Jacqueline Kory-Westlund

At 26, nearly 27, I still think of myself as a girl, and get flustered when I am referred to as “Ma’am”. When did that happen? When did I become a woman in the eyes of society when on so many levels I still think of myself as a “Miss”. I mean, I’m a parent for goodness sake, shouldn’t I identify as a woman now?

I guess on some level I don’t want to admit that I’m an adult, but at some point I’ll have to grow up. Stupid Peter Pan syndrome.

I still think of myself as a “girl,” and it’s the term I would probably use for other females around my age. But I refer to males around my age as “guys,” not boys or men… My terminology could be a result of me not seeing myself (and people my age) as adults, or it could just be something I do out of habit.

Most likely, it’s a bit of both.

Whatever the reason is, I would feel weird calling myself a “woman” when I’m still in school and my parents pay all my bills. Which I guess means that, to me, self-sufficiency is what signifies adulthood. Huh.

You go girl! hehe. Just kidding. I think I started calling myself a man the first time someone called me sir. I was about 24 or 25. But given my slow progress toward maturity, I probably should have waited even longer. By the way, you may want to reread your last sentence in your post.

Tessa: You can be an adult without completely growing up, I think. I’ve known adults who’ve managed to balance out being mature adults and goofing off and doing crazy things like a teenager.

Nichole: Good point with “guys.” It’s a nice, generic, not-old-not-young term for males. I’m failing to think of a similar term for girls that’s used just as commonly (“gals” doesn’t quite fit). And I agree: with all the people our age, particularly people with whom we grew up, it’s partly habit to call us “girls”–after all, that’s what we did for the past decade!

Dan: Huh! That’s interesting; thanks for sharing.

I wonder whether some of that Peter Pan syndrome has to do with the art created by adults who wish they hadn’t grown up as quickly as they did. I know that I seem to have always been aware of the “recapture the magic of your youth” trope, the idolization of childhood’s fresh vision, and I wonder whether the fruits of one generation’s overquick maturation predisposed the next to privilege childhood.

It’s probably more likely that school’s a major factor, though. School carries on long past childhood, but with much the same structure – including the grading system, which makes it easy to place validation in the hands of older figures of authority – while earlier generations might have gone off to tend a field, apprentice themselves, or sign up for wage slavery in the mills. We don’t have a rite of transition, unless graduation counts, and that comes a bit late.

Also, if school’s the delaying factor, it would explain this: http://catandgirl.com/?p=1570

—

To answer your actual question: I’m not sure that I have switched. On the one hand, I’d like to consider myself somewhat mature; it was a point of pride in childhood, and I think I’ve managed to stay ahead of the curve on some counts. On the other hand, identifying myself as a man would require a definition of what it means to be a man, not biologically but socially. Pardon me, but, ain’t never gonna happen. Intriguingly, reflection reveals that I would more readily say “I am an adult” than “I am a man”. Fascinating.

It occurs to me that the one thing that would unambiguously, permanently recategorize me as a man in my own mind would be becoming a father.

When John started referring to me as a woman.

It felt wrong the first time or two that he did, but after that, it felt wrong to be a “girl.” I had been inducted by a member of the adult community.