I began
to notice the proliferation of the word girl in the titles of books a few years
ago. It might have started with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and then went
on to Gone Girl and the immensely popular book and movie, Girl on a Train. Now,
in a recent search on Amazon, I came up with a long list of books with the word
girl on the cover. Here are just a few:
The Girl Who Lied; Girl on a Wire; Girl in Disguise; Girl in the Glass;
The House Girl; The Girl Before; The Girl in the Ice; The Girl in the Garden;
Bond Girl; Geek Girls Unite; Girl Undone; Girl Unbroken. Hardly a day goes by
that the emails I receive informing me of new releases or books on sale doesn’t
have at least one title with Girl-something in it. It makes you wonder, are authors
purposely writing books that can easily use girl in the title?
Having
also grown up in the era of the women’s liberation movement, I remember when
the moniker girl was frowned upon and
even considered a sexist way of referring to someone of the female gender. No
one wanted to be called a girl! It was I am woman, hear me roar, or it was
nothing. So when did girl once again become acceptable? Maybe when women
figured out it was okay to say the word girlfriend? Because who wanted to say “my
lady or my women friends” when that made us sound…hmmm… older?
The
truth is most of us don’t mind another female calling us girls, but it can
still be considered a putdown when a man refers to “the girls in the office,”
or “all the girls I’ve known before.” How girl became popular in book titles is
a mystery, except that I’m sure it has something to do with another familiar
word, especially in the publishing world, Marketing. Because if one book with
girl in the title sold, why wouldn’t 25? It’s an interesting concept, writing a
book around a title, and I wonder how many bestsellers actually started out as
just a title? Did Margaret Mitchell think of Gone with the Wind and then write
the book? (Actually, I think I remember reading that she wanted to call it
Tomorrow is Another Day.) If it were published today, maybe it would be called
Girl of Atlanta or Scarlet Girl. And just how many titles can they continue to
come up with that include girl? I guess as many as will continue to sell. There is even an HBO TV series called simply Girls that has a big following.
In a
way, it’s kind of nice that girl has been elevated to book title status and is
no longer thought of as derogatory or even an outright dirty word. Nice that
more main characters in books and leading roles in movies and TV are female. Because,
seriously, the older you get you start not to mind being called a girl.
