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I've had some womyn tell me not to call them ma'am, they are miss or mrs (as if I'm supposed to know especially if I'm not face-to-face with you). A few think the word ma'am makes them sound old and so you're aging them when you say ma'am. Remember most ladies want to stay young forever, and are ruffled once if someone "ages" them by treating, saying, acting, or thinking otherwise. Start saying miss or missus and you'd have these old goats (playing playing) drooling on themselves that someone thinks they're a young lady again. Remember the McDonald's commercial when a womyn was going into work and a man said excuse me ma'am? And during her whole ride up to the elevator and walk to her office she was making herself crazy with wondering when did she become a ma'am, and does she really look that old and stuff, and then she was happy again when another man called her miss? Yea it's like that with a lot of females.
Of course women want to stay young. That's the only time that society seems to value them! I don't know if this comes as a surprise to anyone, but we live in a really ageist society where youth is king. We heap all types of scorn on older people up to and including segregating them from eveyone else in the own communities. We colloquially call perfectly healthy folks in their 40s and 50s "old" and you're considered a senior citizen at 50! So, Tom Cruise is a senior citizen? We always say women are past their expiration date at 40, sometimes even 30 and we consider women who don't look 18 anymore to somehow be losing their looks. I have observed and heard all of this not only in the public discourse and from the hollywood media machine, but from ordinary people like us posting on this forum.
Women get the worse of it, because the truth is women are primarily valued for reproduction, youth and beauty which are all intertwined. Men are valued for what they do, which is not dependent on reproduction because they can reproduce forever. Getting older is not considered as shameful for a man. In fact, it helps him. He gets better at what he does, he's considered distinguished looking for his gray hair and character lines. For a woman, it may as well be the end. Her social value declines when she is not seen as desirable. Especially if she was not fortunate enough to have children.
All of the factors I mentioned contribute to the reason so many women bristle at being called ma'am. It's a term widely known to be attached to ageing and that makes women feel old. I happen to know that there are quite a few men that feel the same about sir, even though strictly speaking, sir is not attached to age per say. Men are allowed to age, women in many ways are punished for aging.
I don't know what's wrong about it. When Americans refer to me as to ma'am, miss or lady I find it extremely cute. Maybe it's because I grew up in Russia where men would rather call you a whоre than a lady and think they just said a cool thing.
I'm 18, and once some guy called me ma'am. I never felt so old in my life.
This is a regional thing. Where I grew up, Texas, every female is referred to as "ma'am", from the little old ladies to the teens working behind the counter.
The first time I heard people address younger women by "Miss" is when I moved to NY. I hate it. It sounds patronizing to me. Not to mention it is far too much work for the stranger who is just trying to be polite to decipher the relative age and correlating title of "miss" or "ma'am" without insulting anyone.
I like it better in Texas where you use the same title "ma'am" or "sir" regardless of age.
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I never knew 'ma'am' had any connotations of referring to an older woman.
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