"There Is No Unmarked Woman" 12/18/16

     In the text, "There Is No Unmarked Woman," author Deborah Tannen discuses gender stereotypes and the effect it has on society's perception of women. By opening the essay with an anecdote about a past conference, Tannen effectively shows how women and men are treated differently. To specify, she describes how the women chose to dress, style their hair, and their use of make-up or lack thereof and how these decisions were all "marked." For example, she noted that the third woman's hair was "a frosted blond avalanche falling over" and how the "first woman wore facial cover that made her skin smooth and pale." In contrast, when describing the men at the conference, Tannen did not bother elaborating on their clothing or hair, instead stating that it "needed and attracted no attention." This comes to show how women are judged in everything that they do and thus, must take more time to present themselves as attractive or even just confident. This supports the idea that all women are marked, as even the English language distinguish between men and women it further reinforces the idea. As Tannen mentions in her essay, "The unmarked forms of most English words also convey 'male'" and adding "endings like ess and ette mark words as 'female.'" An example is doctor and doctorette. Although the word doctorette has lost its use throughout the years, there are still many that continue to be used such as actor and actress. Essentially, these "marked" words often have negative connotations associated with them. This is most commonly associated with the female gender as being "not quite serious" and "often sexual." This demonstrates the inequality women face in society, even when performing the same job as a male counterpart they are perceived differently. Similarly, even in other languages such as Spanish everything is marked as either female or male even something as trivial as a table. For instance, in school my Spanish teachers put great emphasis on the use of "el" or "la" in front of a word in order to indicate if a word is male or female. I believe that these markers are the result of centuries of tradition and is deeply rooted in various cultures, which all stems from the idea that men are superior to women. By constantly using these marked words I believe that people's perception of women will be impacted whether consciously or unconsciously.