Don't Call Me "Miss"

"Thank you, miss."

"Can I help you, miss?"

"Have a good day, miss."

       Miss? I am 73 years old, and even though those men, those cashiers and salespeople, have no way of knowing my age, there is also no way they could mistake me for a young woman. 

       To be accurate, "Miss" really means an unmarried woman, but because when the word evolved, all unmarried women were supposed to be young (all young women were supposed to get married), the word implies, by obviousness, a young woman. If a woman was no longer young and still unmarried, she was still called “Miss,” in this case implying that the woman who grew old was still a virgin, the “old” “maid.” Miss Habersham, left at the altar on her wedding day and still dressed, after all those decades, in her wedding dress, now ruined with age, is, correctly “Miss” Habersham. Although I am in my seventies and unmarried, I am not a virgin, and I reject the Miss Habersham connotation of being called “Miss.” 

        I don't like being called "ma'am," either, but without linguistic justification for that prejudice. It's probably a rejection of my southern upbringing, when "ma'am" was a respectful title for one's female elders, the problem residing in that last word.

       Title designation was also difficult while I was teaching. I was neither "Mrs. Coogle” (married) nor "Miss Coogle” (virgin). I suggested students call me “Ms. Coogle,” using that marriage-neutral and age-neutral term, in parallel with "Mr." But some students felt awkward using it, by which I understood that it's a dated term, which is too bad because it fulfills a necessary linguistic vacuum. I said that “Diana” was all right, but such informality made some students uncomfortable. The problem was solved after I got my Ph.D., when I was, simply, accurately, and genderlessly, Dr. Coogle.

       I think that when the grocer calls me "Miss," he thinks he's flattering me: "I'll ignore the fact that you're an older (not exactly old) woman and call you by the title of a younger woman," thereby emphasizing the fact that I am not a young woman, so it comes out as a mild insult rather than a mild compliment. 

       Of course, this is petty stuff, miles from the legitimate and serious complaints from women about their treatment from men in the workplace. It isn't sexism but ageism that is the problem here. Using “young feller” with older men, as in "Can I help you, young feller?" makes the same age-related point as calling me "Miss." 

      This way of using a phrase that indicates its opposite is an unconscious use of a literary technique that Anglo-Saxon poets were fond of using deliberately, telling us how a thing was by saying how it was not. When the warriors at the Battle of Maldon encouraged their fellow fighters, they said not, “Warriors, be brave!” but “Warriors, don’t be cowards!” When the Phoenix poet described Paradise, he called it not a place of joy but a place of no lamentation. 

       Likewise today, when a man means, in his subconscious language, "You're old but doing pretty well," he says, "Have a good day, miss."