Miss, Mrs., or Ms.?

Tomorrow is Tina's last day of Pre-K. I'll be writing a Thank You note to her teachers following this blog entry, but first needed to clarify the addressing issue. That is, would it be Miss, Mrs., or Ms.?

I thought a simple Google search would turn up an official conventional use of the terms, but I was surprised to find that there really was none, and that there were many postings of people who were adamant and disagreeing of how women should be addressed. In one thread, a married woman was proud to use her Mrs. status while another used Ms. so as to tell everyone to mind their own beeswax.

After further searches, I found the Ms. term to be favored by those wishing to have their marital status kept discreet. Seems quite fair to me. After all, men are addressed by Mr., which gives no indication of whether or not they're married. How convenient for us!:-) So it's only appropriate then that women are provided with the similar term of Ms.

Certainly the MissMrsMs issue runs to deeper avenues where many feminists are contesting other male-favored conventions. A couple of examples are the addressing of Mrs. HisFirstName HisLastName (e.g., Mrs. John Smith) in formal wedding invitations, and the use of he/him in many writings when the gender is unknown. (For all you men, would you twinge if you were addressed as Mr. Jane Mistress -- Mr. HerFirstName HerLastName?)

Probably a few years ago, I would've figured this discussion as trivial and given it less thought had it not been for my daughters. Ever since Tina and Mindy started innocently placing female terms to their play toys (that I had assumed as male), I became more conscious of my male-term centered lingo. I've since then decided to give the she/her usage (and other feminist-endorsed conventions) a try and see what comes of it.

So as for the Thank You note, I guess I'll be going with the Ms. thing and hope that would be fair. After all, I don't know if either one of Tina's teachers is married, single, divorced or widowed. And if so, maybe they'd want to keep it personal. Certainly, Mr. John Doe has.

Ms. it is.