Young Lady
I found an on-line reference on avoiding sexist language. Among other things, it says:
1. Do not use the word girl to refer to an adult. Many women find this term offensive. Call females over the age of 18 women, not girls, gals, or ladies. (The definition of girl is a female child. One possibility for eliminating problems with this word is to use the terms young woman and young man for teenagers to suggest a continuum.)
2. Use parallel terms for women and men. Use men and women, ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys, husband and wife (not man and wife). Alternate the order sometimes: women and men, gentlemen and ladies, wife and husband. Use ladies only when men are being referred to as gentlemen. And don't call women wives and mothers unless you are calling men husbands and fathers.
Today’s For Better or For Worse strip, with its bag boy carrying groceries by hand for Elly, and Elly’s desire to be called a term, which is now considered to be sexist, shows the age of this strip. I know that Lynn Johnston is about to launch down a series of reprint strips where 1980s Elly complained about anything making her look or feel old; but this strip might have been a good strip to skip. After all, a lot of companies which try to market their old material, usually leave out the material which is considered to be offensive by modern standards. Try buying a DVD of Disney’s Song of the South, for instance.
1. Do not use the word girl to refer to an adult. Many women find this term offensive. Call females over the age of 18 women, not girls, gals, or ladies. (The definition of girl is a female child. One possibility for eliminating problems with this word is to use the terms young woman and young man for teenagers to suggest a continuum.)
2. Use parallel terms for women and men. Use men and women, ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys, husband and wife (not man and wife). Alternate the order sometimes: women and men, gentlemen and ladies, wife and husband. Use ladies only when men are being referred to as gentlemen. And don't call women wives and mothers unless you are calling men husbands and fathers.
Today’s For Better or For Worse strip, with its bag boy carrying groceries by hand for Elly, and Elly’s desire to be called a term, which is now considered to be sexist, shows the age of this strip. I know that Lynn Johnston is about to launch down a series of reprint strips where 1980s Elly complained about anything making her look or feel old; but this strip might have been a good strip to skip. After all, a lot of companies which try to market their old material, usually leave out the material which is considered to be offensive by modern standards. Try buying a DVD of Disney’s Song of the South, for instance.
posted by howard at 11:20 PM
13 Comments:
Elly Patterson is certainly not thinking along the same lines as I do. It seems obvious to me that she believes that if she isn't young, then she's old. Not middle aged, not in the prime of her life, but decrepit-slash-ancient. Every frown line, every grey hair, every sign that she isn't a teenager is magnified in her muddled mind into a clear sign that she's old before her time. Since she spent thirty years worrying her life away, she looks as old as she feels: 90!! I'm 42 and have the sense to not worry about my looks too much. That way, I still feel fairly young. When she was 42, she felt 60.
[T]his strip might have been a good strip to skip.
My thoughts exactly. Wanting to be called young lady?
What strikes me most about the vintage strips is Elly’s discontent. She is probably exhibiting the same personality traits in current strips, but for some strange reason my gut reaction is different.
Anon NYC
DreadedCandiru2,
Since she spent thirty years worrying her life away, she looks as old as she feels: 90!!
This is an element of For Better or For Worse which if, you take the theme as a whole over the entire work of it, it really is 30 years of fretting about aging. Obviously this is a theme which did not come from Charles Schultz, but is along the lines of Cathy by Cathy Guisewite, who is about the same age as Lynn Johnston. Comic strip Cathy has been telling “I look old” jokes for even longer than Lynn Johnston has, since Cathy started in 1976. Like Cathy Guisewite though, both of them were influenced by Charles Schulz and they have both won Reuben awards. I think there is a certain element of these kinds of strips which are intended to reach the Cathy audience. Somewhere out there, there is always going to be a woman who feels like she is getting older, and Lynn Johnston decided she was going to write some (well, a lot of ) strips to reach that audience.
aprilp_katje,
My thoughts exactly. Wanting to be called young lady?
I have a hard time imagining a mother of two wanting to be called that, even in 1980.
Anon NYC,
What strikes me most about the vintage strips is Elly’s discontent.
If you look through the long stretch of things, quite a few of the strips are about something or other offending or upsetting Elly and then either her sullen reaction to something she can’t change or her over-the-top comical reaction to something she can. That was a good bit of the humour of the strip. Unhappy Elly = Funny.
On the other hand, if you view the early strips as a whole, and consider that many of the jokes in the early days were derived from Lynn Johnston’s own experiences at the time, you did get the impression that Lynn was very unhappy with her lot in life. At that time, she was living in Lynn Lake, away from any big cities, dealing with 2 kids and a husband who liked to do his flying dentist business, which almost assuredly cost him money. She doesn’t live near family, she doesn’t like the place where she lives, she’s taking care of 2 kids by herself, and she’s putting out a daily strip with no assistants in those days and she was probably the breadwinner in the family.
Somewhere out there, there is always going to be a woman who feels like she is getting older, and Lynn Johnston decided she was going to write some (well, a lot of) strips to reach that audience.
It's called 'shooting where the ducks are', I'm afraid. She knew from her own experience and from just plain observing the world around her that she'd have a captive audience who'd be only too glad to have their concerns feel more real to them by seeing them in print. She's also got the 'overwhelmed parent' market sewn up.
She knew from her own experience and from just plain observing the world around her that she'd have a captive audience who'd be only too glad to have their concerns feel more real to them by seeing them in print.
That might be giving her too much credit for understanding the market. Lynn was given a her unprecedented 20-year contract to produce a strip which was originally titled The Johnstons because; as I understand it, the syndicate was anxious to have a woman cartoonist and they had seen her David, We’re Pregnant! book. Although Lynn did pull events from her own experience to write the strip, I have the distinct impression that the syndicate knew exactly what kind of audience they were after when they chose Lynn, i.e the David, We’re Pregnant! audience.
However, having seen enough of these reprints from the first year, there is a pretty good indication that Lynn was less trying to hit a market and more imitating others. The “overwhelmed parent” strips in the first year oftentimes roll over into Dennis the Menace territory, with Michael acting as Dennis. Today’s strip wanders well into Cathy territory. And of course, there have been a few strips with the characters pontificating on their reason for being which are quite Peanuts-like. I can’t tell if it is Lynn understanding her part of the market, or Lynn imitating other people who are successful in doing comic strips.
Howard,
Thank you for your insightful explanation. Now I understand why I don’t enjoy the reprints.
Anon NYC
What it looks like is an unsure author finding her voice. The first three years of the strip might as well not have existed as far as I'm concerned. It took until 1982 for the Pattersons to stop being cardbaord cutouts and become the family they are now. As an example, it's about then that Mike stopped being some sort of warped cross-fusion of Dennis Mitchell and Rerun Van Pelt and became a real troubled, angry boy with a discernable, realistic albeit somewhat selfish motivation for his default hostility.
DreadedCandiru2
What it looks like is an unsure author finding her voice. The first three years of the strip might as well not have existed as far as I'm concerned. It took until 1982 for the Pattersons to stop being cardboard cutouts and become the family they are now.
I agree with you there and it’s not that uncommon for comic strips. I remember that in early Dennis the Menace, the boy bordered on excessive cruelty. In the first 3 years of Peanuts, Snoopy was still kind of like a dog and had not developed all those characteristics which we associate with him. I think that is one of the reasons, when the syndicate went with Peanuts reprints, they chose to reprint a sort of “Best of” selection. In other forums I have heard of newspapers starting to drop For Better or For Worse in favour of newer strips and the ironic part is that Lynn Johnston is not done doing the newer strip storylines.
That's because most editors don't know that she changed her mind about when the time-freeze would take hold. They think that when Anthony said "Let's go home", the story of the Pattersons was over.
dreadedcandiru2,
That could be the answer. Of course, some editors adjust their comic lineup at the beginning of the year, and it's not like the last 4 months of For Better or For Worse have had any really good strips.
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