In the women’s competition at Wimbledon this year, apart from the umpteenth contest between the spirited and cheeky William sisters for the crown at a grand slam event, the other most notable happening was that Wimbledon has done away with the tradition of calling the women players by their title Ms or Mrs. Is calling someone by their title that offending? If not then why the fuss?
At this point I like to remember the story of ‘Her name and She’ which goes somewhat like this: when born she was called ‘so and so’ and then somewhere along the line she assumed the status of Miss Someone. The title quite an advertisement of her single status that one couldn’t miss in combination with the glow of youth, it was hardly surprising that few chance and awkward meetings with Mister Someoneelse took place. They decided to give it a chance and first names were exchanged and permitted, then few movies and dinner dates later nicknames took over. Things then got so mushy that even new silly nicknames were coined for each other. Sadly but inevitably some stability in the relationship was reached when they started calling each other names. Depending on which part of the world they lived in either they broke up or they got married and lived together ‘happily’ ever after as Mr. and Mrs. Someoneelse.
I don’t really see much of a problem with the initial titles being in place, it seems just like one of the many names different people call a person by, the problem is that for women there is this additional information about their marital status included which doesn’t seem too appropriate in this day and age. In professional circumstances it is downright insensitive to provide personal information of anyone, be it man or woman, which has no bearing on the person’s professional abilities. For women tennis players at least Wimbledon has finally decided to show a little more sensitivity even if it meant going against the British ethos of sticking by tradition. In one of the press conferences apparently Venus Williams when asked a leading question like which trophy she prizes most, put tradition in its place by saying that she has too many trophies and they serve well as make up brush holder. The eyes rolled all around and one could hear a stiff upper lip moving that little bit to utter “ how American”!
2 comments:
I remember a conference at an indian academic institute where the session chair was bustling around trying to find out if the speakers were Prof. (Mrs) or Prof. (Ms). He seemed pleased with himself till one of the speakers ticked him off before delivering her lecture. Tradition is more often than not just a codeword for propagating various anachronistic practices.
Mallad: If people in academia can be so outdated in their outlook then what is the hope. I wish that such people are slowly getting outnumbered by the increasing number of progressive people.
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