Marked Men By Deborah Tannen Summary

Jahkiya Jack

English

Prof. Avila

15 July 2016

Analysis of Deborah Tannen’s “Marked Women, Unmarked Men”

In the article "Marked Women, Unmarked Men", author Deborah Tannen discusses the issue of women being judged by appearance or other superficial factors, while men are seemingly untouched by the judgement of others. To begin her argument, Tannen describes her observation of three women during a conference meeting, and stereotypes each one by their clothing, makeup, and hairstyle choices. Meanwhile she pays no attention to the eight men at the conference, supporting her claim that the way a women is perceived is based on her appearance, but men have the freedom to be unmarked. Tannen goes on to further support her

point, by using the example of titles. She acknowledges the fact that men are addressed by just a single title "Mr", which holds no meaning other than that he is a he, while women are categorized by either "Mrs"or "Ms", each telling a story about her current marital status. Although I agree with Tannen’s argument that women in today’s society cannot go unmarked, I disagree with her assumption that men are free of this same judgement.

One of Deborah Tannen’s primary arguments is that men have the freedom to wear what they want without many assumptions being made about them, while every style a women wears has a meaning.

In the essay Tannen claims, "There is no woman's hairstyle that can be called standard, that says nothing about her" this along with Tannen’s similar statements regarding women’s appearances suggest that every choice a woman makes about herself is used as a way to evaluate her personality. For instance, if a woman wears revealing or tight clothing with lots of makeup and tousled hair then she is viewed as attention seeking and even as a hoe to some. Because of personal experience, I completely agree with the point Tannen is making. As a teenage girl I can easily say that I have looked at a woman's outfit whether it be a tight dress and heels or a turtleneck with loafers, and formed my own opinions about who they are. Tannen goes on to use the clothing styles of three ladies in her conference meeting as examples to further her point. Carefully analyzing each of them, she observes that they all had different styles; while the men were all dressed alike because they have the freedom to. Tannen continues to argue her point that every woman's style is marked stating, "Each of the women at the conference had to make decisions about hair, clothing, makeup and accessories, and each decision had a carried meaning". While I concede with Tannen that women are indeed marked by their

appearances, I cannot look past the fact that men can also be judged by this same criteria. For example in a business setting like she describes, men are often restricted to corporate outfits just like those of her male colleagues, and if one of the men were to show up in shorts and a T shirt he would be judged and deemed unprofessional. A man’s style says a lot about his personality, occupation, economic class and sexual orientation. To many, if not all, it is clear that a man in a suit works in some kind of professional business setting, while the guy in a dirt stain t-shirt and a helmet works in construction. In my opinion, Tannen’s evaluation is restricted because she is not considering the formal setting of her case study, as well as what is considered appropriate or inappropriate in such a setting. With all that said, people, regardless of gender, are marked by their appearances.

The next point Tannen makes regards how some words in the english language are marked.

Tannen discusses the fact that adding suffixes to certain words to make them feminine seems to infer a sense of frivolousness. In Tannen's example she quotes actress Alfre Woodard, who explained that she identifies as an actor because of the negative connotation of being self-involved and superficial that goes along with the term actress. Tannen supports this claim by explaining how gender markers like the -ess in “actress” add extra meanings commonly associated with women such as being unserious and even sexual. I agree that actresses are not taken as seriously as actors, although it is not because of the evidence Tannen provided. My feelings on the issue stems simply from the fact that actresses get paid less than actors for doing the same exact job. Tannen continues to contest the english language by bringing about the topic of “Ms”and “Mrs”. She explains how these titles exclusively mark women as either married or single, while men are completely unmarked with the title of “Mr”. Although they are only titles it is easily said that an actor is taken more seriously than an actress and that at a certain age a women would be judged for being either a “Ms” or “Mrs”. Some may say that these suffixes and titles are just added to show grammatical differentiation in gender and not for social gender classification. However, I fully support Tannen’s claim that women are solely

marked by the english language.
In conclusion, I believe the author Deborah Tannen did a reasonable job in arguing her points, but the evidence used to back up select points was not strong enough to fully support the arguments. Also she rejected to offer opposing opinions, and simply looked at the topic from a woman's perspective. In my opinion, every choice a woman makes absolutely tells a story about her. I equally believe that women are aware of this fact, and that is why they are more conscious of their appearance than men. This however is not to say that men do not endure similar judgement. Overall, I believe that no one goes unmarked in today’s society.