Madame, Not Mademoiselle: The Word France Retired From Its Forms

The smallest gamble of a French morning is two words long. You walk into a boulangerie, catch the eye of the woman behind the counter, and must choose: bonjour madame, or bonjour mademoiselle? Pick the first and, if she is twenty-three, you may have aged her by a decade. Pick the second and, if she is the owner, you may have called the boss a schoolgirl. France noticed too, which is how one word ended up debated by feminists, defended by traditionalists, and struck off the government's own paperwork.

One title asked a question the other never did

The asymmetry was hiding in plain sight. A Frenchman is monsieur at eighteen and monsieur at eighty, married, divorced, or happily committed to his cat. The word reveals nothing and asks nothing. A Frenchwoman, traditionally, was mademoiselle until marriage and madame after it, which meant her title announced her marital status to every clerk, waiter, and form she ever met. Mademoiselle is a pretty word, light and musical. It was also, campaigners pointed out, a small piece of public information that nobody had any business requiring.

The comparison that did the damage was Ms. English had largely solved this problem decades earlier with a title that simply declined to say. French had no equivalent waiting. It had a word for a wife and a word for a girl, and a great many adult women were neither interested nor obliged to be sorted by the distinction.

In 2012, the forms gave up first

In September 2011 two feminist groups, Osez le féminisme and Chiennes de garde, campaigned against the word with a blunt argument: the mademoiselle box on a form was one box too many. Why should a woman renewing a passport have to declare whether she was married, when the man in the next queue declared nothing at all?

The government agreed faster than governments usually do. On 21 February 2012 a circular from Prime Minister François Fillon ordered mademoiselle removed from administrative documents and replaced by madame, the exact female counterpart of monsieur. Other survivors went with it: nom de jeune fille, literally maiden name, became nom de famille. Overnight, officially, every adult woman in France was a madame. The state had performed a small revolution and, in proper French fashion, done it by circular.

The word refused to leave the street

Here is the catch, and there is always a catch. The circular governed forms, not mouths. Nobody was fined, and mademoiselle carried on happily in daily life, where it still lives. Small children still use it, waiters of the old school still call it across a café terrace, and plenty of grown women hear it as a small, pleasant fiction about their age and would be quietly annoyed to lose it.

Others hear something else: a pat on the head in professional life, the title that makes a thirty-five year old lawyer sound like an intern. Both hearings are real, which is why the word survives in a kind of negotiated truce. In an office, a town hall, or anywhere serious, madame has won completely. In a bakery, at a market stall, between people who are smiling, mademoiselle lingers on, demoted from a category to a compliment, and compliments are given rather than demanded.

A field guide, for visitors who want to survive the bakery

The rules in practice are mercifully simple. Addressing an adult woman you do not know, default to madame, always. You will never insult anyone with it: at worst you have been formal, and formality in France is a compliment in a suit. Say bonjour madame as one phrase, because in France the greeting and the title travel together, and a bare bonjour can land as oddly abrupt. For a child or a young teenager, mademoiselle is fine and rather sweet. If a woman is introduced to you as Madame Something, that is your answer for the rest of the conversation. And if you freeze at the counter, take comfort: the French hesitate over this one too. You are not failing a test. You are joining a national pastime.

Wear the safe answer

Our Oui Madame Minimalist Line Art Portrait Tee gives the winning word the last say: a clean line portrait, two small words, complete confidence. Oui, madame is the correct answer to the boulangerie, the town hall, and most of life in France, and it looks better on a tee than a retired form box. Wear it to Paris. The counter staff will approve of the title, if not of your accent.