Dicing with the `g' word

A reader from the US has taken me to task over my use in a recent column of a certain four-letterword. And I'm afraid I have to plead guilty. Yes, writing about an encounter with a hairdresser at a party years ago, I described the female in question as a "g**l".

"So what age was this `girl'? Five? Nine-and-a-half?" asks Virginia Pleasants from Delaware, who goes on to disprove the myth that Americans don't understand irony by asking if there are no labour laws in Ireland to prevent the under-age having to work in hairdressing salons. Turning serious, she concludes: "For shame, Frank! Next time you're in the eye-roving department, stick to [the term] `woman'."

I'm assuming Virginia is American, because if she was Irish she'd know that we have no shame here any more. Shame was phased out during the 1990s to make room for the C**tic T*g*r, and the most we can feel about anything these days is mild embarrassment. Which is what I felt when reading Virginia's email.

The fact is, I did think twice before using the "g" word to describe a person then in her 20s (as was I). The political correctness checker on my computer also objected to it, suggesting "woman" or "young woman" instead. But "woman" seemed somehow clinical in the circumstances, and "young woman" sounded stiff and awkward, like a Free Presbyterian's collar.

So I opted for the conversational term. Girls is what I called my female contemporaries at that time and, more to the point, is what they called themselves. Admittedly they didn't usually call people like me "boys", but they didn't call us "men" either, or if they did, we'd be nervous. Country girls generally used the term "fellas" and trendy city types said "guys".

There's an elaborate apprenticeship before you qualify as a man in this country; and speaking as someone who was refused a coke in a Dublin pub at the age of 23, in front of witnesses, I speak from hard experience. In an average male life, you have to go through being a baby boy, a boy, a teenager, an obnoxious adolescent, a lad, a broth of a boy (optional), a guy/fella, a chap and maybe even a "young bucko", before people start thinking of you as a man.

If you get in trouble with the law, you face a period of being described as a "youth" in the newspapers (an exclusively male term in this context); and as if that wasn't bad enough, once convicted of a crime, The Irish Times will stop calling you "Mister". There is an equally complicated evolution between "girl" and "woman", which I won't attempt to detail here; except to say that in certain circumstances, to refer to your girlfriend as your "woman" would make you sound like a knuckle-dragger.

Anyway, I hit 38 last month and am now, irrevocably, a man: a situation not without sadness. But yes, Virginia, in the unlikely event I find myself in the eye-roving department in the near future, I'll definitely stick to the term "woman". (I'm sure my wife will have a different word for her).

THANKS to email, you never know who will write to you these days. Another recent message came from Kristen Keller in Frankfurt, a political science lecturer and "avid reader of The Irish Times", who began with the alarming question: "Is Dublin part of England or Ireland?".

This was more irony. But to cut a long story short, Kristen's complaint was that it was "really, really sad" how dominated we in Ireland are by England. Her impression of Dublin in particular was of "a small hamlet inside some posh English county, a cricketing county with rolling green hills and Ms Marple-type villages, no doubt." Such was the image she saw in the pages of this newspaper, and a recent holiday here confirmed it in every detail. I don't know why she's asking me about this; unless it's because of a column I wrote a couple of months ago about modern Ireland's identity crisis, in which I said the problem was occupying the minds of most of our "serious thinkers", including me.

That too was irony, Kristen - I never do any serious thinking unless Fintan O'Toole are Vincent Browne are really busy. Nevertheless, I will deal with the criticisms, which I think are unduly harsh. We may have our faults, but to suggest Dublin and homecounties England are culturally homogenous is an injustice to the many areas in which our capital city is uniquely Irish.

Take litter. England is a notoriously tidy country, especially those Ms Marple-type villages; whereas Dublin has a proud, ancient tradition in the area of litter, which has been given full expression since independence and, if anything, is enjoying a revival at the moment, thanks to the boom.

Only yesterday, the city's residents celebrated St Patricks Day in traditional style, transforming the colour of the River Liffey by throwing as many wrappers as possible into it during the parade. It's true that the Tidy Towns movement has gained a foothold among some impressionable communities around Dublin; but the rebel tradition is still strong, and on windy days visitors could be forgiven for thinking grey plastic an alternative national flag, there's so much of it flying from trees and lampposts.

How anyone could confuse this place with England - with her prissily tidy village greens and so on - is a mystery. I doubt even Miss Marple could explain.

Frank McNally can be contacted at fmcnally@irish-times.ie