Was Washington Really Different or are Those Rose Colored Glasses?

Okay so here's the pet peeve of the day and after today, it has to be a good one to rise to the top.
Girl. 
That girl.  The girl at the front desk.  The girl who teaches Zumba.  The girl who introduced us.  The girl with the long hair.  The girl who was here Friday.  Just ask your girl to give us a call.  If I"m not here, just call the girls in the office.  There seem to be an abundance of adolescent females employed in Miami.

Was DC different or am I just remembering differently?  Or was it the crowd I hung with, those damn radical feminists.  Okay, but not at work.  Were they just so trained/intimidated by me?  Oy.

Most times I let it go.  I make the assumption to correct or suggest something different to the guy who owns the Zumba gym -- for whom English is not his first language -- the suggestion of some other word would be far harder than I'm up for.  I let it go, but it eats at  me.  He must have said it 10 times.  The girl who teaches Monday, who now is the same girl who teaches Thursday, etc. Ugh.

When the guy at the doctor's office -- the only man in the room -- told me to call the other girls  if I couldn't get him, I wanted so badly to say something but I chickened out.  What if the women right there, the very women whose dignity and respect I was trying to protect, didn't rally around what I was saying.  Or worse, didn't get it themselves?  What's the worst that could happen, embarrassment?  I didn't do and I felt bad the rest of the day.  Like I had let a real opportunity go by.  Its clearly stuck with me.

When my own primary care doc, a woman, told me to take my paper work to the girls up front, I couldn't resist.  The girls, I said?  She stopped, looked at me and smiled.  "Okay, what should I call them - the ladies?"  Hmm.  I offered how about the people at the front desk, take your papers to the folks up front, the women up front will check you out -- seems like there are a whole bunch of options.  She smiled and said good bye.  I don't know that I changed hearts and minds right there in that moment but I felt better, and that counts for something.

I have a friend who told me that she never thought about this before me and now that she has, she won't use the words in the same way.  This is the same friend who works in various operating rooms and tells truly horrid stories about the sexism that goes on in the OR.  While I was on a rant one day, I was explaining how one innocuous thing like calling a woman a girl is the slippery slope that leads to or makes it easier for a surgeon to look a neuroscientist up and down before declaring her pretty enough to work in his OR.  Are those two offenses the same, no.  Are they on the same spectrum.  You bet.

So do me a favor if you would.  If you don't already, open your ears to the language used around you.  Sexism is so commonplace we hardly even hear it.  Way to often we let it go by, even us radical feminists.  The next time you hear a grown woman referred to as a girl, say something, do something.  It doesn't have to be rude it can be as simple as repeating back with different language.  "Take this to the girls at the front desk."  Okay, so I take this to the women at the front desk and I'm done?  Simple,subtle but done nonetheless.

I thank you and the women thank you.  Even if they don't know they do.

And as for those rose colored glasses, well, my friends in DC will have to tell me if its really different there or I'm just remembering a city I miss.

Come see for yourself -- visitors always welcome.

Just one woman in Miami....