Mon 26 Mar 2007
You Know You’re In The South When…
Posted by Liza under Current Affairs, Opinion
You know you are in The South when you call to make your annual NPR pledge and the man taking your call, after taking your name, asks if you prefer “Miss” or “Mrs.”
I can’t remember my last moment of feminist shock, in a day to day interaction. I thought that whole marital status title business was just…settled. On a form, you pick the one you want, and if someone doesn’t know, they use Ms. Or none.
I wish I’d had the presence of mind to say “Doctor” or “Senator” but I think my stunned sputtering and eventual, “I prefer Ms., actually,” probably did communicate my feelings.
Also the email I sent to the station, in which I asked, “Is my money more valuable to you if I am in a legally recognized relationship, or not?”
It would have been different if I’d been somewhere else, or calling somewhere else, at least a little bit. At the grocery store, or any retail shop, I don’t really care if people call me “Mrs.” And they almost never call me “Miss” anymore.
And if I were calling Concerned Women for America, Ladies Against Women, or even the Republican party, I wouldn’t have been so taken aback. But NPR? Does Linda Wertheimer know about this? Do we need Cokie Roberts to stage an intervention? Susan Stamburg, what should I do?
March 26th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
i don’t know if it’s a southern thing. travis’ sister (who has never lived outside PA) addressed a card to me as “miss jen [lastname]” and i was so taken aback. i hadn’t been referred to as a miss since i was a girl. but travis had no idea that you are “supposed” to use ms. and he didn’t really get that ms. is any different than miss. and he certainly is not part of the marriage hegemony. as strange as it seems to me, i think there are a lot of people in certain parts of the country that just aren’t hip to the whole “ms.” thing and don’t mean anything by using the mrs./miss distinction.
March 26th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
Living in a non-english speaking country, as an obvious white woman, I get addressed as all kinds of things. My personal favorite is lady. As in, “eh, lady, you wanna ride on my moto?” I am slightly more annoyed by the madam this, madam that; although I am not sure where that annoyance stems from. I am amused by the ones who go for Mrs. as it usually comes out “miss-ess-ess” which really sounds to me to be a combination of mrs. and mistress.
As for the states, I found the same thing when I moved to MO. I suddenly has become miss in person and mrs. on the phone– but rarely, if ever, ms.
March 27th, 2007 at 2:14 am
Wertheimer, Roberts, Stamberg– heck! You need the power of Isis, sister!
The good (odd) news for me is that when I was living in the midwest, I got called “sir” maybe a third of the time! Yahoo! Would that it were a choice between Miss or Mrs! After saying “Will that be all, sir?” or “Or can I help you, sir?” or “What’ll you have, sir?” people would look up from their cash registers, or their waitron’s check book thingy, and then stammer and sputter some apology or another. I usually am tickled and entertained by bamboozling folks, and then hasten to comfort them before they make us both uncomfortable. “Six of one, half-dozen of the other” is my standard reply. (I still get accused of being “sir” over here in Cali, but a whole heck of a lot less than in the midwest. My theory: I look not a jot femmier. But most folks out here left the “m’am” and the “sir” somewhere between the Rockies and the Sierras. Near as I can tell.)
March 27th, 2007 at 9:05 am
Wow, that’s… disturbing. You wouldn’t expect it from NPR, of all places. Indeed, let’s get Ms. Wertheimer on it immediately!
March 27th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
At the risk of sounding diplomatic, I add this comment. I think that the people who answer the phones are volunteers. This is not an excuse. The Miss-Mrs question was inappropriate. I just mention it because I’ve been a volunteer for NPR before, and as I remember it, my only training was from the phone-answerers sitting nearby. Not an excuse but possibly a glimpse behind the scenes?
March 27th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
Oh, one more comment from me. As you know, I also live in the South. I’ve never been asked “Miss or Mrs” before, but I have a PhD, and I’ve always hoped to be asked that so I could, “No, it’s Doctor actually.”
March 28th, 2007 at 8:03 am
Thanks for all of your comments!
I’ve continued thinking about this for the last couple of days, and realizing things like, I call all of Noah’s teachers — and pretty much anyone he talks to — Miz Firstname or Mr Firstname. Which could be heard as Miss or Ms. Sometimes I think I should use Miz Lastname, but it feels stilted.
I don’t think most people mean anything by whatever title they use, but at the same time, language still shapes our experiences, and being addressed by the “wrong” title can be uncomfortable. Whether it’s wrong because of gender, lack of acknowledgment of an achievement, or the cognitive dissonance of the “wrong” marital status. (Factually, technically, or because the situation at hand has nothing to do with marital status.)
Polly, your comment reminded me of my college and early graduate school days, when I was trying so hard to be butch. Heh. I got “sir”‘d a great deal, and it felt so wrong. Perhaps that should have been a clue that I was just.not.butch. Alas, it took longer to figure that out.
September 19th, 2007 at 9:58 am
Hi, I don’t know exactly how welcome my comment will be and PLEASE don’t take it offensively because I don’t mean it in that way at all. I am a seventeen year old bisexual girl living in the South and while I see your point, I don’t really think that the person on the other line was trying to offend you in any way. You see, in the South there is a big difference between Ms. and Mrs., but not because it really MATTERS whether you are married or not. It’s more of a respect matter. Not so much that you are respected MORE if you’re married, but it’s just a commonly accepted thing down here that when you get married your title changes. There are actually quite a few women in the South that will get offended if they are married and you call the Miss. So, as I said, I don’t think the man was trying to offend you, it was actually his way of being respectful.