Is it offensive to call women 'girls'?

A lot of elderly ladies that I know refer to one-another as "girls" -- but apparently men must not call any adult females "girls"

Last week Pharrell Williams defended himself against accusations that 'the worst song ever' Blurred Lines made light of sexual assault. After giving his version of events, (it's about rejection, repeat to fade …), Williams said he considered himself a feminist. As a visual flourish of sorts, he turned around to show the back of his jacket which read 'girls are everything'.

But … Williams is 44 years old. Is it OK for a man of his age, a man who says he supports equality, to call an album GIRL? And if it's not, well why is it permissible for Beyonce to proclaim that 'Girls run the world'? And for Amy Poehler to call her web series 'The Smart Girls at the Party'? And hey, for the love of political correctness, what about Lena Dunham?

What about those times when women - real, human, grown-ups with Facebook accounts - have said to one another, 'Let's organise a girl's night out' and everybody knew that did not mean children. And do we dare confront the thorniest question of them all: the Ryan Gosling 'Hey Girl' memes? I mean, are we human or are we DANCER?

When I first started working as – soft brag alert - an editor at Fairfax media I was told to familiarise myself with the stylebook. One of the top rules was this: Under no circumstances are writers to refer to any woman over the age of 18 as a 'girl'. So, if the stylebook of a large, mainstream media company can lay down the law, surely it's ok to question what the hell is going on when men as old as Williams are using it … willy-nilly?

It's not simply that the word is reductive, (which it is). But that, as sociology professor Lisa Wade pointed out last year, 'The sexualisation of girls and the infantilisation of adult women are two sides of the same coin. They both tell us that we should find youth, inexperience, and naivete sexy in women, but not in men."

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