Chels

A new year brings a fresh start to applying for jobs, and with that comes filling in my details on various applicant portals. Every time I do this I’m faced with the dilemma: am I Miss or Ms? I ended up choosing Miss again this time, but I’m not sure how much longer I’ll use it. There are so many factors that go into the decision, and I always find myself researching if there are any specific milestones that separate the two titles, but ultimately, everyone says it’s a personal choice. 

When I was young, I remember learning that Miss was used for unmarried women, Mrs for married women, and Ms was reserved for divorcees. That seemed like quite a simple solution, and one that made a lot of sense, so learning that it wasn’t entirely correct was quite frustrating, if only on a personal level. I’m not married, and I might never be, so I don’t need to worry about Mrs, but can I be Miss for the rest of my life?

Miss is for girls and unmarried young women (often including women in their 20s), but no one ever specifies the age that one can no longer be Miss. It’s my birthday next week, and I’m going to be 26, and I’m slowly starting to see myself as an adult. It’s hard to remember that I’m an adult, mostly because I still feel very similar to the person I was in my late teens and early 20s. I spent my early 20s in lockdown, too, and while I feel like everyone lost a few years, in a sense, to the lockdown, those of us in quite transformative life periods were more likely to get a little lost along the way. I look at myself and see adulthood in my face, but I still feel young, and to me, Ms feels like something that should come at a later age. It would be more complex, but in a way I wish there was another title, one that feels more mature than Miss, but less than Ms. Ms feels like a title I’d be ready for in a decade, but at the same time, I already feel like I’m outgrowing Miss.

There’s also the matter of authority. To me, Ms feels much more authoritative than Miss. A CEO would be Ms, or a lecturer, or someone with a level of authority outside of a career. When I think of my own work – both of my jobs are only part time, and I don’t really carry a great deal of authority – and my life in general, I don’t feel like I’ve earned the Ms title. That’s not to say I think the title needs to be ‘earned’, but for myself, I feel almost a sense of impostor syndrome when it comes to it, which I will admit seems silly.

Then, there’s the social aspect. There’s a notion, particularly in online feminist spaces, that young women have a habit of infantilising ourselves. While I don’t always agree with a lot of the current online centric feminist takes, I do concede that I find I refer to myself as a girl more often than as a woman, despite being 25 years old. I’m still not sure how much of an urgent issue I would consider that, though. Ultimately, Miss was for girls and young women until Ms was created – which pretty much exemplifies a lot of my attitude to modern feminism, that is, while certain things become available as a choice for women, I don’t think that it should mean that the original single option should become unavailable. Just because Ms is an option for women who choose it, I don’t think Miss should be reserved solely for children and teenage girls. That’s not to say I’m rejecting the term – it’s the opposite. I’d be more than happy to use Ms, I just don’t feel like it’s the correct term for my current circumstances. If anything, I think it’s interesting that women have three possible terms of address, but for men, Mr suffices on its own. It’s a double edged sword of choice – yes, it’s nice to have options, but it’s also just another thing that we have to be conscious about. Because yes, Ms carries more authority than Miss, socially. It also implies an older age, and perhaps even a sense of anonymity or reservedness to share personal details, and ultimately, the term that one chooses will present information even unintentionally. Men get the luxury of real ambiguity. Mr Smith could be old or young, married or unmarried, and nothing can be parsed just from his choice of title.

This might all seem a bit of a first world problem, but I think it’s an important conversation to have. The title we choose forms part of our identity as a whole, whether we want it to or not. Miss does imply youth as Ms implies age. Mrs and Miss both tell marital status, and while Ms allows for ambiguity, it also allows for prying and rumours as to why you’ve chosen ambiguity. 20 years ago, it also implied a past marriage, but less so these days. The way we present ourselves, even down to our title, invites people to make assumptions about us, and from those assumptions, we can be thought of and treated differently by strangers.

When I apply for jobs using Miss, I’m well aware that it could lead to being underestimated or even discounted, because it does imply a lack of experience, and a young age. But at the same time, even if I used the Ms title, the disadvantage would come in the expectations of age and experience – physically, I’m very short (under five feet tall!) and unassuming – and I think the sheer difference between how I present myself and the expectations of the Ms title could heighten perceptions of me, putting me, again, at a disadvantage, as if I’ve missed the mark before I’ve even begun an interview.

It’s all far too complicated, and quite frankly, feels like an unfair extra hurdle in an already difficult job market.