The Born Identity

Brace yourselves, equal people of the world: this one's about sexism and marriage in English-speaking culture.

Women. Am I right? Women.

When once I was a little girl, I had fairly normal little girl tendencies. Sure, I played a good deal with dogs and went hiking in my backyard and wanted to do the things my brothers did and played soccer and climbed trees and preferred 101 Dalmatians to The Little Mermaid and spent a longer period of time with Legos and TMNT action figures than I did with Barbie, but I also have a picture somewhere of two-year-old Vanessa (or Nessie Boo, as she was then known) proudly wearing her little dress-up costume that was a wedding dress and veil with a toy bouquet.

I spoke of getting married as a given. One time, in fact, I told my parents that I was going to marry a black man -- but a real one, not like Michael Jackson (dubious racial progress!). I have (and still do) planned my wedding and the names of my children and thought about who my husband will be for as long as I can remember. My parents love each other very much even now after forty years of being together and thirty-eight years of marriage, through nearly every possible kind of horrific catastrophe a marriage can sustain from the outside of itself, so I have high standards and high hopes for what I still strive to eventually attain in a partner and a spouse (assuming I ever get a boyfriend). I am, on the whole, pro-marriage and pro-not-too-extravagant-wedding.

When my mother married, she went from being Donna Kay Tanner to Donna Tanner Bellew (which I've always considered an upgrade because...wouldn't you rather be the bear in the Jungle Book than someone who tans leather for a living?), so as a child I grew up expecting that one day I'd meet someone and we'd get married and then I'd stop being Vanessa Lauren Bellew and start being Vanessa Bellew Hislastname and I did at one time consider it a charming prospect. I remember, however, always feeling a little grumpy about the fact that I was expected to lose my middle name (even though I've never really liked it). I also was jealous that my brothers would always get to be Bellews. And I had a very strong sense as a child that because there were no famous Bellews that I was aware, when I was famous (be it from writing or acting or both), I wouldn't pull a Natalie Portman and change my last name for privacy. Oh, no. I would be Vanessa Bellew come Hell or high water so that some other little Bellew girl out there could look at me and go, "Yes! She's a Bellew and so am I and I can be like her!"

So began my long-time decision that I would be Vanessa Bellew in public, but probably I would take my husband's last name in our personal lives (especially assuming that he had an awesome last name like 'Moriarty' or 'Picard' or 'Zombieapocalypse'). This, I felt, was a good compromise because I wouldn't want him to feel emasculated by my powerful famous woman-ness. Because apparently being a strong, independent woman makes your husband less of a man in the eyes of society, or so I understood to be true at one point in my life.

This summer my very best friend in all of the world ever ever ever, the beautiful and clever Danielle Boss of the Texas Bosses, tied the knot with her long-time paramour Daniel McDonald. I believe our conversations about what she'd do about her last name have led to this post (or perhaps a natural progression of awareness about my identity versus my identity as a woman). Danielle decided on hyphenation: Boss-McDonald, which is understandable, socially accepted these days, and a credible feminist stance to take.

Danielle and I have also been friends since we were in sixth grade. We went through middle school and high school together and then went to different colleges, but have stayed very much in touch. At this point in our lives, nearly ten years after graduation from twelfth grade, we speak just about every day. So we've been discussing the engagements and marriages and children of our friends and acquaintances throughout the years, usually in baffled, incredulous terms. An average conversation would maybe go like this:

Danielle: um, did you see that so-and-so got married?
Vanessa: Oh my God, yes. What was she thinking? She's nineteen! She hasn't even finished college!
Danielle: seriously. too young.
Vanessa: I don't even know how to take care of myself, much less be married!
Danielle: same here.

Fast forward to age twenty-six and Danielle, who is completely capable of taking care of herself even if she occasionally admits to not really feeling like an adult, is now a married woman who shares her life with another human being. I still, closer to thirty than to eighteen, am completely at sea when it comes to being a functioning grown up. I can't imagine I'd be very good in my current condition at being married.

As time has passed and I've seen more and more of my peers become happily domestic (usually aided by Pinterest), I've noticed a disturbing trend of what I shall henceforth refer to as Housewife Mentality*. Please do not misunderstand: my mother was a housewife for most of my life and she is bitchin' at it, so I am not disparaging housewife as a life choice. It's just a shorthand way of saying that they are following the preprogrammed societal expectation that a woman is absorbed into the man in marriage like a too-small twin in the womb. It would be one thing if these millennial young women were making this choice fully aware of themselves and how culture has shaped them and told them what to do and what to be, but for the most part I'm pretty sure the girls I've been watching checking things off their List of Life Steps (high school, college, boyfriend, fiance, husband, dog, house, baby, etc.) are particularly proud of their old-fashioned roles, almost as a reaction to the modern have-it-all woman.

Yesterday a friend of mine who at one time in her early adulthood said repeatedly that she would never get married...got married. She seems perfectly happy and for that I am glad. What struck me, however, was that immediately on Facebook, she changed her last name to his and then posted how pleased she was to be Mrs. Hislastname. And that is what started my brain train down these sexism and marriage tracks.

Danielle, on Facebook, is still Danielle Boss. And as always, I turned to her to air my grievances with this new development. I said I found it repugnant. The more I think about it, the more it bothers me that women have been societally expected to completely give up their Born Identity (get it?) when they get married. All this time, all these changes in the perception of what women can and can't do, and here we still are, traded off to someone else in marriage because of traditions of property that somehow we've turned into 'cute' and 'quaint' and 'sweet'.

Having said that, I still have every intention of having my father walk me down the aisle and give me away. So these traditions have their hooks in me as well.

This also got me started thinking about how sexist our prefixes are. A boy is born a "sir" and a "mister" and remains a "sir" and a "mister" his entire life. A girl is born a "miss", grows into a "Ms." and a "ma'am" if she isn't married by a certain time, and, upon her marriage, becomes a "misses". First of all, I can't ever imagine anyone calling me "misses" and I have no warm feelings whatsoever for the word itself. I think it's dumb. I much prefer being a "miss" and I don't think I will ever refer to myself as "Ms." even on an envelope. I am not a piece of fruit. I do not lose worth with age. And I am not a stray cat, to be given a new name with each new owner (sorry, Nietzsche).

So I think today I have made a new life decision. When and if I am married, I will remain forever the person I was born: Vanessa Lauren Bellew**. I will never be Mrs. Anything, but will prefer to be called "Miss" for the rest of my life. And I suppose in the next few years, I'll have to spend some time thinking about the naming tradition for children in which they only inherit their father's last name, as if half of their DNA were not important.

I am woman. Hear me roar my given name.



* Did you notice that I set up that terminology and then never used it again? Me too.

** Exceptions will be considered in cases of extremely awesome last names as previously mentioned. How could I pass up being Vanessa Picard? I don't think I could.