n : a woman who engages in sexual intercourse for money (syn: {prostitute}, {cocotte}, {harlot}, {trollop}, {bawd}, {tart}, {cyprian}, {fancy woman}, {working girl}, {sporting lady}, {lady of pleasure}, {woman of the street})

v 1: corrupt by lewd intercourse

That's the dictionary definition, my friends. And on the matter I'm about to bring up, I'm sticking to the letter of the law, as it were.

I am sick to death of seeing young women use that word as part of their nicknames.

Grrl power is a farcical construct that is nothing more than overcompensation for a beleagured self-impression. You are not standing up for your female self, or your sisters, by being aggressive.

And that, right there, is a very figurative word: aggressive.

Words like whore and bitch are not words of empowerment, they are not words of assertiveness, they are words of ugliness and deprecation. I don't think their continued use is going to remove whatever misperceived sting you think they carry; anymore than spelling the word woman with y's in all vowel places, did.

If you want to latch on to the phase of female empowerment, be assertive for your self, not aggressive.

And if you think that labelling yourself with words that conjure up such dirty connotation is a cool thing, then I feel nothing but pity for you.

It's a pretty pathetic trend to follow, and in my books it doesn't make you cool, it makes you weak. You should have confidence in yourself for self reasons, not because you are hiding behind the illusiory and fleeting power of some mis-used label.

If you have no sense of self-worth, changing your label isn't going to help you very much. As I said, worth and value come from within, not from the names you choose to call yourself. What happens when those words you label yourself with get so used that they no longer have any power? You have nothing to hide behind anymore, and are left with what you had before you started; nothing.

Certainly by using some words more often, and in more casual manners, than before can eventually remove negative connotations and their power to make people feel degraded; but, it's a bit like the switch from genocide to ethnic cleansing. The annihilation of a race is a Very Bad Fucking Thing any way you look at it, and wrapping it up in pretty paper only serves to make people forget what's in the package. "Oh, it's ethnic cleansing. Cleansing is a clean word. So I can go back to my little hole now, and forget that half a world away, some race of people is being erased from the chalkboard of the globe."

Some words should NEVER EVER be made anti-septic.