Super Trope or Sister Trope to Maiden Aunt and Christmas Cake?: Old Maid

Old Maid was launched back in December as a result of this TRS discussion, wherein it was determined that the Western concept of the "Old Maid" was distinct enough to be separate from the Japanese idea of the "Christmas Cake".

According to the YKTTW discussion for OldMaid, upon launch the examples that were not listed as "Japanese and over 25" would be moved from Christmas Cake to Old Maid, however that never seems to have been done since there are still an extremely large amount of Western examples on the former, and almost no examples at all on the latter.

It was also mentioned in that YKTTW discussion that the distinction may be that a Christmas Cake was still young and beautiful despite being beyond the age where they're considered to be marriage material, and the Old Maid would represent examples of "faded beauty."

To throw a wrench into all of this, Maiden Aunt was also launched, which is specifically meant to cover older women who have never married.

So my question is this: Is the Old Maid a sister trope to Christmas Cake and Maiden Aunt, and if so, what distinguishes the Old Maid sufficiently from both of them? Where does the Japanese distinction fit with Christmas Cake, if there is one at all?

Or, should the Old Maid be an exampleless supertrope, with the subtropes being Christmas Cake for unmarried younger women of all cultures, and Maiden Aunt for unmarried older women of all cultures?

I thought Maiden Aunt was just older never married (wanting to or feeling pressure not required.)

Hell I have heard the term used to describe an unmarried lady who has a niece or nephew and helps take care of them.

Old Maid is the supertrope.

Christmas Cake should be Japanese examples, and move the Western examples to Old Maid

Christmas Cake also relates to Cake Eater (younger men attracted to older women) - can't remove Western examples from one without the other. Attractive older women don't really fit into the connotations of Old Maid imo. Should be a different trope.

There is an ongoing TRS thread for Cake Eater that's leaning towards a rename, which should take care of that problem.

Cake Eater needs to go.

Whoever the guy is could be after anyone older.... They could (and more often than not) easily be married and be in Stacy's Mom not any of these.

edited 7th Aug '11 1:34:54 AM by Raso

Cake Eater is not the trope this thread is about. Please don't bring in other tropes that aren't Cake Eater,Old Maid and Maiden Aunt.

Well anyway going by what I understand reading Maiden Aunt - She's your favourite elderly relative. never married or widowed, most importantly never actually had kids herself and usually helps take care of her relatives' kids. They arnt looking for someone at all and it's already too late to have a kid. (Can we useful notes most of that writeup?)

Very different than Old Maid.

edited 7th Aug '11 7:03:25 AM by Raso

A Maiden Aunt may have been an Old Maid when she was younger, but she doesn't have to have been. Premature death of their betrothed, a bad case of The First Cut Is the Deepest, or simply lacking an interest in matrimony are also common causes. But Maiden Aunts are so far past the matrimonial age that they are beyond the "longing for marriage but firmly on the shelf" idea of Old Maid. Although every once in a while, the Maiden Aunt will get paired up with the Cool Old Guy.

edited 7th Aug '11 9:47:12 AM by StarryEyed

An Old Maid is an Old Maid regardless of age. Maiden Aunt is an Old Maid.

In fact, Old Maid (ie Old Maiden) started as a reference to the Maiden Aunt trope (as mentioned on the page), it's only later that it started to be used to also refer to any woman who was in danger of becoming an Old Maid.

Old Maid is the supertrope. It's a pre-existent term. Trying to narrow it down and excluding things like Maiden Aunt makes the title inaccurate, because the term is not that narrow.

If Old Maid is a supertrope to both Christmas Cake and Maiden Aunt, should it have any examples?

If so, what is the criteria for what goes on Old Maid as opposed to its subtropes?

edited 8th Aug '11 6:32:20 AM by Meeble

I believe the normal practice is that if an example fits a subtrope it goes on the subtrope page. If it doesn't fit the subtrope it goes on the supertrope page.

That's part of my confusion on this, though. Reading the description on Christmas Cake, the only specific criteria I see for the trope is that it's a woman over 25. That would lead me to assume that Maiden Aunt would be for elderly Old Maids, and Christmas Cake would cover everyone else.

I just don't know if my understanding of that is shared by everyone else.

edited 8th Aug '11 6:39:48 AM by Meeble

Christmas Cake should be "Woman over or around 25, no boyfriend, no prospects, and is angsting over it"

Basically, a woman is only Christmas Cake if she thinks she is. If she's 25, unattatched and likes it that way, she's not Christmas Cake.

Ok so the main differentiation for whether a character is a Christmas Cake or an Old Maid would be whether or not she experiences angst over not being married?

That would be something workable, I think. If that were the case, we could move any Christmas Cake examples that do not specifically indicate some kind of angst over to Old Maid, as long as they don't otherwise qualify for Maiden Aunt status.

Does everyone agree with that?

That would make sense. I'm guessing that Christmas Cake has experienced some example drift and could use some cleaning up. Its a pretty specific trope.

If this is the difference between the tropes the age restriction of Christmas Cake has to be removed, and the description focused on Japan too. Because this kind "Old Maid Panic" is not limited to Japan and not limited to the age of 25.

edited 8th Aug '11 7:13:54 AM by Osmium

Well, I think the "25ish" is a good cutoff point in terms of qualifying for an Old Maid in general. After all, an 18 year old can have angst about not being married yet, but no one would really consider them to be an Old Maid at that point.

Saying "no younger than mid 20s doesn't count" seems like a valid starting point for qualifying for Old Maid or one of its subtropes.

edited 8th Aug '11 7:19:10 AM by Meeble

If the trope is about the "OMG!I will never by married, because I am to old"-Reaction then the age doesen't matter. In modern societys a girl hitting 20 without being married would not count, because nobody really expects her to be marryed at this age. But when the writer developed a world/society where young girls are expected to be married at the age of 16 and a 18 year old girl has the "OMG, I am too old!" reaction, then it would be this trope.

edited 8th Aug '11 7:38:37 AM by Osmium

There has to be some angst for Chistmas Cake but not necessarily from the person in question.

Take Sato in Detective Conan, its her parents, co-workers and everyone else that are all over it making her go to Omiai's (leading to 100 man Police Stakeouts on any maybe date she might have.).

Age.... 26.

There are a bunch of specific cultural stuff that goes into Christmas Cake vs Old Maid which is older and fading beauty (with maybe a mid life crisis.)

Christmas Cake is also becoming a dead horse trope in RL however (the Old Maid age is becoming more common age to actually marry.) its still full on strong in actual Japanese media.

edited 8th Aug '11 7:48:17 AM by Raso

I thought the whole reason we created Old Maid (previously Christmas Cake covered all of it) was because we decided that different cultures at different times have very different attributes (age cut-offs, societal response, etc), and that therefor we needed a supertrope.

Christmas Cake was to become a subtrope specifically about the current Japanese attitude about an Old Maid: A woman is past her "sell by" date at age 25. The concept of becoming "a bride". The prevalence of this attribute for young female teachers, etc.

Maiden Aunt was to be a subtrope about the situation in America (and Britain), during certain time periods for there to be "spinster" aunts. Specifically caused by a lack of marriageable men due to war. These aunts usually stayed with a brother or sister and helped raise their nieces and nephews, and thus usually appear in stories set in this time period either as a strict taskmaster, or occasionally a confidant. Essentially a non-parental authority figure, that was also family.

Old Maid was supposed to receive examples that didn't fit one of the established subtypes, at least until someone went and created additional subtropes.

For example there was talk about "Biological Clock Ticking" subtrope, which would be about how in modern America the Old Maid thing has tended to reappear with women in their 30s wanting to marry while still young enough to have children. Thus it's changed from a societal measurement of the right age to marry, to one driven by biological concerns.

I assume if there is some trope associated with this in 1500s Africa that would also be a subtrope (assuming there are 3 examples).

Eventually the hope was Old Maid would become similar in format to Ice Queen or Tomboy.

All of these examples were to be limited to examples where being an Old Maid was actually commented on in-universe.

For example: A Christmas Cake would be a (Japanese) woman who is over 25 (or approaching that age) and is worrying about it. Or someone else identifies a woman as being 25, and past marrying age (possibly a mother for example). Or a woman is identified as past 25, and explicitly laughs off this trope (making it a subversion). Just being over 25 and unmarried would not be an example.

edited 8th Aug '11 7:52:39 AM by Sackett

I guess what I'm trying to hammer out is: What can we put in the description for Old Maid that would make it clear that example X should be listed on Old Maid, example Y should be listed on Maiden Aunt, and example Z should be listed on Christmas Cake.

There seems to be a lot of differing opinions on what goes where, so breaking it down to distinct, established guidelines is necessary before we can do an example migration, which is desperately needed at this point.

Basically we need an accurate laconic for both of the subtropes so that we can clearly determine which examples belong where.

edited 8th Aug '11 8:05:37 AM by Meeble

Christmas Cake is pretty much about how in Japanese culture, a young woman magically turns completely unmarriable, doomed Old Maid the second her age turns 25, despite how desireable she would be if not for the age.

The western progression of Old Maid is more smooth, instead of a sharp frop from 75% or so to 0% overnight it's a straight declining line from 100% from at 20 to 0% at 30 or so, depending on era and place.

So it's practically Christmas Cake is Old Maid But More Specific, In Japan. Note that I'm not asking for them to be merged.

So would it be accurate, then, if the last paragraph of Old Maid went something like this?

"For examples pertaining to the outdated Japanese cultural idea that a woman is unmarriageable after the age of 25, see Christmas Cake. For women who have remained unmarried until their twilight years, see Maiden Aunt. All other examples should be listed here."

If everyone is okay with that distinction, it gives a clear guideline of which examples belong on each page.

Unfortunately, I think you can't use the term "outdated." But otherwise that sounds about right.