Monday, 8 March saw the celebration of International Women’s Day, not International Ladies’ Day. But would anyone care if it was International Ladies’ Day?
Well, when I went to Knysna with my family some years ago, we walked past stalls along the roadside. “Hey lady! Litchis for you today?” one hawker asked me.
Monday, 8 March saw the celebration of International Women’s Day, not International Ladies’ Day. But would anyone care if it was International Ladies’ Day?
Well, when I went to Knysna with my family some years ago, we walked past stalls along the roadside. “Hey lady! Litchis for you today?” one hawker asked me.
I definitely wasn’t thinking about the fact that I had just been called a lady. The only thing I thought about was how good those litchis would taste after my lunch. Many years later, I visited a book shop in Grahamstown and while I was paying for my book a man approached the counter and asked for assistance. The cashier responded, “I’ll help you once I’m done with this lady”.
This time I wasn’t thinking about litchis or the book I had just purchased; instead the strangest thing happened to me.
You know those tiny hairs at the back of your head? Mine prickled, and there was something strange going on in the pit of my stomach.
I think I was offended.It all started when I took my seat as a fourth year Journalism student in the
Grocott’s Mail newsroom early this year.
Grocott’s Mail and The School of Journalism and Media Studies have published a style guide for the writing students working at Grocott’s Mail. It functions as a guide on what to do and what not do in the newsroom and when reporting. So there we were, on our way to becoming 13 ethical journalists.
All was well and good until someone slipped up and said the L-word. We were promptly told that newsroom rule number one is: never use the word ‘lady’. Ever.
So being a bit naïve I had no clue that ‘lady’ was passe and very wrong indeed. Gone are the days when a lady was the female equivalent of a lord and denoted a particular station in life.
The thing is, in the world of journalism,we are taught that there is a very particular way of speaking about people in news reports.
You have to be quite careful with the terms you use so as not to judge the person’s moral character. And lady just happens to be one of those tricky ones. Lady implies a female (I think I’ll stick to that term for now) who acts in a certain kind of way.
We all know that ladies should sit with their legs crossed and chew with their mouths closed, and they most defi nitely don’t spit. Which makes females who aren’t ladies seem slightly vulgar and scary.
So that’s why we opt for the comparitively safer term- woman. In that way everyone is treated the same, no one’s morals or behaviour is questioned and journalists might still have their jobs at the end of the day.
Except now poor old lady sits in the sexist language category among other taboo words in the journalism style guide.
Who knows where she will end up next? The meaning of the word has certainly been on an interesting journey.
The root in old English comes from the word “bread” and initially meant a breadmaker or kneader of dough. Then it became synonymous with being the mistress of the household – the equivalent of a lord, a position of authority.
Along the way it also accumulated moral overtones as in the story about journalist William Allen White who got into trouble in 1946 when he wrote an article about a woman who was fi ned for prostitution.
She was angry with him – not because her conviction was reported – but becausehe referred to her as a woman instead of a lady.
So by the time the second wave of feminism came along, lady was listed among cumbersome words such as poetess, actress, authoress, comedienne, chairwoman to denote gender.
To bring us back to present, journalistic usage, generally, is to skirt these terms and to stick to neutral language. But ‘lady’ persists. For many it is still a term of respect, and ‘woman’ often seems bad-mannered.
I still have to keep slapping my wrist for accidently letting it slip, but I will eventually (hopefully) get used to the more politically correct woman instead of the politically incorrect lady.
Just give me time, but this is why I feel like I am constantly walking on eggshells when I talk about people, because I just never know what to say, thanks to the constant metamorphosis of our language.
But what I think is really important here, in that we are all imbedded in different cultures and contexts, and one of the lovely things about us is that we all have preferences.
We all have views and we all have opinions. And they’re never going to be the same. So we are going to differ.
Inside the newsroom ‘lady’ is discriminatory, but outside the newsroom it might be a different story. Some people are offended by ‘lady’ while others have more important matters to discuss.
And with that ladies and gentlemen, men and women, boys and girls – take your pick – I’ve come to the end of my rant.
