Hey girl, if you're not Ryan Gosling it's "woman" to you

You hope by your late 20s and beyond that these phrases are as likely to be used as descriptors as smog is to be secured in a net.

I read a recent interview with Helen Mirren, (all woman, surely), where she decried the use of reductive female adjectives: spritely, sassy, feisty. "Only women are feisty. It just makes me gag. We need new words for female power and funniness and smartness."

She makes an astute point. Mirren is the type of woman called on to play strong female characters. I hate the notion of a strong female character. When do you ever hear of a strong male character? You have complex male characters but are expected to feel grateful when a writer deigns to make a woman more than just a convenient sop for the male action around her.

What is a strong woman? A woman who displays masculine characteristics. It's a compliment. A soft man, displaying feminine characteristics is not a compliment.

A "strong female character" or a "strong woman" are the anomaly and not the default.

More innocuous a threat is "girl". Girl makes me gag. It makes me want to kick the speaker on the shin, quite hard. Though that probably just backs up their assessment of "girl" as an appropriate epithet.

A friend (early 30s) was at an event listening to the economist Vicky Pryce speak about her time in prison and raised her hand to ask why Ms Pryce repeatedly referred to her fellow inmates as "girls". On spotting the raised hand, the chair called on "the girl at the front." There would never have been a question from "the boy at the front" because the equal to "girl" is "man".

I sigh at the casual sexism of 'girl', the casual disrespect. Girl is younger, weaker and less able. Girl diminishes women, renders them unimportant. Girl is not inherently potent or powerful. Some women enjoy being viewed as girls for the shock value of disproving expectations. I hate that to be competent and intelligent is a surprise.

Women still refer to themselves as Girl. The girls from Sex and the City, the girls in the office, that girl who works in Starbucks drinks with the girls.

Lena Dunham's Girls are young women scrabbling to find a place for themselves in adulthood. While the scrapes available to the young women of Manhattan might not resonate with your average young woman on the west coast of Scotland, I'm sure the feeling of being a girl but faking it til you make it is similar to both.

Girl is a pejorative way of describing a woman, undermining her and belittling her. It's not that women refer to themselves as girls because they are trying to claim the word for themselves. You can't reclaim the word girl because it's not powerful enough in and of itself. It's not startling enough a word, not unarguably homophobic or racist, it's too easy to claim you didn't mean any offence by it even though "like a girl" is never complimentary.

Of course, there's a wee bit of hypocrisy here: I might not want to be called a girl but I still feel girlish. "Woman" is a slightly uncomfortable mantle to wear. Mums are women, women are responsible and capable and a little bit staid.

Girl smacks of glamour and youth. There's your problem: the chummy use of girl is a rejection of ageing, a shyness of maturity and the preference for youth making women happy to infantalise themselves.

Girl. I hate girl. I'd urge any woman with the urge to call herself girl to grow up.