Actor vs. Actress

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant. This is Dawn Grand calling from Orono, Minnesota.

Hello.

Nice to have you here, Dawn. What can we help you with?

I’ve always wondered why we differentiate by gender for people whose profession is to act.

So actors and actresses, and we don’t really do that for all other professions, like doctors and doctresses, or, you know, we have painters and paintresses.

We don’t have painters and paintresses.

Right.

So I guess I’m just wondering why that is.

Dawn, what’s your preference?

If it were up to me, I would have it be actors, E-R-S, a person who acts.

Oh, A-C-T-E-R?

Right, rather than actors and actresses.

Oh, that’s interesting.

How did you come up with that one?

I haven’t heard that solution.

No, no, I don’t know.

It just makes more sense to me just in terms of, you know, again, someone who’s a painter.

You know, it’s just someone who paints a painter.

That’s interesting now that you mention it.

But you’re right, actor and actress.

We have those two terms, one male, one female, very gendered.

We don’t use the female gendered forms in many other places anymore, at least in American English.

Right.

Waitress is still lingering around, but server is taking a strong position, right?

Right, right.

I know a lot of women who act who prefer to be called an actor, but I also know some who prefer to be called actresses.

Same here. Same here. I know some on both sides who have very strong feelings.

And the side-preferring actress, there’s a really good passage in a book that I want to quote to you, if that’s all right, that really kind of explains it.

Basically, what it says is acting was gendered as male for a very long time.

And so it was originally only actors.

And then when women entered the trade or the profession, then they came up with the new term act dress to specify the kind of exceptionality of women acting in a profession that had traditionally been male.

Because even the female roles were played by boys or young men for a long time.

And so now I’ve had women tell me point blank.

They’re like, I feel like saying that I am an actress specifies my exceptionality and demonstrates my participation in the field that is still even now often seen as male and heavily skewed towards male-centered scripts, male-centered roles, male-centered audiences.

Right.

But I also know many women who act who far prefer to be called an actor.

Yeah, and their reasons?

Are that it should be gender neutral.

And I think the Academy Awards actually has a lot to do with that.

You know, it’s hard to imagine them giving an award for best female actor as opposed to best actress.

That kind of thing.

There’s a book written on gendered language, and it’s called Language and Gender.

It’s by Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell.

I don’t know how you say her other name.

Ginet or Genet, G-I-N-E-T.

And this book deals with exactly these kinds of things, these kind of curious places in English where we’ve ensconced and entrenched the maleness that our society has had for thousands of years, right?

We inherited as far back as the written record goes.

Actress is a word really represents kind of this weird offshoot of the feminization of something that’s traditionally male.

And they have a lot to say on these sorts of things.

It’s really interesting.

That book is called Language and Gender.

Language and gender. I’ll have to check that out.

Donna, I’m sure we’re going to hear a lot about this, so I appreciate your starting the conversation.

Yeah, well, thank you so much again for taking my call.

Okay, thanks, Donna.

All right, have a great day.

Take care.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Well, language is complicated and interesting.

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