Southern Gentleman, Gentlewomen

Jimmy Hennessey goes by “Jim” now but told me via email I could slip up and call him Jimmy because his mom still does. Last Saturday, he drove to Slidell from his home in Hattiesburg to attend the First Official Meeting of the Order of Planners Extraordinaire for the Twentieth-Year Reunion. He held open the door when we walked outside to photograph ourselves, he held open the door to the coffee shop we found open after the meeting, and he waited to be last in line to order a beverage.

Now I’m not saying that I want men to offer me such privileges simply because I’m a delicate womanly flower, but it felt special. I’d forgotten. I’m not saying men and women both haven’t been holding doors open in other parts of the world, either, such as Chicago, but still. It felt special in Slidell last weekend.

Feminists might be bristling at my use of the label “girl” in my photo descriptions. So I’m going to tell you a little stylebook story. (Climb onto my lap, virtually speaking.) As a copy editor for many years, I notice writers’ choices of terms in such circumstances. Part of my job is to determine whether the terms suggest a certain tone or bias and whether they do indeed apply. Where I currently work, I’m supposed to use “girl” when the subject or patient is female and younger than 18 years old. If she’s older than 12 years, I can use adolescent or female adolescent.

I had to decide what rule to apply to my blog posts--set my own publishing conventions, if you will. My goal when writing the posts, as it is when editing articles, is consistency. When you use terms consistently, people don’t usually get hung up on noticing them and they can focus on only the message itself. The motor of the truck doesn’t distract from the importance of its cargo, so to speak.

When posting pictures taken in 1985 and 1986, I just can't refer to my teenage friends as “women,” no matter how much time has passed since that camera shutter opened. But when I saw Susan Whelan, the blonder subject of last week’s photo, walk into our meeting room last Saturday, I thought, “Wow, what a woman. I wish I knew where she got those shoes.”


(The 20th-year reunion is Saturday, June 10, 2006. Do we know how to reach you?)