Wow, I knew you guys would have a ton of opinions on this!

OK, I called you all "guys", then almost changed it to "ladies" and then realized the irony of it all so I left it as is...

I must admit that I refer to my friends as "the girls" quite often and they're in the 40-60 age range. I sometimes use the word "chick" but usually only when I'm PO'd at a woman as in "That chick just cut me off!" I call people of both sexes "guys" but that falls back to my youth. I do refer to a woman as a "lady" depending on her age and/or activity and I think there are plenty of occasions where the term is perfectly appropriate.

I guess my main point was that it sounded weird to me to refer to a female athlete as a lady and it sounds like most of you agree so I will tell DH and make my point.

My own pet peeves - I didn't like being called "ma'am" too much at first but I'm getting used to it, the older I get, and we don't hear it much around here anyway.

But I really hate being called "dear" by a woman younger than me. Where I live, we sometimes call an elderly lady "dear" and elderly people often call us "dear" but if a younger woman calls me "dear" I guess I figure it implies she thinks I'm old!

Thanks for your replies!