in Gray and Green: Miss Cicely Alexander'' and ''The White Girl'' (shown at right). Many novels begin with the childhood of their heroine, such as ''Jane Eyre'' who suffers ill treatment or Natasha in ''War and Peace'', who is sentimentalized. Other novels include Harper Lee's ''To Kill a Mockingbird'' in which a young girl is protagonist. Vladimir Nabokov's controversial book ''Lolita'' (1955) is about a doomed relationship between a 12 year old girl and an adult scholar as they travel across the United States. ''Memoirs of a Geisha'' by Arthur Golden begins as the female main character and her sister are dropped off in the pleasure district after being separated from their family. ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' by Lewis Carroll featured a widely noted female protagonist. Moreover, Carroll's photographs of girls are often cited in histories of photographic art.

Popular culture

. European fairy tales have preserved memorable stories about girls. Among these are ''Goldilocks and the Three Bears'', ''Rapunzel'', Hans Christian Andersen's ''The Little Match Girl'', ''The Little Mermaid'', ''The Princess and the Pea'' and the Brothers Grimm's ''Little Red Riding Hood''. Children's books about girls include ''Alice in Wonderland'', ''Heidi'', ''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'', the Nancy Drew series, ''Little House on the Prairie'', ''Madeline'', ''Pippi Longstocking'', ''A Wrinkle in Time'', ''Dragonsong'', and Little Women. Books which have both boy and girl protagonists have tended to focus more on the boys, but important girl characters appear in ''Knight's Castle'', ''The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'', ''The Book of Three'' and the Harry Potter series. There have been many American comic books and comic strips featuring a girl as the main character such as Little Lulu and Little Orphan Annie. In superhero comic books an early girl character was Etta Candy, one of Wonder Woman's sidekicks. In the Peanuts series (by Charles Schulz) girl characters include Peppermint Patty, Lucy van Pelt and Sally Brown. In Japanese animated cartoons and comic books girls are often protagonists. Most of Hayao Miyazaki's animated films feature a young girl heroine, as in ''Majo no takkyūbin'' (Kiki's Delivery Service). There are many other girl protagonists in the Shōjo style of manga, which is targeted to girls as an audience. Among these are ''The Wallflower'', ''Ceres, Celestial Legend'', Tokyo Mew Mew and ''Full Moon o Sagashite''. Meanwhile, some genres of Japanese cartoons may feature sexualized and objectified portrayals of girls. The term ''girl'' is widely heard in the lyrics of popular music (such as with the song "About a Girl"), most often meaning a young adult or teenaged female.

See also

Boy
Female infanticide
Girl group
Girl Guides
Girl Power
Woman

Notes