Infovore, I for one am shocked – shocked – that you have the temerity to be annoyed by something that other people on the Internet are not annoyed about.
Do I detect a note of annoyance in your post?
God, I hope so. I put in half a concerto’s worth.
Yep, you’re wrong (well, about the age). I’m 47. No kids, not a lot of contact with kids. And I tend to be really sensitive to gender-related issues.
Just curious: from your perspective, is a 15-year-old boy a “little boy”?
Yes.
If you aren’t around real children much, let me remind you that the actors you see playing them in movies and on TV are typically much older both physically and emotionally than the characters they play. I don’t mean that as snark either.
Does that make me the inspiration for the concerto or are you dedicating it to me?
If you think of teen boys as “little boys” then you’re not part of the annoyance in my OP. Like I’ve said before, it’s not that it happens–it’s that it’s applied unequally that bugs me. Infantilizing girls but not boys to make them seem more vulnerable and sympathetic. Shouldn’t we have equal sympathy and feel equally protective toward all kids who disappear?
And yeah, I understand what you mean about actors. I don’t take that as snark. This is an old example, but I was just mentioning this last night while the spouse and I were watching “Happy Days” on the Hub while we waited for the House finale to start. Richie, Potsie and Ralph were supposed to be 17, but not one of them looked a day under 30. It hasn’t gotten a lot better in the last 30 years…
It’s recreational-outrage inflation, as are a brutal murder, a brutal rape, a brutal beating.
They make one wonder whatever happened to gentle murders, gentle rapes and gentle beatings.
I humbly offer that you don’t know what the hell you are talking about. As the father of two daughters now well past 15, one definitely thinks of kids that age as little girls, at least some times and especially when they are in distress. Parents see the connection between a 15-year-old and the girl when she was younger. A parent sees the little girl things that a 15-year-old does at home, even when she would never do them outside.
Since you didn’t give a link I don’t know if it is the same person, but the Sheriff I heard speaking at the news conference today is a woman. Maybe she has daughters. Maybe she is thinking of what if this horrible thing had happened to them at 15.
As another data point, one of my daughter’s friends live around the block. Her father was a cop, and he walked with her everywhere, despite our neighborhood being pretty safe. I suppose he had seen stuff, even in our town, which scared him.
I heard some of the news conference. It appears that they found DNA evidence from him on her possessions (they found a bundle of clothes by the road) and they found evidence that he was in her car, which thy had taken a while ago. There was video footage showing it hanging around the scene. They had him under 24-hour surveillance for quite some time, hoping he would lead them to the body. The sheriff did not say why the made the arrest now (not from the portion of her comments on the radio) but the perp is being charged with murder. He is also linked to some other assaults from 3 years ago, using DNA.
ET include link to news story. The sheriff quoted in the OP is a woman, BTW.
I’ll ask you the same question I asked Scumpup: if you had boys, would you think of them as “little boys”? And again, parents and relatives aren’t part of what I expressed in my OP. I’m only talking about unrelated people (and particularly the media, even more than law enforcement).
It is the same person. I left her name out because a lot of people are searching for info about her and I didn’t want them find this thread, since it wouldn’t be helpful or relevant. And yeah, you have a point about the sheriff, if she has kids. Fair enough.
But the world is a dangerous place for boys as well as girls. Boys disappear. Boys get murdered. So why does the “little” stuff all seem to be focused on girls? That is the crux of my annoyance. That’s all.
Mine hasn’t been “my little boy” since kindergarten, but given that he’s now 24, he’s still “the Rugrat”.
I would venture that it’s cultural, if not biologic, that ‘little girl’ for a 15 year old is because of the instinctive desire to protect a female, while ‘little boy’ is rarely used beyond 8 years or so because males are supposed to grow up strong and protective. The wording evokes sympathy for a girl.
If I’m going to get flamed for a caveman attitude, go tell it to someone who cares.
It kind of irks me, too. What’s wrong with young lady? As if young women don’t need to be protected, just little girls.
Bothers me as well, and I’m 42. The teenager in question may be considered to always be her parents’ “little girl” but she is not the sheriff’s, reporter’s, or reader’s little girl. And I agree that I don’t recall any “little boy” usage for tales of teen boys gone missing, at least not from law enforcement.
Well, yes. My point is that they still look more adult than a 5 year old, but their thought processes and behaviors are still very immature and that it’s a good idea to remember that.
I forgot to respond to this very reasonable question. I think I would, but I can’t say for sure not having any sons.
Girls seem to disappear more frequently, or at least it gets covered more frequently. By the way, the missing girl is not the blue-eyed blond so loved by some of the media. (We don’t have a lot of them around here.) Has Nancy Grace covered this case. If not, there is your reason.
BTW, I’m reading “Homicide” by David Simon in conjunction with watch the series from Netflix. One of the cases in both is the murder of a young girl. Simon mentions that the cops at the scene did not do the joking around that they did at most murder scenes. It is not surprising that this kind of crime strikes home deeper than your usual crime, and leads to them thinking of the victim as a little girl (or maybe boy) who can be protected only by finding the perp. I can think of situations where outrage at calling a 15 year old a little girl is justified, just not here.
Any parent knows that if your daughter is being called “young lady” she is in the process of getting yelled at.
True, true. I’m not a parent and even I know that!
But what’s wrong with “young woman,” or “girl,” or even “young girl” or “teenage girl”? Any of those would be less condescending than “little girl” for a 15 year old.
I think if it were a 15-year-old boy missing, he would be “teenager” or “boy” or “young man.”
FWIW, I’m 46, and have two nieces. To me, the 11-year-old is still a “little girl”. The 14-year-old is definitely not.
But of course, as soon as they’re 18 they’ll suddenly be “women”, as far as the media and such are concerned.
Spanish reporters are starting to do that. Recently I saw a mother being asked about her “little boy” who’d been wounded in a car accident and giving a mangled answer halfway between “what ‘little boy’, he’s 17, he’s almost a man! My little boys are these other two!” and “ohmygod, this shouldn’t have happened!”