Its just a rant but i cringed everytime i see FL or any female characters being called a little girl even though they are clearly grown ups who are the same age as ML. Ie in the synopsis please spare me a tail "As the leader of the No. 1 mercenary team in the 'last days', Lu Ye was always respected and feared by everyone up until a little girl joined his team." I havent actually read the novel yet tho but more or less the context is similar to that The little girl looked quite delicate, but super empowered when beating the zombies. Lu Ye's only problem is that she keeps staring at his butt.
Maybe the 'little girl' is a translation problem? Or is it originally written like than in Chinese as well?
I have been called a frail cute little girl before despite being 18 and male, it's a fairly common saying when you want to pamper someone
It's a mistranslation. The term that's used is "少女", and while it can look like "little girl", it more properly means young woman. It's the female equivalent of "少年", which is a term applied to men from the late teens to late twenties. There is a chance that the original text was "女孩", which can be rendered as "little girl", but "young woman" is still more accurate. In this context, this term is used in its slang form, and I would still consider the former to be a mistranslation.
I'm not sure about the whys and hows but your choice of vocabulary ("creeped out") suggests you might be "oversensitive" to "little girls"... as opposed to, say, put off by the patronizing tone it might imply when used to refer to adult women.
Omg you summed up everything that i want to rant about in easier paragraph lol, its hard being non native english speaker sometimes
If there's an age gap, then for me it's fine. As I grow older, I refer to people that are 4-5 younger than me as kids.
I complained about this to Fringecapybara before. Why are male teenagers are called men, but female teenagers or even women in their 20's referred to as 女孩? She said its because culturally, women want to be seen as young. Think about how in Chinese novels, the compliment of saying MC's mom looks like she's MC's sister. I feel that would be so cringey in non-Chinese cultures. Or the pressure of getting married before 28 in China/Taiwan for a woman.
One time my mom accompanied my brother to the hospital (my brother was 29 or something), and the doctor was like, "Oh, your brought your wife with you?" And my brother was like, "She's my mom..." My brother felt a bit bad, like, "Do I look this old." While my mom was quite happy about it, because like, "Oh, seems like I look young!" So uhn... I dunno? I feel like it's not really cringe at all? Unless you like... Know that the other person is the mom. Then it's a bit of a weird compliment. But being thought of as younger than what you actually are is generally nice~ (well, not if you're on your 20s and people think you're a teenager, but it gets nice to receive this kind of compliment later on)