Sheila Michaels 1939 2018
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By Olivia Gagan Sheila Michaels 1939 2018 ‘The first thing anyone wanted to know She initially thought ‘Ms’ was a typo. It live many lives and forge many facets to about you was whether you were married wasn’t—it was simply a way of referring her identity—perhaps the most impactful of yet. I’d be damned if I’d bow to them.’ to a female without revealing her marital which was her dedication to giving women status which had long fallen into obscurity. a name and a status beyond marriage. What’s in a name? A lot, as it happens. In a 2007 interview with The Guardian, Sheila Michaels’ name was changed by Michaels explained why the word caught her forces beyond her control multiple times attention ‘No one wanted to claim me and I throughout her life: other people’s mar- didn’t want to be owned. I didn’t belong to riages, other people’s divorces, other peo- my father or belong to a husband.’ ple’s feelings about her. It was in part why Spotting that letter would be the first of she became such a passionate advocate a handful of chance events in Michaels’ for reviving the word Ms, and for women life that helped lift ‘Ms’ out of obscurity. identifying themselves on their own terms. It would take a decade of campaigning for her efforts to gain traction: a turning point Born in St Louis, Missouri, as a child Mi- came in 1971, when Michaels appeared on a chaels was shuttled between her mother New York radio show. During a lull in con- and her grandparents in the Bronx. Her versation, she explained why she thought biological father, a civil liberties lawyer ‘Ms’ should become commonplace. A friend called Ephraim London, for many years re- of feminist Gloria Steinem’s was listening fused to acknowledge her as his daughter. and suggested ‘Ms’ as the title for Steinem’s Instead, she was given her mother’s first soon-to-be-launched new feminist mag- husband’s surname of Michaels. After her azine. Ms launched in 1972. An overnight mother’s second marriage, her surname was success, the magazine helped push ‘Ms’ changed again, to Kessler. into the public consciousness. Michaels was an outspoken, opinionated The modern-day re-emergence of the woman from the start, expelled from college honorific, originally used in the sixteenth as a teenager for writing anti-segregationist century, has faced criticisms: etiquette articles for the student newspaper. Embar- bible Debrett’s called it ‘ugly-sounding’, rassed by Michaels’ activism, her mother The Queen’s English Society branded it ‘a would later disown her, prompting another linguistic misfit’. Nonetheless, the word has name change—her mother asked her to stop been embraced and has persisted. Thanks using her husband’s surname of Kessler. in large part to Michael’s work, ‘Ms’ is now Michaels moved to Manhattan and became in everyday use as the standard prefix a member of the Congress of Racial Equal- throughout English-speaking countries. ity, an organisation that played a key role Michaels had a rich career beyond reviving in the civil rights movement. It was in New ‘Ms’. Over the course of her life, Michaels York in 1961, aged 22, where she first saw was by turns an oral historian, a New York the word ‘Ms’ on a piece of mail received by City taxi driver, a writer, a restauranteur her flatmate. At that point, the only common (she was married to Japanese chef Hikaru Top photo: Garbis Photo Studio. Garbis Photo photo: Top honorifics for women were ‘Miss’ and‘Mrs’. Shiki) and a humanitarian. She decided to .