How old must a female be before she is referred to as a woman and not as a girl? In a story on Chelsea Clinton in today’s New York Times, loyal Clinton supporter John Catsimatidis calls the 27-year old former first daughter a “very talented girl.”

This caused me to put the paper down, look over to several co-workers, three males and one female in their 20’s and early 30’s, and ask if they think referring to a female adult as a ‘girl’ is as inappropriate as I do.

The other woman in the conversation said it didn’t bother her. The three men in the conversation didn’t get my side at all.

“You mean, if I went up to you at a party and said, ‘Hey girl!’ you’d be offended?” one male coworker asked.

Would you if I called you a boy? What about our 21-year old male intern?

“No way! That’s an insult.”

Why the difference? The men offered it’s because there’s no female equivalent to the term ‘guy.’ I argued guy could be male or female, but still, what did that have to do with calling a woman a girl?

I also argue that this is not about my being offended or my female coworker being indifferent, rather it’s about society being so unaware of this inequality that ‘girl’ is a mainstay in our acceptable language.

Dictionary.com defines girl as: 1. a female child from birth to full growth and 2. a young, immature woman, esp. formerly, an unmarried one.

For years, I have been a one-woman force trying to even things out. I’ve always used the term ‘boy’ when referring to any man I’m romantically involved with who pisses me off, as in “Boys are dumb.”

Conversely, I also use ‘boy’ as a term of endearment for guys I like, as in, “Wow, that George Clooney. He’s the cutest boy ever.” That no doubt stems from growing up on Sassy’s Cute Boy Alert.

The deal is, I’ll grow out of my immature teenage ways of referring to men as boys when society grows out of calling women girls.

This article appears in Jul 25-31, 2007.