Miss-ing the point

So on Monday, it snowed in London, lots – the most in 18 years. All the schools were closed, so my love and I went for a walk in the snow, in the park nearest our house. As we entered the park, a group of teenage "youfs" approached us, bizarrely whistling the theme from the Disney's animated movie Robin Hood. It was hilarious and unexpected, and I started to laugh until their leader (Robin?) said to us, "Hello Mr. & Mrs."

Now, I object to almost all forms of impersonal address: "Miss!" "Ma'am!" "Dear!" (and most dreaded of all) "Mrs!" or "Madam!" I don't think I would object to being called "Mademoiselle" and I certainly don't object to "Slechno!" even when shouted at me by bums selling the Czech equivalent of The Big Issue. In trying to dissect this phobia, I've deduced that it's an age/identity issue. After all, the speaker, the person shouting "Madam" or "Miss!" at me, has to look at me and answer this question: "Is this female I see before me a Miss or a Madam?" I imagine that every flier distributor in London uses a complex mental algorithm that calculates a bunch of stuff about me, from my hair color (dyed or natural?) to my choice of bag (sensible or statement), coat, umbrella and shoes, before deciding which address to hurl in my direction. In actual fact, this is probably not the case, but the truth remains that these addresses carry weight.

Imagine the humiliation of the Victorian spinster forced to correct the unsuspecting stranger who addresses her as Mrs., or the way the title might haunt a woman who's lost her husband to illness. English school children call all teachers, regardless of marital status, "Miss," perhaps a holdover from the days when the only respectable profession for an unmarried woman was education. Even Ms., which I use under duress (I would prefer to use nothing but my name) is dodgy. It's consciously evasive and begs the question, "What is she hiding? Why does this woman not want me to know her marital status?" The absence of "Ms." from the cacophony of street-addresses is telling; it's something we tolerate in nonconformist women, we humor them by accepting its use, but don't admit it into pop-parlance. At the root of this issue is the question why, in the twenty-first century, marital status is even indicated in a woman's name. Men's names reveal nothing but their gender. With a doctorate, interestingly, one becomes genderless; both men and women can educate themselves into the ranks of the androgynous, but again, that doesn't trickle down to the street, or in my case, the park.

Why did this upset me so much? When someone, like Robin Hood boy, calls me "Mrs.", I feel older than I am and as if I am being mistaken for someone I'm not. I'm sure some girls love hearing it, and that's great, but at the end of the day it's just plain unfair to confront the female half of the population with hypotheses as to their marital status on a daily basis. To solve this, perhaps we should reinstate "Master" to refer to all unmarried men and see what chaos ensues. Or we could all adopt, "Hey, you!" Genderless, casual, vaguely proletariat...it has potentional.