Ms Sheila Michaels: The Feminist who popularized ‘Ms’, Dies At The Age Of 78
- Sheila Michaels, an American feminist who brought the honorific “Ms.” into mainstream use, has died.
- In this session, we will look into the backdrop of its use and its role in popularizing it.
The Backdrop into the Use Of Ms.
Sheila Michaels did not actually invent the term ‘Ms.’. But, she is credited with rescuing it from obscurity after she saw it used in an address, thinking it was a typographical error.
“Ms.” did not convey a woman’s marital status, unlike the traditional options “Mrs.” or “Miss”. I had never seen it before: It was kind of arcane knowledge,“
she said.
In an interview with the New York Times last year for her own obituary, Michaels said the honorific term resonated with her, both as a feminist and as the child of unmarried parents.
“[I] was looking for a title for a woman who did not ‘belong’ to a man. There was no place for me,”
she said to The Guardian back in 2007.
“I didn’t belong to my father and I didn’t want to belong to a husband, someone who could tell me what to do.”
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What’s In A Name?
The term Ms. dates back all the way to at least the year 1901. However, due to its anonymity, Michaels first thought that it was a typographical error, actually intended to be Mrs, on a housemate’s delivery of a Marxist magazine in the early 1960s.
Years later in 1969, she brought it up casually, during a lull in conversation on the broadcast radio. There it was heard by others and eventually began to attract attention.
That broadcast eventually caught the attention of Gloria Steinem. Steinem named her magazine Ms. Magazine “after prompting from Sheila Michaels, who had been pushing the women’s movement to adopt its usage,” as written by the magazine just last month.
“’Ms’ is how you address a woman as a whole person. In a culture where women were identified on the basis of their marital status… [it was a] way to define ourselves as individuals, not subordinates or partners.”
The new honorific was already in the public sphere as well as a subject of debate. However, it was not adopted by the New York Times until 1984. The term was seen as a milestone for its usage by a traditional stylistic conservative.
Now, the New York Times has published an all-embracing obituary based on interviews with Michaels herself.
“Ms Michaels leaves a legacy both minute and momentous: two consonants and a small dot – three characters that forever changed English discourse,”
the newspaper wrote.
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Short Bio of Sheila Michaels
Sheila Michaels was an American feminist and civil rights activist. She is credited with popularizing the use of the term Ms. as a default form of address for women regardless of their marital status. More Bio…
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Posted on: Monday, February 25 2019
