How quick we are to embrace the lure of social currency. I was reminded of this recently when feminist author Emily Maguire sent me a copy of her contribution to a Women of Letters literary salon, the theme of which was "A letter to the person I misjudged". In achingly grand prose, Maguire (author of Your Skirt's Too Short) travels through a series of apologies to the girls she met along the road to adulthood: her fellow kindergarteners, whose ironed bows and frilly socks drew her withering disdain; her middle-school friends, on whom she turned her back when presented with the first taste of male validation; and finally her high-school friends, and the limits they put on themselves by assuming that their adventurous forays into adulthood were the domain of men and thus all the more brazen.

Maguire's letter solidified something that has bothered me for a long time: namely, the tendency of some women to enthusiastically distance themselves from what are seen as typically female attributes and interests in order to elevate their own worth. I've noticed an increase in women speaking of their childhood inclination for boys' toys with an unconscious pride, as if a past dedication to Tonka trucks makes them more evolved than those who served tea to their My Little Ponies and made their Barbies have sex. But what's so interesting about a truck?

This all comes down to the unquestionably limited way in which society has constructed girlhood. Consider the marketing of children's toys. Girls are encouraged to bake pink cakes in pink ovens while realistic pink babies wee on their frilly pink dresses. Meanwhile, the boys are out preparing for their eventual roles as Masters of the Universe by roaming the countryside dressed as firemen and superheroes.

Is it any wonder that smart, savvy women with multidimensional personalities – that is, most of them – would seek to distance themselves from these tropes? We've all gone through a period where we've announced loudly that, of course, most of our friends are boys because we just seem to get on better with them. We wear it like a badge of honour. Boys build the world while girls are expected to decorate it. They have to be sexy without being too sexual, smart without being too smart and in need of protection without being too needy. The world does not respond well to women who look at these tiny boxes and ask for a little more wiggle room.

But it's a double-edged sword. Despite wanting them to conform to those stereotypes, society doesn't like girls very much. Girls are frivolous and sappy. They care too much about shoes and frills and vampires who sparkle in the sunlight. They're manipulative and emotional, but they're also weak, throwing, running and crying like girls. "Girl" is an accusation that's used against boys to humiliate them. And the absolute proliferation of this in sitcoms, movies, books and pop culture has resulted in 50 per cent of the world internalising the idea that not only are they somehow less than their male counterparts, they also occupy a state that's shameful and gross.