A “More Positive” Way To Say “Fat Spinster”
I teach a composition class, and one of the textbook exercises this week was quite illuminating! The students read a section on denotative and connotative meanings, and had to rewrite a few sentences “with words that arouse more positive feelings.” The words that the students were supposed to change were underlined.
For example, they might change “Felix was a mediocre student” to “Felix was an average student” or “The stench from the kitchen meant dinner was ready” to “The aroma from the kitchen…” One of the sentences was “My neighbor was a fat spinster lady.”
Here are some of the choices the students made. Some students thought different euphemisms were better than “fat.”
My neighbor was a plus-sized, single lady.
My neighbor was an overweight, single older woman.
My neighbor was a chubby single lady.
My neighbor was a big unmarried woman.
Some students thought it was “more positive” not to mention her weight at all.
My neighbor was an unmarried woman.
My neighbor was an independent lady.
My neighbor was a brilliant lady.
Best of all is this one: it would be “more positive” if she were thin!
My neighbor was a lean single lady.
You could also look at what they did with “spinster”–is her unmarried state worth noting? Is her weight? Talk about a teachable moment.
Posted by mo pie
Email us
How old is that book? Nobody seems to really care all that much about single women who live next to them. Or use the word “spinster”, for that matter.
Hmm… If I were in you class, I’d write “My neighbor was curvalicious woman, who happened to be single”, in the attempt to make someone laugh.
Fascinating! My favorite is “brilliant lady.” It’s a near-complete interpretation of “fat spinster lady.” I’m also interested at students who did or did not feel the need to change the word “lady.” When is lady bad? When is it not?
That is a really tough exercise, if you don’t have any other context! I would probably say “imposing single woman” if you have to get both ideas in there, but maybe she isn’t imposing. It could be equally positive to say, “The woman next door was available and all curves” or “The elderly lady next door was fat and warm and welcoming. She lived alone and …” If you really need the connotations that come with “fat spinster lady”, you could say, “My neighbour was single. She seemed lonely, and self-conscious about her weight.”
This is fun! I miss school.
Aw, shit! I would go and put a grammatical error in my comment about a writing assignment.
Here is mine!
“My neighbor is happy.”
LMAO
“My neighbor can do what she wants to do, go where she wants to go, and eat what she wants to eat without being hassled by a man!”
Okay, this may be inaccurate. We all know that being fat and free opens one up to hassles at any point in time, but it’s how I felt when I was single with no overbearing boyfriend! (My husband, bless ‘im, treats me like a goddess!)
Yes, indeed, it certainly IS a “teachable moment”.
Teaching people to euphemize, to dumb down, rather than to express their thoughts in a clear and cogent manner is outrageous. Saying that someone is a “mediocre” student means just what it says. That “stench” obviously means that the speaker is dreading sitting down to a meal prepared by a really bad cook. In point of fact, I have for many years referred to myself as a spinster: it’s what I AM and I’m proud to say so.
And oh yes, for a long time I was very fat, and described myself as ” the best looking, middle-aged fat broad in town”. I was speaking the truth, being direct, and avoiding any charges of political correctness, a practice that has wreaked havoc with the language & led to some really sad (also funny) material.
If you’re a teacher, you ought to be telling your students to tell it like it is: if the neighbor is a fat spinster, then for God’s sake SAY SO!
I don’t think the idea of the exercise is to dumb the sentences down, just to be aware of the connotative meanings of the words. The underlying idea is not that the cook is bad, or that the student sucks; those are misrepresentations. The intention is more positive, so the words should be more accurate. Not more euphemistic.
how about, “my neighbor was a large and in charge independent woman who refused to answer to any man.”
Katsuryi, people still do use the word “spinster” in a negative way. Just the other day I had to verbally smack a commenter on Apartment Therapy who looked at a family tree image and said, “Oh, look at that poor spinster at the top!”. For crissake, really, dude?? I couldn’t let it slide.
My neighbor was fat and awesome.
;)
“My neighbor is an independent woman who’s substantial in every way.”
I don’t call myself a spinster because I haven’t spun wool in years. “My neighbor is single and fabulous.”
We did something similar to this in my German class last week “Mein dicker Mitbewohner” (my fat roommate) became “Mein beleibter Mitbewohner.” The prof gave us the sentence “Mein beleibter Mitarbeiter ist beliebt” (roughly translates to “my corpulent coworker is well-liked”) Beleibt is a great word because it comes from “Leib” which just means “body” (or can also mean “belly”). I hope this catches on in English. Instead of “plus-sized” which implies a non-normal state, we could just call larger people “bodied” or “full-bodied”.
And we all know from that crying toddler video how unbearably awesome it is to be a “single lady”. So she’s a full-bodied single lady.