girl power, n.
Brit. /ˈgəːl ˌpaʊə/, U.S. /ˈgərl ˌpaʊ(ə)r/
Forms: α. 19– girl power; β. (In sense 2) 19– girrl power, 19– girrrl power, 19– grrl power, 19– grrrl power forms with r appearing four or more times are also occas. attested.
[‹ girl n. + power n.1 In sense 1 after manpower n. Compare woman-power n. at woman n. Compounds 2.
In β forms after grrrl n.; compare riot girl n.]
1. The number of girls available to perform a task; girls considered collectively in relation to their capacity to perform work. Contrasted with manpower n.
| 1913 Ogden (Utah) Examiner 28 Mar. 6/7 Girls have a potential value to society which makes it uneconomic to use them up in service and scrap them like wornout cheap girl power at present. 1932 Columbia Law Rev. Nov. 1162 In the girl-power mills, the operators agreed to remain with the company for twelve months at fixed rates of wage. 1952 M. Lowry Let. 24 Nov. (1967) 323 Nearby is a Catholic church within which it says: ‘We want girl-power for our convent.’ 1963 Population Index 29 356 A dowry was required for a girl's marriage. Her farm family..needed cash more than it needed girl-power. 1989 St. Louis (Missouri) Post-Dispatch (Nexis) 18 June 1 d, The St. Louis Boy Scout and Girl Scout councils and the Missouri DeMolay, the Masonic youth organization, quickly supplied the boy- and girl power. 1996 News Tribune (Nexis) 10 Mar. c1 Why waste so much manpower (more precisely, boypower and girlpower) in holding dozens of games designed to fill footnotes in a record book? |
2. orig. U.S. Power exercised by girls; spec. a self-reliant attitude among girls and young women manifested in ambition, assertiveness, and individualism.
Although also used more widely (esp. as a slogan), the term has been particularly and repeatedly associated with popular music; most notably in the early 1990s with the briefly prominent ‘riot girl’ movement in the United States (cf. riot girl n.); then, in the late 1990s, with the British all-female group The Spice Girls.
| 1967 Daily Rev. (Hayward, Calif.) 21 Mar. 7/3 (advt.) Crisp cotton gingham flattery, lace trim. Zings up your girl-power like mad. 1969 Fitchburg (Mass.) Sentinel 21 Oct. 5/1 Girl Power... A report from the Bureau of Government Research at the University of Massachusetts..says the typical student power activist at the university is a girl. 1986 Los Angeles Times (Nexis) 16 June v. 1 ‘Girl Power: Health Power’ motivates girls to assume long-term responsibility for their health and fitness. 1992 Star Tribune (Minneapolis) (Nexis) 14 Mar. 1 b, [She] helped dissect a sheep's heart Friday to learn about the heart as part of the Minneapolis YWCA Girl Power program. 1992 Houston Chron. (Nexis) 4 Oct. (Lifestyle section) 3 Places like girl bedrooms, girl bathrooms and punk-rock clubs such as 924 Gilman in Berkeley, Calif., that have specially arranged girl nights, when girl bands sing songs about girl power. 1994 Rolling Stone 16 June 24/4 It has four all-girl bands... All amazing. Part of the grrrl-power underground that's so exciting. 1999 Times 2 Aug. 43/4 This was the fabulous, horrible lie of Girl Power—as a movement with absolutely no meaning, it became a disembodied slogan capable of being slapped on any act. Girl Power, it seems, is simply Anything A Girl Does. 2001 Dreamwatch Mar. 24/1 Cameron has done it by mixing the sober feminism of his Terminator and Aliens characters with the sexed-up Girl Power of a Britney Spears concert. |