girlishness

“There was a girlishness to Shiv back then, but she has transformed into a woman,” she said, “and that reflects my own journey as part of the series.”

Ms. Delinian, in her 70s but with a girlishness about her, gets about three amps a day to her apartment from a private generator.

The point being, she said in an email, that “girlishness” is simply “a state of mind, free from gender binaries and expressed through embracing a spectrum of different identities.”

Why is girlishness so often talked about as a sign of immaturity and naivete and boyishness as a measure of vigor and enthusiasm?

Her face maintains a semblance of girlishness, in the length of her eyelashes and the slight pout of her lips, despite the fact that she is clearly too old to be properly called a girl.