Guardian columnist argues the 'girl' prefix trend trivialises ordinary adult life

Writing in The Guardian, columnist Elle Hunt argues that the now-widespread habit of prefixing ordinary activities with the word "girl" — girl dinner, girl walk, girl coffee — trivialises and infantilises what are simply normal parts of adult life for women.

Hunt traces the trend to the pandemic era, when "hot girl walks" built on the momentum of Megan Thee Stallion's 2019 song Hot Girl Summer to become one of the first major TikTok phenomena of the genre, before spreading into near-ubiquitous use across social media and everyday conversation.

Her central objection is that framing routine activities, such as eating dinner, taking a walk, or doing housework, as inherently gendered or cutesy implies they need a special, diminutive label when performed by women, in a way they would not if performed by anyone else. She argues this amounts to a subtle form of self-infantilisation, dressed up as empowerment or relatability.

Hunt contrasts this framing with a more straightforward view of adult womanhood: she is, she writes, simply a woman who walks, eats, works and votes, without needing a cutesy qualifier attached to any of it.

The piece situates the "girl" trend within a broader pattern Hunt sees in online culture, where language marketed as fun and inclusive can end up reinforcing the idea that women's ordinary activities are novel or noteworthy only when framed through a particular, youthful lens.