Miss Sarah Perry; Mrs. Rupert Grint; Ms. Wait, this doesn't mean divorced?

So the other week, Ithaca College hosted the Mr. and Miss Ithaca competition. While standing in line, I noticed that the female candidate was not "Mrs. Ithaca" while the male one was "Mr." It occurred to me that males have only one pre-nom/ title as they go through life, but women all over the world have a choice of 3, all which depend on their marital status.

As you may know, Miss is for an unmarried young woman, Mrs. is designated to married women, and Ms. is for women who used to be betrothed but, for whatever reason, they are no longer.

I mentioned this phenomena to my friend who was standing in line with me, and her reaction was a "Huh. that's funny."

Yes, yes it is. It is funny, because we still use these titles in modern day society. Whether or not a boy is 5 years old or 50, he will always be Mr. Y chromosome. But a woman will have her title changed depending on the status of her left ring finger.

So as I said, all over the world this happens, but the connotations have changed. In France, a woman who is assumed to be married (meaning she is above the age of 30) is called Madame. But if you make the mistake of calling a woman who is actually unmarried, you will get a scolding. Part of this is probably because women, in general, don't like to reveal their age and by titling them "Madame" you assume they are old. Another reason is because it reminds women, who are of age to marry, that they are still alone.

The same thing goes for Ms. Many women who are no longer married switch between the titles of Miss and Ms. Some of them want to seem young again, so they prefer "Miss," others want to be reminded that they are older, and superior because of that age, so they prefer "Ms." A third possibility, is that women who are divorced prefer to not be reminded that they were married, so "Mrs." insults them.

Now the point of this blog? Well one, why do we still maintain these titles? They don't really do anything for society except cause pain to those who don't want to be reminded of their age. I guess there is the positive that you can compliment a woman with "Miss" but isn't that really a backhanded insulting compliment to those who wish to be younger?

The second reason for this blog: I have been totally disillusioned to the original intent of "Ms."

A few generations of women back, the same question of "Why do we need titles" was brought up. Men aren't judged on their marital status, they are always the same Mr. Man, but what you title a woman depends on her ability to attract the male sex. Miss gave the connotation of a young, innocent, weak woman. Mrs. was a title given to those who have achieve marital status; her life has been completed. Well the proposition of finding a neutral title was put into affect: "Ms." was actually created to create a "fill-in-the-blank" status that allowed women to be free from their attachment to men.

However, this did not last long. The title was given a negative connotation and was brought down from the original positive intention. In fact, I always though Ms. was an awful name given to "old hags." And interestingly enough, my guy friend disclosed to me that he has never heard of the title "Ms." he just refers to women as either Miss or Mrs.

So now I ask again, can we bring back this neutral name? Because the confusion and hurt feelings that result from the title of Mrs. and Miss, not to mention the unfortunate attachment to men that these titles really insinuate, don't seem like very good reasons for keeping these titles around.