Good work, girls

Off the getting-tiresome subject of falsified, time-travelling memos, I thought I'd ponder the use of the word "girls," as it was just used on me.

A freelancer for us (not a particularly good one at that), just came by our offices, and twice offered, "Good work, girls!" etc. to my one fellow female reporter-colleague and myself.

Okay. It just sounds outdated to me. My father used to call the women he worked with "the girls in the office." They were the secretaries, I'm guessing, because as far as I can recall, there were no other women in other positions at his company till sometime in the 1990s. He made the switch to "women" sometime during my years at uberfeministy university. Occasionally, though, he still did the "girls...I mean women..."

Fine. But this is a whole new use, although I'm reluctant to say "reappropriation," cause that freelancer with the bad dye job didn't smell of new feminism - whatever that smells like.