Yesterday that Flipkart guy on Shark Tank (Piyush) big time scolded a girl from IIM for referring to her employee as “girls”. He said it’s not dignified to do so. She started crying and all.

Ok, but I see everyone in law firm circles refer to employees and colleagues as “girls”. Honestly, it’s weird if I am to refer to my batchmates and college juniors (or few years senior) as “ladies” instead of “girls”. I would never refer to Zia Mody or Pallavi Shroff as “girls”, but why not people in my age group? Even my mom refers to her college friends as “girls”.

To the contrary- i think theres a weird cultural thing going on with college kids/ recent graduates where they keep calling themselves girls/ girlies rather than women. part of it - i think is just- cultural gender wars and being a woman means youre subject to all the awful things that happens to women but being a girl is more "carefree". All nonsense ofc. you cant escape the social consequences of your biological sex. what you can do is confront them.

I think its also- idolising youth and beauty which is a very western american concept thats creeping in through social media. There are also a lot of people wanting to regress/ remain in arrested development. I taught a credit course at a law school recently- I was surprised at how unlike their age students were behaving. theyre not really adults in training or behaving like adults in law schools anymore- its almost toddler like- the emotional dysregulation.

but yes. I think where theyre grown- even if theyre your age- you should start referring to adults by age appropriate words- ladies, gentlemen, men, women. If you woke up tomorrow and youre 30 years old- would you still call your colleagues girls and boys? a 25 year old who works in a law firm is at that stage in life where "girls" and "boys" is infantilising language. Anyone in the workplace- just age appropriate words are best.

In fact, I think some women may like being referred to as girls because it makes them feel young! For example, if you ask people who are 25-30 years old if they are college students, they may act embarrassed but secretly like it. A very good female friend of mine, who is 27 but looks very young told me so herself, after a client mistook her for an intern and remarked that she looked like a student.

Coincidentally, there is an article in today's ET which says that Gen Z now prefer to be called girls, as it signifies freedom and independence, whereas the word "woman" is outdated and contains patriarchal and regressive connotations.

So it's settled then: I will say "girls" and not "women" or "ladies".

https://brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/marketing/a-return-to-claim-girlhood/108251683

Whoa… this issue has blown up in the national media. The IIM girl has now blasted Piyush and said that he was trying to build his own PR by condemning her fir calling her employees “girls”.

https://www.news18.com/movies/shark-tank-india-3-pitcher-calls-peyush-bansal-worst-makes-shocking-comment-he-used-the-word-8806326.html

I faced this issue the other day. I referred to a classmate and old friend in my law firm as a “girl”, while speaking about her to someone else. Some woke associate from another law school, who overheard the conversation, butted in and tried to shame me as a misogynist and patriarchal. I told him to STFU as I know her for many years since she was a kid and she too will prob refer to me as a “guy” and not a “gentleman”.

Really stupid this whole nonsense about why we can’t address old friends as “girls”. My parents do so with their old classmates. This is why liberals are getting a bad rep these days. Trying to police language and label everything as a “micro aggression”.

Yeah you're wrong. We all have friends from law school that we call all kinds of things in private but refer to respectfully in public. If she's your colleague, talk about her respectfully in front of other colleagues. Do whatever you want in private. Same goes for her. The equivalent of 'girl' is 'boy' not guy and it would be very patronizing if she referred to a colleague as that 'boy'.

Why is it unacceptable for white people to use the n word to describe/talk about/refer to a black person, whereas it is acceptable for a black person to use that word about another black person? Please think about this and reflect how this same concept might apply in contexts other than race. You are supposed to be able to do this (thinking critically) as a lawyer, but your comment shows you to have done a very poor job of it in this case. Is this why you are in a law firm? Mediocre to less than average academically, so you became a glorified paperpusher?