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[DonCoquixote]

98. well

someone just told me the proper term is "girls" or women. I told said person that the last time I used girls, I got flamed, even though it was about someone who was then under 18 (and therefore, a girl.)

The point is to show that messages, even the meanings of words themselves, are not as consistent as they may appear, and some of us do make the effort to ask, however, if "woman" is preferred to "lady" I can use that term, though I am curious about how "lady" became the "bad term."

If you are asking me why boys are called "men", well, I confess, I have not heard that. I hear a lot of the opposite; where over 18 males refer to themselves as boys, such as "going out with the boys, homeboys, or so and so is my boy" etc. I myself wondered why the term "boy" was kept, when said people were over 18. As for why your boys were called men, I think, and this is a guess, that children in general are expected to grow up before they are older: men were expected to get jobs, get laid, get heart attacks, and not put too much thought into developing. That is because society tends to want generation to grow up, die, and make way for the next batch of disposable heroes. Sadly, when you take a look at people like Miley Cyrus, people given pressures that would crack 50 year olds before they are 15, the pressure to grow up too quick looks like it is coming to the women as well.

All I know is that "lady" was supposed to be a polite term for a woman past 18, such as it's old counterpart "gentleman" was supposed to be used for men over 18, though that term seems to be obselete. And let's not get into the fact that "guys" is somehow now the unisex term for a group of young males and females "hey Guys!"

As I told another, if the object is to destroy the word "lady" and relegate it to the Museum of Oddities and curiosities along with "Gentleman", fine. The last thing I intended to utter was anything along the lines of the "n word."