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I used to joke with my friends that I always wanted to be called Ms. since I hadn’t Miss-ed anything. The use of the title Ms. came up for me a month or so ago when a young woman in her early thirties mentioned that she thought a woman used the title Ms. if she was single but not a young girl and didn’t want to be “considered a young girl (i.e., inexperienced, delicate, vulnerable, subordinate or any of the negative connotations of "Miss").” She also thought the title was primarily used in business communication. She went on to say that she would use it if she didn’t know whether a woman with whom she was corresponding was married or single.
This led to us having a brief discussion in which I shared with her that Ms. came into use during the feminist movement of the early seventies as a parallel title to that of Mr. for men. Mr. (Mister) in and of itself doesn’t designate whether a man is single or married. Women wanted, nay demanded, the same parity in title for themselves.
“Oh,” she said. “I never knew that.”
Our conversation got me to thinking about titles and made me remember Ms. magazine, which I used to read without fail. I tried, unsuccessfully, to have some of my writing published there and still have the personalized rejection of a short story I submitted to them, Folake: To Be, which was ultimately published by Sojourner in Boston. I remember the rejection letter said that the story had caused quite a bit of discussion in the office and that the editors said, “Do let’s encourage her.” (Okay, I've stopped and had a brief pity party about that rejection that still smarts lo these many years later.) Back to this post.
Ms. magazine was first published as a “one-shot” insert in New York Times magazine in 1971. The first regular issue hit the newsstands in July 1972. It is now published by the Feminist Majority Foundation and has been since 2001. For more about the history of Ms. Magazine, see the magazine’s website. There's also a book about Ms. magazine, Yours in Sisterhood: Ms. Magazine and the Promise of Popular Feminism by Amy Erdman Farrell.
In thinking about titles, I would say that ninety percent of the time, I use Ms. The only times I’ve embraced the title Mrs. has been in situations where someone assumed that I wasn’t married and in that moment I felt a need to proclaim Mrs. loudly to “get them told” and let them know not to assume they already knew what my marital status was. (This often happened when I was still playing suburban pattycake with well-meaning but often condescending suburban mothers at school events in the suburban school district to which my children were bussed.)
It turns out that, in the blogosphere, other women are thinking and writing about this issue of titles.
Nancy Gibbs, in an article, Mrs., Ms. or Miss: Addressing Modern Women, writes about the dilemma of what title to use:
So I did an unscientific survey of married friends and found that none of them had a clue either. At work and out in the world, I'm Ms. Gibbs; at my daughters' school and the pediatrician, I am Mrs. May; to a few people who've known me since I was 2, Miss Nancy. Some friends use their husband's name, but their e-mail addresses are their maiden name, though that dainty phrase seems to have been banished in favor of birth name. I never understood why, from the perspective of fighting the patriarchy, it was somehow more liberated to bear your father's name than your husband's, especially since you choose your husband and inherit your father. In my case, each had an efficient, pronounceable name. How to choose?"
Lisa Belkin, writing a response to the Gibbs article on her blog, Motherlode: Adventures in Parentingin the New York Times magazine, writes:
But until I read Gibbs’ essay, I hadn’t focused on the fact that Ms. has become so ubiquitous that it’s less a choice now than a default. As she says, “it’s O.K. not to care.”
I can't quite agree that we're so liberated that it's okay not to care what title one uses but I understand that it's not as frontline an issue as it was in the seventies.
Erin Meanley on Single-ish: Daily Dating Blog on Glamour.com Do You Use Miss or Ms. in Front of
