“Beauty is not even half of what makes [Bond women] charming and alluring…[they are] intelligent, resourceful, self-reliant, articulate, and usually professional businesswomen. To think of them or any women in terms of only physical beauty is to miss the best points of what Bond women have to offer.”
~ Paul Kyriazi, How To Live The James Bond Lifestyle (Ronin Books)
When I refer to Bond Girls from the Bond books or movies, I use the regular spelling of G-I-R-L. However, in my fEmpowerment® seminars and training, and so in this book as well, I help women uncover and unleash their Inner Bond Grrl (with two Rs). Why? I adopted the Double-R-Grrl spelling because, every time I read Bond Girl, I thought “girlie-girl.” And since I didn’t come up with the phrase Bond Girl, I can’t change it without losing the mental link to the metaphor.
Hence—Grrrrrrrrrl. A “girl” with “Grrrr”… with a tiger in her tank, to quote the old gasoline ad campaign. This spelling makes me happier with the term, and I hope helps to eliminate the “girlie-girl,” weak, “Oh, James!” images that could pop into your mind.
This is not to say that some of the Bond Girls are not “girlie-girls.” A couple of them in the movies from the ’70s were even “Eek Girls” (Don’t know what an “Eek Girl” is? You gotta read the book! :-) ). But I hope that in reading G-R-R-L, you won’t mentally see that girlie-girl, less-than-a-woman image that the word G-I-R-L used to bring out in me.
