Ladies for some occasions, women for others

I work for a magazine, located somewhere in the English-speaking world. Every month our proofreader comes into the office and checks the proofs for typos, spelling errors, grammatical blunders, design flaws and more. In short, he checks for any oddities that would detract from our tacit claim to being highly literate, well-informed users of the English language.

A couple of weeks ago, in early February 2017, our proofreader noticed that I had used the word 'ladies' when describing two entrepreneurial young women from Melbourne who were running a vegan restaurant. I had written: 'These ladies love their sugar and oil and are not afraid to splash it around liberally.' 

Our proofreader wondered if the use of the word 'ladies' in this context might sound a bit patronising. I knew exactly what he meant but I decided to let it stand.

I couldn't explain, however, why the word 'ladies' – in this context – might be interpreted as having pejorative connotations. If you were to see a mother in a shop who was pressing a ten-dollar note into the hand of her child as she said, 'Give the money to the lady', then you wouldn't give it a second thought. Most of us would agree that this expression has no patronising connotations, and to use the word 'woman' in that context would sound rude – for reasons that are similarly inaccessible to most of us when we first think about these matters.

Why doesn't the use of the word 'lady' sound patronising or in any other way demeaning in the example of the mother, the child and the shop assistant?  'Lady' in that context may have a tincture of a bygone world about it, but it sounds in no way disrespectful. But what if the mother were to say to the child, 'Give the money to the woman'? The word 'woman' in that context sounds harsh, like a term that might be used in a police report: 'Police apprehended a 21-year-old woman driving down Hoddle Street in a reckless manner.' 'Woman', in the legal context, sounds perfectly appropriate, and the use of the word 'lady' would strike most of us as peculiar.

'Ladies', in the context of my review of the recipe book written by the two Melburnian restaurateurs, would, I think, sound acceptable to a large part of the reading public. It's not as blandly generic as 'women', and it has playful connotations of courtliness and decorous behaviour. There are similar fine distinctions between words used when referring to men – 'bloke' (more Australian, certainly not American, slightly old-fashioned), 'guy' (bland and generic, a hint of American influence, applicable to both sexes), 'mate' (unmistakeably Australian, usually friendly, but sometimes used aggressively  – as in 'Watch it, mate!') and 'buddy' (unmistakeably American, connoting a social distance between the speaker and the person spoken to, often used aggressively, as in 'Hey buddy! Whadda ya think ya doing?').

Ogling you

If you use public transport to get to work, then you'll be familiar with the annoying behaviour of your fellow commuters. They will play their music too loudly. They'll wear a pongy perfume that makes you sneeze. They'll rummage noisily through their belongings, engage in grooming sessions (which may include fingernail or even toenail clipping) and heedlessly fling their bag or backpack in your face as they stand up to get off the bus or the train.

But some people can enrage us without making a noise, wearing a foul fragrance or ever laying a finger on us. To all the world they seem to be leaving us entirely alone and unmolested. Except for one thing.

Their gaze.

One of the more benign starers.

If another person stares at us – and we become aware of the staring – we can feel profoundly unnerved. Is the starer sizing us up to figure out if it's worth the effort of robbing us? Are they ogling us with unwholesome and lewd thoughts, deciding if they're going to ravish us? Perhaps they just hate the look of us. We might be too expensively dressed for their liking or be from the wrong race or ethnic background – whatever that may be.

Even if we're not frightened or discomfited, being stared at by another person in a public place can annoy us. Yet the strange aspect of being stared at is that nothing from the person who stares at us necessarily impinges upon us. It's purely an act of reception – not transmission – yet it can be the most disturbing of these mild annoyances that other people perpetrate upon us. They're not emitting annoying sounds or odours and they're not touching us. The act of staring is entirely contained within the starer. Yet most of us find it profoundly disturbing to be stared at, and we can instantly feel anxiety or hostility  well up inside us.  It could be an idle gaze, but many of us feel that an element of malevolence is contained in the look of someone who stares.

But what can you do when someone stares at you in a public place, especially when they are a long way from you and probably out of earshot, unable to hear any reprimands you might want to make? I have experimented with a technique that has always worked for me, so allow me to share it with you. 

Most of us, when stared at, don't want to match the starer in their pointless and intrusive activity. We tend to look away for a few moments, then look back at the starer to see if they're still ogling us, which they invariably are. So here's what I do to stop starers: even if they are not within earshot, I look at them and start talking to them. I usually say something like, "You've been staring at me for some time now. Why are you doing it? It's extremely annoying and it's perverse. Stop doing it." 

I usually make sure that I'm enunciating clearly, to increase the chance that they can lip-read my message. Occasionally I might include the f-word. Even poor lip readers seem to have no trouble in deciphering this word with its unambiguous fricative. Placing your top teeth on your bottom lip followed by the opening of your mouth doesn't leave much doubt about what you're saying, even if the other person can only see your mouth and not hear the words coming out of it.

The starer invariably seems to find this speaking directed at them to be disturbing enough to make them quickly desist; they usually look away within seconds. 

So try this speaking strategy next time you feel a pair of eyes boring into you. And let me know if you are successful with it.

Eleanor Catton – and cats

I work for a magazine, whose offices are located somewhere in the English-speaking world. Some months ago I mentioned the word aptronym in the magazine. An aptronym is a name that is apt for the person who bears it, usually because of the connection between that person and their career. The examples I mentioned included crime writer Karen Slaughter, New York meteorologist Amy Freeze and the Sydney-based veterinarian Dr Melissa Catt, who treats only cats.

The connection between the name and the interests or the physical characteristics of the person with that name could be coincidental, but I wonder if some strange subconscious process has occurred, creating an affinity between that person and the thing denoted or connoted by their name. In a previous blog post I mentioned a woman whose surname was Grey, and how she bristled when a colleague said that she couldn't stand the "drab, grey walls" in the office. Ms Grey said she didn't think they looked too bad. I also mentioned a woman called Glenda Browne, who, whenever I saw her, always wore clothes in a shade of brown. 

The connection between Dr Melissa Catt and her feline customers is clear. But I've also noticed that people with names that contain the word 'cat' – usually at the beginning of the name – also seem to have a strong affinity with cats. ABC Sydney radio broadcaster Angela Catterns is an example. She has frequently said on her radio programs how much she loves cats.

So when I heard that the young New Zealander Eleanor Catton had won the 2013 Man Booker Prize, I felt very strongly that she would also be a feline fan. But how to quickly confirm this without writing an email to her and asking her a leading question? I didn't have to wait long. I checked out her Twitter account (twitter.com/eleanorcatton) a few months ago and discovered that on 17 September 2013 she wrote the following:

So there's your proof that she's not just your average cat owner, but a besotted fan of the feline. But do her parents share and would her father's ancestors have shared this attraction to cats? Does the name 'Catton' subconsciously work an inveigling magic upon the minds of those who own it, causing them to have an affinity for this creature? Or could a genetic factor be at work here? Were the Cattons so called because they worked with cats and the affinity was somehow inherited? 

It would be fascinating to find out if a psychological researcher or an onomastician (a person who studies names) has carried out any research into the connection between a name and the things in the world that it denotes or connotes. Do bearers of certain names feel a stronger connection than other people with the thing in the wider world that their name denotes or suggests?  So, for example, do people with the surnames Catt or Catterns or Catton feel more positively towards cats? If a person with that name became estranged from their family, would they feel more antipathy to cats than their family members who are still very much a part of the Catt, Catton or Catterns clans?

One thing before I end: check out photos of the Australian actor Paul Chubb, and of Australia's Chief Scientist, Dr ian Chubb. I wouldn't say that thse two famous Chubbs are particularly overweight, but their faces do indicate a certain jowly jolliness. 

I am humbled

Saturday 28 September 2013

Aussie actor Hugh Jackman feels pretty crappy today. He's just attended the 61st San Sebastián International Film Festival in Spain, where he picked up a Donostia award for lifetime achievement. I know he feels lousy, because he said the award made him feel "humbled".

The Oxford Dictionary (www.oxforddictionariesonline.com) says that the verb to humble means "to cause someone to feel less important or proud". Macquarie Dictionary defines it as follows: "to lower in condition, importance or dignity; abase".

Does this man look lowered in condition, importance or dignity?

This unusual use of the word humble is becoming an increasingly common phenomenon. Wherever someone gets an award or otherwise has praise and adoration lavished upon them – whether they're actors, sports stars or triumphant politicians – they can often be heard telling us that they feel humbled by the honour.

Why are they seemingly telling us that all this positive attention makes them feel so bad? In the recent past it was only genuinely devastating blows to one's ego that would prompt people to say that they felt humbled, such as undergoing a relationship breakup, losing one's job, getting thrashed in a debate with a friend or colleague – or undergoing any number of the countless other humiliations that life can throw at us. 

What's happening to the meaning of this word? I suspect it's in the process of becoming a contronym, which is a word that means both one thing and also its exact opposite. Probably the most well-known example of a contronym is the word sanction, which means "a penalty for disobeying a law or regulation" (e.g. "The sanctions against Iraq imposed by the US were having a drastic effect on the Iraqi population") and which also means "official permission or approval for an action" (e.g. She sanctioned his use of the company credit card"). So sanction can mean to permit or to punish.

But on second thoughts, I'm not sure that when the word humbled is used at these moments of triumph that the person wants to say that they feel either elated and proud or abjectly low and unworthy. The sense I get is that they want to say that they are deeply touched by getting the award and the lavish praise and attention, that they feel genuinely appreciative and grateful. But there's still a hint of the original meaning of the word in there. They don't really feel humiliated, but they want to get across the idea that all this attention hasn't given them a swollen head, that they've still got their feet on their ground.

Bigotry in the garden

I was watering a few plants this morning when I noticed a shoot of Wandering Jew – the weed known by the Latin name of tradescantia – poking out from behind some of the leaves of the only plant that was intended to be in a particular container.

I was struck by two arresting thoughts: what do Jews called Wandering Jew, and are they offended by the name? I felt sure that they would find the term offensive; who would want to be associated with such a pervasive botanical menace? A quick internet search revealed nothing about what I imagined to be the high dudgeon in which Jews would find themselves if they worked as horticulturalists or were home gardeners and wanted to call a radio gardening program to ask advice about getting rid of this plant. My search terms were "wandering Jew plant offensive", yet there was almost no discussion from Jewish websites about being scandalised by this name and wanting to change it. Jewish groups object vehemently and rapidly to acts of anti-Semitism carried out by individuals or organisations. But why don't they protest as loudly – or at all – about this common name for the tradescantia plant that would seem to be quietly and insidiously perpetuating anti-Semitic sentiment?

Would doing so be seen as petty, thereby bringing more unwarranted scorn upon a people who have already suffered more than enough? Haven't they got more important things to worry about? some people might say.

Or might they feel an odd affinity for this plant, with their shared history of persecution? I've noticed this name affinity phenomenon (as I've just termed it) among people whose surnames are the same as words used to designate colours, such as Grey (or Gray), Brown(e), Green(e), Black and White. I once worked at a place where a colleague – a neatly attired woman in late middle age – had the surname of Grey. A few of us were sitting around one day and commenting on the drabness of our offices. One forthright colleague – who rarely stopped to think of the insulting implications of any of her utterances – said, "How about these grey office walls? Can you think of any colour more drab or dreary? I absolutely hate grey! It's such a boring colour." My eyes darted over to Mrs Grey to monitor her reaction. She sat mutely for a while, then said, "I don't think they're too bad. At least it's a light grey, so it reflects a lot of light."

Was this her heartfelt response to the colour of the walls? Or did she – unlike the colleague who made this comment – only too readily perceive the connection between her surname and the colour? If she liked her surname, would she feel reflexively (and perhaps irrationally) compelled to defend any denunciations of the associated colour? Or can some colour-surnamed people distinguish between the colour and the name and comfortably harbour contradictory feelings about each?

I once attended an editing course in which there was an indexing component taught by a very knowledgeable woman called Glenda Browne. Apart from her good teaching skills, one of the first things I noticed about her was that she wore items of brown clothing to every class. I wondered if she did this consciously, or as many students of onomastics (the study of names) have noted, we are motivated by unconscious forces to do so many things in our lives, including selecting a particular name for a child. Were the clothing choices of the indexing teacher a way of expressing solidarity with the Browne clan? And what if a person has a colour surname but doesn't like the actual colour it denotes? Would they feel like a traitor?

Ex-politician Bob Brown – the former leaders of the Greens – is a slightly different phenomenon. He's got a colour surname, but he's associated more with a more verdant hue than with brown. But it's still intriguing that both his name and his career have colour associations. And I've often wondered how the ABC political commentator Antony Green feels when he's commenting on the pasting that his namesake political party is taking in various polls or elections, now that their fortunes have turned.

You probably already know that the star of the hilarious movie School of Rock is the endearingly pudgy Jack Black. But did you know that his co-star in that movie – the spineless, put-upon Ned Schneebly – is named Mike White? Not only were their two characters polar opposites in personality – one loud, lazy and overconfident; the other meek, responsible and lacking in self-belief – but in real life their names were also chromatic opposites. What were the chances?

Names are indeed very strange and powerful things. When you start to think about them seriously you'll see all kind of patterns and possibly unconscious impulses at work, whether it's mothers choosing appellations for their newborns, people choosing a career (there's a vet in Sydney called Dr Melissa Catt) or freakishly serendipitous business collaborations; I once knew of a small firm of solicitors called Hazard and Friend. One name hints at the advisability of keeping one's distance; the other beckons with a cheery greeting.

Tradescantia – also known as Wandering Jew

The age-defying, death-denying Cliff

On Christmas Eve I saw something at my local newsagent that horrified me and nearly made me vomit. It was the Cliff Richard 2013 calendar. The cover showed the eerily youthful Cliff striking a dynamic, action-man pose as he was swinging his surf ski from one side to the other, stopping for just a mo' to be captured by the adoring camera. But there was, curiously, not a fleck of sea foam or any other water on him. He was clad in a life jacket and, disturbingly, his chest was exposed. 

Cliff is now 72 years old, so you'd expect the bloom of youth to have long faded and that there would be at least few grey hairs. But not a single strand of silver could be seen. I think it was the chest hair that produced the involuntary retching action. It was the colour of diluted furniture varnish. Cliff has said that he insists that there should be no "airbrushing" (what a funny, old-school term that is) of his image, but this doesn't mean he hasn't succumbed to the temptation of a bottle of hair dye. I believe Cliff when he says that there should be no "airbrushing" of his photos, given his strong Christian principles and commitment to a virtuous lifestyle. But he has admitted to using Botox at various times and I'm sure that his hair  – both that on the head and on the chest – is no stranger to colour-restoring agents. 

Cliff attributes his fresh and dewy complexion to clean living and an abstemious diet. But having loads of money and not having to work too hard in later life would help to smooth any incipient furrows that might otherwise have threatened to mar his relatively smooth brow.

Cliff should be a marvellous example to seniors everywhere and serve as a role model for those of us who are younger and aspire to an active senescence. But there's something creepy about the Cliff Richard 2013 calendar. I could be on my own here, given that Cliff's 2012 calendar outsold the calendar of the much younger, smoother Justin Bieber. 

There is, however, an antidote to the youth glorification of celebrity calendars. American artist Georgia O'Keeffe has often had her own calendar, and although it was largely filled with her paintings of flowers, you would occasionally see an image of her on the painter on the back of the calendar. But she presented a very different image of old age from that of Cliff. She was probably much older than Cliff when the iconic photos of her face were taken – she lived to be 99 years of age – and it showed. Her faced was deeply lined and parched, like a stretch of the New Mexico desert that became her permanent home after 1949. It was, despite the wrinkles, a very beautiful face that seemed unafraid to deteriorate. Its owner was serene and seemingly comfortable with the way she looked. It was, above all, a fearless face, whose owner seemed unafraid of the inevitability of losing youthful beauty, succumbing to decrepitude – and finally ceasing to exist.

Georgia O'Keeffe as a young woman

What is really frightening, in contrast, are the faces of people who have been disfigured by botched plastic surgery. The expressions of these poor people call to mind the fright masks worn by Halloween pranksters. The flesh surrounding the eyes may have been plumped with filling agents, but this only serves to make the eyes look as if they have been poked further back into the head, the last pinprick vestiges of vitality deeply recessed into a haunted and tortured face. The fillers seek to emulate the attractive plumpness of youth, but they often end up looking like swellings acquired as a result of being punched – but without the bruises. Smiles are sometimes weirdly accentuated – I think by somehow widening the mouth and extending its corners – but the result looks more like an unnerving leer than a genuine expression of pleasure or delight.

The artist in her later years

People who can't bravely accept the inevitability of the ageing process are discouraging to the rest of us. It makes many of us who are younger think that growing older and losing the appealing looks of youth must be an extraordinarily difficult burden, and that the only way to alleviate the distress is to resort to plastic surgery, non-surgical face fillers and litres of hair colouring (which, despite all our technological progress, still looks really dodgy – especially on men). If you can use any of these age-concealing techniques and successfully acquire more youthful looks, then good luck to you. But if you end up getting a trout pout from your over-filled lips, you won't end up looking more youthful. You'll just look old and stupid. Nothing wrong with looking old. But who wants to advertise their stupidity on their face?

I can't imagine the pain you must be going through

One of the clichés we frequently offer to grieving people, in our seemingly hopeless attempt to offer some comfort, is 'I can't imagine what it must be like for you.' This expression is supposed to offer consolation, but apart from the offence it might cause by being a cliché, it could – for a thoughtful listener – provoke additional offence because of its logical absurdity.

Take a minute to think about it. If you utter these words – 'I can't imagine what you must be going through' – to someone who is grieving, then what you are saying, from a strictly logical viewpoint, is that you have no empathy at all for their situation. Yet this is the total opposite of the message you intend to convey. 'Empathy', according to oxforddictionaries.com, means 'the ability to understand and share the feelings of another'. Most of us would agree that empathy is a desirable human trait and that if we are going to understand and share the feelings of another, although we may never have been in their predicament, we will need to use our imaginations. We may not have had a relative who died tragically, but most of us have friends or family members whom we value dearly, and we can indeed imagine how devastated we would feel if they were to die suddenly. Unless we have a pathological deficit of empathy, we don't have to actually undergo the loss of a loved one to feel, if only to a small but nonetheless affecting degree, the distress of someone who is actually grieving. We instinctively put ourselves in their shoes and have no trouble at all imagining ourselves in a similarly dreadful situation.

Yes, I know what you're thinking. You're objecting that it's an idiom, and idioms can't always be analysed with logic. Although I don't have any historical analyses of this idiom at hand, my gut feeling born of years of listening with fascination as other people talk, tells me that this expression started out as its opposite, that is: 'I can imagine how you must feel'. This is, in fact, the true message we want to convey to the grieving person: this is an overwhelmingly distressing situation, but I can feel some of your pain along with you. Feeling someone else's distress is what motivates us to help them in the first place; we can all too easily imagine ourselves in that same situation, and we too would appreciate it if someone were to help us.

But somewhere along the way, the opposite of the current idiom – 'I can imagine how difficult it must be for you' – was offered a little too glibly for the liking of the person in despair, and the mourning person spat back, 'No, you can't imagine how difficult it must be! Have you ever lost a child/mother/father/dog/pet snail/whatever?'

So gradually we all adopted the reverse form of the expression and now utter its exact – if illogical – opposite: I can't imagine how difficult it must be for you. We somehow explain this to ourselves (usually only on a subconscious level) by reasoning that the tragedy is so overwhelming that it's beyond the capacity of our feeble imaginations. Many of us may have limited imaginations, but all of us at some time have envisaged various worst-case scenarios that could befall us and have shuddered at the prospect that they might actually manifest in our lives. People with anxiety and panic disorders, for example, have an unenviable aptitude for this kind of imagination. Mental health professionals even have a word for it: catastrophising. All of us can do it, and some of us, unfortunately, are past masters at it.

I suspect now, however, that both the positive and negative forms of this expression are unacceptable. The positive form ('I can imagine how difficult it must be for you') won't do, because it was already a cliché even before it sounded hollow and trite. And the negative version is not only a cliché, but compounds the insult with its stupidity.

It can be hard to think of comforting words – words that will encourage, enthuse and cheer – at the best of times, let alone at a time when not only the grieving person, but also we feel so dreadful. We despair and feel inadequate and that we are not up to the task: how can we – puny humans that we are – possibly offer anything to counteract the enormity of death and the psychological devastation that it brings upon those closest to the deceased?

But the truth is that we can. In my next post I'll talk about how to write a condolence card.