A girl is any female Female is the sex of an organism, or a part of an organism, which produces non-mobile ova (egg cells) human Humans, known taxonomically as Homo sapiens , are the only living species in the Homo genus of bipedal primates in Hominidae, the great ape family. However, in some cases "human" is used to refer to any member of the genus Homo from birth through childhood Childhood is the age span ranging from birth to adolescence. In developmental psychology, childhood is divided up into the developmental stages of toddlerhood , early childhood (play age), middle childhood (school age), and adolescence (post-puberty) and adolescence Adolescence is a transitional stage of physical and mental human development generally occurring between puberty and legal adulthood (age of majority), but largely characterized as beginning and ending with the teenage stage. According to Erik Erikson's stages of human development, for example, a young adult is generally a person between the ages to attainment of adulthood An adult is a human being or living organism that is of relatively mature age, typically associated with sexual maturity and the attainment of reproductive age. In human context, the term has other subordinate meanings associated to social and legal concepts, for example a legal adult is a legal concept for a person who has attained the age of. The term may also be used to mean a young woman.[1]
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Etymology
The word girl first appeared during the Middle Ages The Middle Ages is a period of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The period followed the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, and preceded the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period in a three-period division of history: Classical, Medieval, and Modern. The term "Middle Ages" (medium aevum) was coined in between 1250 and 1300 CE and came from the Anglo-Saxon Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written in parts of what are now England and south-eastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century. What survives through writing represents primarily the literary register of Anglo-Saxon words gerle (also spelled girle or gurle).[2] The Anglo-Saxon Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written in parts of what are now England and south-eastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century. What survives through writing represents primarily the literary register of Anglo-Saxon word gerela meaning dress or clothing item also seems to have been used as a metonym Metonymy is a figure of speech used in rhetoric in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept. For instance, "Washington", as the capital of the United States, can be used as a metonym (an instance of metonymy) for its government in some sense.[1]
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 Girlfriend ( pronunciation ) is a term that can refer to either a female partner in a non-marital romantic relationship or a female non-romantic friend that is closer than other friends is in 1892 and girl next door The cultural and sexual stereotype of the girl next door or the All-American girl is invoked in American contexts to indicate wholesome, unassuming femininity, as opposed to the culture's other female stereotypes such as the tomboy, the valley girl, the femme fatale, girly girl, or the slut. The male equivalent is the "boy next door", meant as a teenaged female or young woman with a kind of wholesome appeal, dates only to 1961.[3]
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 A boy is a young male human , as contrasted to its female counterpart, girl, or an adult male, a man can be considered disparaging when applied to an adult man The term man is used for an adult human male (the term boy is the usual term for a human male child or adolescent). However, man is sometimes used to refer to humanity as a whole. Sometimes it is also used to identify a male human, regardless of age, as in phrases such as "men's rights". Hence, this usage is often deprecative.[1] 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 "Promiscuous" is a song recorded by singer Nelly Furtado and Timbaland for Furtado's third album, Loose (2006). Furtado, Timothy "Attitude" Clayton, Timbaland and Danja wrote the song, and Timbaland and Danja produced it. The song lyrics feature a conversation between a man and woman who call each other a "promiscuous"") 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 "This One's for the Girls" is the lead single from country singer Martina McBride's Martina album. The song's lyrics are a salute to women of various ages dealing with the struggles of different phases of life, telling them "You're beautiful the way you are.""). 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
A girl from Mali Mali, officially the Republic of Mali , is a landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over 1,240,000 km² with a population more than 14 million. Its capital isSlightly 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.[4][5] Since the 1700s the human sex ratio has been observed as about 1,050 boys for every 1,000 girls born and sex selection on the part of parents further lessens the number of female births. Although the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is a multilateral treaty adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 16, 1966, and in force from January 3, 1976. It commits its parties to work toward the granting of economic, social, and cultural rights (ESCR) to individuals, including labour rights and rights to has asserted "primary education shall be compulsory and available free to all" girls are slightly less likely to be enrolled as students in primary and secondary schools (70%:74% and 59%:65%). Worldwide efforts have been made to end this disparity (such as through the Millennium Development Goals The Millennium Development Goals are eight international development goals that all 192 United Nations member states and at least 23 international organizations have agreed to achieve by the year 2015. They include reducing extreme poverty, reducing child mortality rates, fighting disease epidemics such as AIDS, and developing a global partnership) and the gap has closed since 1990.[6]
Gender and environment
A girl plays with paper dolls. Biological gender interacts with environment in ways not fully understood.Biological gender interacts with environment in ways not fully understood.[7] Identical twin girls separated at birth and reunited decades later have shown both startling similarities and differences.[8] 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."
A girl pretends to drive a toy car. Gender differences emerge very early and have to do with underlying predispositions which are shaped by experience.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."[9] Author Judith Harris Judith Rich Harris is a psychologist and the author of The Nurture Assumption, a book criticizing the belief that parents are the most important factor in child development, and presenting evidence which contradicts that belief has said that aside from their genetic contribution, the nurturing provided by parents likely has less long-term influence over their offspring than other environmental aspects such as the children's peer group A peer group is a social group consisting of people who are equal in such respects as age, education or social class. Peer groups are an informal primary group of people who share a similar or equal status and who are usually of roughly the same age, tended to travel around and interact within the social aggregate Members of a particular peer.[10]
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.[11] Historically, girls lagged on standardized tests. In 1996 the average score of 503 for US girls from all races on the SAT The SAT Reasoning Test is a standardized test for college admissions in the United States. The SAT is owned, published, and developed by the College Board, a non-profit organization in the United States. It was formerly developed, published, and scored by the Educational Testing Service which still administers the exam. The College Board claims verbal test was 4 points lower than boys. In math, the average for girls was 492, which was 35 points lower than boys. "When girls take the exact same courses," commented Wayne Camara, a research scientist with the College Board, "that 35-point gap dissipates quite a bit." At the time Leslie R. Wolfe, president of the Center for Women Policy Studies said girls scored differently on the math tests because they tend to work the problems out while boys use "test-taking tricks" such as immediately checking the answers already given in multiple-choice questions. Wolfe said girls are steady and thorough while "boys play this test like a pin-ball machine." Wolfe also said although girls had lower SAT scores they consistently get higher grades than boys across all courses their first year in college.[12] By 2006 girls were outscoring boys on the verbal portion of the SAT The SAT Reasoning Test is a standardized test for college admissions in the United States. The SAT is owned, published, and developed by the College Board, a non-profit organization in the United States. It was formerly developed, published, and scored by the Educational Testing Service which still administers the exam. The College Board claims by 11 points.[13] A 2005 University of Chicago study showed that a majority presence of girls in the classroom tends to enhance the academic performance of boys.[14]
Art and literature
Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, Jan Vermeer van Delft Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer was a Dutch Baroque painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of middle class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime. He seems never to have been particularly wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death, perhaps because he produced (1657 Year 1657 AD was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar)).Egyptian murals Ancient Egyptian art refers to the style of painting, sculpture, crafts and architecture developed by the civilization in the lower Nile Valley from 5000 BC to 300 AD. Ancient Egyptian art was expressed in paintings and sculptures & was both highly stylized and symbolic. Much of the surviving art comes from tombs and monuments and thus there included sympathetic portraits of young girls who were daughters of royalty. Sappho Sappho was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life. The bulk of her poetry, which was well-known and greatly admired throughout antiquity,'s poetry carries love poems addressed to girls.
In Europe, some early paintings featuring girls were Petrus Christus Petrus Christus was an Early Netherlandish painter active in Bruges from 1444' Portrait of a Young Girl (about 1460), Juan de Flandes Juan de Flandes ('John of Flanders') was an Early Netherlandish painter who was active in Spain from 1496 to 1519. Born around 1460 in Flanders (modern Belgium), and evidently trained there, Juan de Flandes became an artist at the court of Isabella I of Castile in Spain painting accomplished portraits of her and members of her family in the' Portrait of a Young Girl (about 1505), Frans Hals Frans Hals was a Dutch Golden Age painter especially famous for portraiture. He is notable for his loose painterly brushwork, and helped introduce this lively style of painting into Dutch art. Hals was also instrumental in the evolution of 17th century group portraiture' Die Amme mit dem Kind in 1620, Diego Velázquez Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary baroque period, important as a portrait artist. In addition to numerous renditions of scenes of historical and cultural significance, he painted scores of portraits of the' Las Meninas Las Meninas is a 1656 painting by Diego Velázquez, the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age, in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. The work's complex and enigmatic composition raises questions about reality and illusion, and creates an uncertain relationship between the viewer and the figures depicted. Because of these complexities, Las Meninas in 1656, Jan Steen Jan Havickszoon Steen was a Dutch genre painter of the 17th century (also known as the Dutch Golden Age). Psychological insight, sense of humour and abundance of colour are marks of his trade's The Feast of St. Nicolas (about 1660) and Johannes Vermeer Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer was a Dutch Baroque painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of middle class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime. He seems never to have been particularly wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death, perhaps because he produced's Girl with a Pearl Earring The painting Girl with a Pearl Earring is one of Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer's masterworks and as the name implies, uses a pearl earring for a focal point. The painting is in The Mauritshuis in The Hague. It is sometimes referred to as "the Mona Lisa of the North" or "the Dutch Mona Lisa" along with Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window. Later paintings of girls include Albert Anker Albert Samuel Anker was a Swiss painter and illustrator who has been called the "national painter" of Switzerland because of his enduringly popular depictions of 19th-century Swiss village life's portrait of a Girl with a Domino Tower and Camille Pissarro Camille Pissarro was a French Impressionist painter. His importance resides not only in his visual contributions to Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, but also in his patriarchal standing among his colleagues, particularly Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin's 1883 Portrait of a Felix Daughter.
American paintings featuring girls include Mary Cassatt Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists's 1884 Children on the Beach and Whistler James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American-born, British-based artist. Averse to sentimentality and moral allusion in painting, he was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake". His famous signature for his paintings was in the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger for a tail. The symbol was apt, for it'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 Jane Eyre is a famous and influential novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published in London, England in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. with the title Jane Eyre. An Autobiography under the pen name "Currer Bell". The American edition came out the following year published by Harper & Brothers of New York who suffers ill treatment or Natasha in War and Peace War and Peace , a Russian novel by Leo Tolstoy, is considered one of the greatest works of fiction. It is regarded, along with Anna Karenina (1873–1877), as Tolstoy's finest literary achievement, who is sentimentalized. Other novels include Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. It was instantly successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern American literature. The plot and characters are loosely based on the author's observations of her family and neighbors, as well as on an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when in which a young girl is protagonist. Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian-American novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist. He also made contributions to entomology and had an interest in chess problems'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 Memoirs of a Geisha is a novel by Arthur Golden, published in 1997. The novel, told in first person perspective, tells the fictional story of a geisha working in Kyoto, Japan, before and after World War II 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 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll . It tells the story of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar and anthropomorphic creatures. The tale is filled with allusions to Dodgson's friends. The tale by Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll (/ˈkærəl/, KA-rəl), was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and " featured a widely noted female protagonist. Moreover, Carroll's photographs of girls are often cited in histories of photographic art.
Popular culture
A girl from Portugal Portugal /ˈpɔɹtʃʉɡəl/ (Portuguese: Portugal, Mirandese: Pertual), officially the Portuguese Republic (Portuguese: República Portuguesa; Mirandese: República Pertuesa), is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and.European fairy tales Fairy tale is an English language term for a type of short narrative corresponding to the French phrase conte de fée, the German term Märchen, the Italian fiaba, the Polish baśń or the Swedish saga. Only a small number of the stories thus designated explicitly refer to fairies. Nonetheless, the stories may be distinguished from other folk have preserved memorable stories about girls. Among these are Goldilocks and the Three Bears "The Story of the Three Bears" is a children's story first recorded in narrative form by English author and poet Robert Southey and first published in a volume of his writings in 1837. The same year, writer George Nicol published a version in rhyme based upon Southey's prose tale, with Southey approving the attempt to bring the story, Rapunzel "Rapunzel" is a German fairy tale in the collection assembled by the Brothers Grimm, and first published in 1812 as part of Children's and Household Tales. The Grimm Brothers' story is an adaptation of the fairy tale Persinette by Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force originally published in 1698. Its plot has been used and parodied in, Hans Christian Andersen Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish author and poet noted for his children's stories. These include "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", "The Snow Queen", "The Little Mermaid", "Thumbelina", "The Little Match Girl", and "The Ugly Duckling"'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
| Look up girl in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
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(PHOTOS) Huffington Post (blog) (satire) Congratulations, it's a girl ! Get ready for pink, rhinestones and a plethora of gender-affirming toys. From cleaning trolleys to Bratz babies, ...
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88 . Girls. . Dorothy McGuire. Mary Duncan Marsha Hunt Linda Ware Jane Powell Ingrid Bergman. George White Scandals group. Doris Day. Contsance Moore. Anna Friel (As we know from our studies, the "88" refers to the number of piano keys, ...
