I'm not sure why the "stand/come closer to me" bits are in there. I doubt those are sexual - he's probably just trying to get them on the mark so that everything can be in one shot. I'm sure you can find the same with male contestants. Also, a few of the clips seemed to be of the women themselves starting things - kissing him or groping him in some way.

However, I agree that some of those were pretty infantilizing - I'm not overly opposed to "girl" in some cases (as the equivalent to "guy" though I wish we had something better) - but calling a grown woman "a pretty little girl" is definitely overboard. And some of the bits were downright demeaning ("Does your voice always quiver that way?").

American Idol always refers to the "girls" versus the "boys" (or "guys"). It annoys me to no end, since the vast majority of the contestants are in their 20s and are certainly not girls and boys. (Even the female contestants who have had children are called "girls"!)

A lot of women still call themselves girls. There was nothing that bothered me more about working at Save-On-Foods than the overt sexism towards one's own gender that I saw on display among the head cashiers at my store. And the older men that came in and just generally harassed the women doing things like snapping at them to get their attention, whistling, asking questions slooo-owly so that we (as women with inferior brains?) could understand and making lewd comments.

Worst thing about the creepy old men? Was that telling them not to do that to you, make comments, or whistle/snap would probably cost you your job. I never tried it.

YES I'd like to comment on Jamie Oliver - his constant barage of "doll" "honey" "sweetheart" and "darling" are really annoying. It would be okay if was every once in a while, but every. single. woman. he meets? I love his show but come on!

Richard Dawson, on Family Feud, was always the one that stuck out to me. He kissed nearly every female contestant, and there were definitely some lewd comments thrown in there as well.

I believe even Family Guy poked fun at him for it.

That "ticky ticky ticky" thing just blew my damn mind. Gross.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0WW9BXdKuc

Even creepier.

I saw this clip of Barker on The Soup the other day. He's still creepy after all these years! (Check it out around 1:05. Possibly not suitable for work.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3C6Jc-Tj_0

My grandfather (died in his early 80's in the mid-1970s) always said that a "woman" was his age or older and a "girl" was younger than him. This was as true at 76 as it had been at 35.

I'm not a girl. And for the past few days, an older male customer keeps coming in the co-op I volunteer in and talking to me. And he tells me things like, "you're so pretty, you don't need to work so hard being an archaeologist. If I was you I'd take off the librarian glasses and try to get a job as a hostess or a waitress. You're a pretty girl."

1. I am 25, hardly a girl.
2. I like my librarian glasses.
3. I LIKE DIGGING AND I LIKE POTTERY so eff off, dude.

It's especially creepy considering that at least one of the "spokesmodels" later sued Barker for sexual harassment--and, I believe, lost.

I am outraged by this patent display of banal, garden-variety 70s sexism, in which a legendarily smarmy TV personality acts a little smarmy. I was promised "stunning."

yeah i really cringe at being called a "girl." i really do think it's even consciously used to patronize/demean, at least sometimes. i've known guys who constantly say "girl" instead of "woman" and also use a lot of pet names to be the most blatantly misogynist. sadly sometimes i'm relieved to even hear "girl" instead of "bitch."

sigh.

In fairness, to all those talking about how girl is used to belittle women but not men - my dad insists on calling men 'kids'.

It's "the Johnson kid did this", "This kid said that" ... and then I ask him, "When you say 'kid', how old exactly is this person?"
The answer's usually about forty.

I'm not sure whether this is just because he likes to put them down, or becasue he is often friends with Mr. Johnson senior or has known the man since he was a child.

To me the term girl means both a female child and a young woman. That's the common usage - you can rail against the fact that implicitly our language suggest women are similar to children whereas men are distinct, but i don't think you can call every person that uses the term misogynistic.

I also tend to call men my own age 'guys' rather than men, just as I call the women 'girls' (I'm 22). I think calling someone a 'man' or a 'woman' implies more maturity than just being an 'adult' does.

I'm 30 and people around my own age I refer to as 'guy' or 'girl', mostly because 'gal' sounds a bit country or hickish or something. And I rarely use 'woman' to refer to an individual at all, I usually use 'lady'. I'd like to think that I'm not being misogynistic, it's just a way of speaking that I've grown up with and find very hard to change.

To me it seems that for people my own age it's acceptable to say 'girl', but for Bob Barker to do it is condescending. Words can change meaning and connotation over time (look at the evolution of 'gay' over the past century, and the more recent attempt to distance it from a homophobic term by changing the spelling to 'ghey').

I'm not really sure if I have an over-arching point here, I just wanted to add my two cents.

I guess I'm in the minority; I don't mind being called a girl, and still refer to myself as a girl (or a lady, or a woman, they're pretty interchangeable) despite being grown. I may also refer to males as "men", "boys", or "guys", regardless of their age. It never bothered me to be called a girl, but that's my own perception.
What I do have a problem with is this Barker guy's attitude; he calls the "girls" pretty as though he's validating their existence. I don't mind being called a girl as long as the attitude behind the noun is respectful, but this guy absolutely treats them like a child! Maybe he was trying to put them at ease because they were on TV and playing for money, but does he treat the men that way? And to find out that there was a sexual harassment lawsuit just makes him look that much smarmier. Oh the 70s, what a time to be alive...

What I'd love to see contexts do is list "white women" when it applies instead of as the default for women generally more regularly, although I know this may/is often difficult to do. It's ONLY the women who are infantalized, because they are considered feminine/innocent (white and asian women) who are called "Girls". We hear "Asian girls" and "White Girls". However, we don't hear Latina women and black women being referred to as girls (unless we're literally talking about those under the age of about 9), because our racialized gender differences, being the "non-feminine" of the races, does not permit this. I've heard "Srong black woman", but never "strong asian woman" or "strong white woman" as black women/girls are deemed a masculine threat.

Occasionally this applies to men too.

Big black man (heard).
Big asian man (never heard).
Asian guy I usually hear (more emasculating than man).
White guy I've heard equally as white man, but FAR MORE than I hear "black guy" (I never really hear this unless the black man is himself not a masculine stereotype or is comedic).

"White boy" is common by black men in an attempt to emasculate white men, as calling black men "boy" in the south was done. So yes, politics play in how we word things. I.E. we've never heard of "black femininity", or "soft features" when it applies to black women, only to white and asian women.

Just some examples to consider...

The whole "Ticky ticky ticky" part was super creepy to me... probably because I have a tickle fetish... so it doesn't look cute, it looks gross and to me, like sexual harassment.

Men are harassed and objectified just as much or more than women. The only difference is, if we take issue with it we are laughed at and never taken seriously