Deborah TannenÆs essay ôThere Is No Unmarked Womanö successfully illuminates the cultural peculiarity of judging women by their appearance or other factors, but not judging men for the same things. As Tannen points out, everything a woman wears says something about her. Men, by contrast, can opt to be unmarkedùand most do; they choose the standard, almost regulation dress that all men wearùa light shirt, dark pants, and dark shoes, so they have not made any distinguishing choices that set them apart from other men and define them. For women, however, every choice a woman makes about herself that is detectible is used as a gauge to evaluate what she is like and pass judgment on her. What she wears and how she wears it becomes an advertisement of herself to the world around her. Being a woman is like living in a fishbowl where everyone can see you, and they are all taking note. Women are constantly being evaluated and ôpegged,ö even though most people know that judging people by their appearance is unfair and misleading. True stories of people dressed in tatters who live in the slums but have millions of dollars stashed in their mattresses, or of serial killers that friends and family insist have always been ôclean-cut and niceö should be enough to convince anyone that judging by appearances is unreliable. Yet everyone judges women by their looks. Although Tannen does not explore this angle, even other women do it.
Tannen cites several examples of the ways in which such judging occurs, like the decision a woman makes about her last name when she is married. If she decides to take her husbandÆs last name, she is identified as married and traditional. If she decides to hyphenate her name to his, she is also marked as married, and her name becomes a challenge to repeat. If she keeps her own name, she is marked as someone who has done so. Another example is the use of the generic ôheö to mea
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