“I am not a chick”: Part 1

The following is a guest post sent in by reader Lauren*.  Read and ruminate!

I’ve been trying to get my brother to stop referring to women as “chicks” for about a year and a half so you can imagine my surprise when my feministy new roommate used the term. Now I know that users of the word aren’t necessarily evoking the word to be purposefully disrespectful, but some things about it just don’t sit right with me.  Former English major + Feminist = more time spent analyzing words than I probably should.  I realize that it may be “just a word,” but I’m also aware that language is one of the ways we’re equipped make sense of our world and communicate that sense to others, so I do think it’s important.

I tried looking up the etymology of the word, but only found that usage started in the U.S. as slang in the 1920s and not the original intent behind the word.  Regardless, I’ve come to be pretty leery of any phrase that equates people with animals.  A cute, fluffy, fuzzy animal, maybe, but a fragile, helpless animal…I’d rather be called condor or eagle, I think.  And again, while people may not use chick to be intentionally derogatory, the term is less than respectful.  Recall the tones in which people speak when using the word.  It’s usually something like “this chick in my biology class said…” or “some chick I saw today…”.  It’s a word that we use when referring to someone that we consider not deserving of a name or title in a conversation.  I realize that there are times (a lot) that require a word that refers to someone whose name we don’t know, but I think there are better ones than chick.  I used to use “guy” and “girl” when referring to someone in passing, but I recently took a cue from a friend who speaks of people as “man” and “woman.”  At first this struck me as really strange—it seemed too formal to refer to people who are my age—but then he explained how he does it out of respect and it caught on.

This brings up a good point about gender equality—is there a male equivalent to the word chick?  There is “guy,” but somehow that comes out of my mouth with less conflict.  I took a linguistic class about gender and power, and I remember a really interesting chart of all the animal, food, and inanimate object pet name-type words we use for people—there are literally dozens for women and barely any for men.

Here’s something to try: type “chick” into Google image search and see what kind of representations of women come up.

*Thanks Lauren!