A mother. A daughter. A topic.
Do I like the name Cindy?
I guess its okay. It’s not a bad name. It has two syllables (I like names with two syllables). And it’s kind of cute. I mean when I think of the name “Cindy” I think of a cute girl, probably with blonde pigtails, sitting on an old wooden swing hanging from the limb of a single tree on top of a hill, on a bright cheery day.
(What a strange vision I seem to have.)
So I don’t really relate to the name.
I know I’m blonde, but I never did the pigtail thing…or the swing thing for that matter. Now that I’m 54 years old…it’s really an absurd vision of the name. OY.
I, like millions of other folks, had no control over the name I was given, and was always referred to with my shorter nickname (Cindy) of my longer, more formal, real first name…Cynthia.
I like Cynthia, but I have absolutely no personal relationship to the name. It was the name that I had to learn to write in Kindergarten, but I knew that even though I had to learn how to spell it…nobody would ever use it to reference me.
I was Cindy. From the day I was born.
My mother used to tell me that she named me Cynthia after Elizabeth Taylor in the movie with the same name. I never saw the movie. I’ve seen just about every other Elizabeth Taylor movie, but somehow, Cynthia has eluded me over the years.
So, when writing this post I decided to look it up (love that Google) and see what my namesake was up to in the movie. Here’s the first blurb I found…
Cynthia (1947) was Elizabeth Taylor’s coming-of-age film, the one in which the intense and determined young girl who had become a star at the age of 12 in National Velvet (1944) became an intensely lovely and just as determined young woman.
Nice! Mom named me after a girl of intense loveliness and determination. I could live with that!
But then I read on…
Based on an unsuccessful Broadway play, Cynthia is the story of a sickly, sheltered teen who rebels against her parents’ overprotectiveness, finds a boyfriend, goes to the prom, and gets her first kiss.
Really? First…they made a movie based on an unsuccessful Broadway play? NOT A GOOD IDEA.
And then…she was sickly and sheltered and her only great accomplishments were that she rebeled against her parents, finds a boyfriend, goes to the prom and gets her first kiss.
Whoop Whoop.
And…It was a flop. According to a critic for the New York Times, “Cynthia is a synthetic morsel — right out of the Metro candy box.”
Thanks mom.
But…more than 40 years later, British critic Alexander Walker re-evaluated, calling Cynthia one of Taylor’s “unjustly forgotten triumphs of tact, sympathy, pathos and insistent self-assertion; and the identification with Cynthia by the bobby-soxers who saw it must have been total. It is one of the most likeable movies of adolescent independence.”
AHA! “One of the most likeable movies of adolescent independence.” Now I understand why my mom loved the movie.
She also used to tell me that she named me after the Character/Movie because she thought Elizabeth Taylor was one of the most beautiful women EVER and she wanted her girl to have the name that embodied that beauty.
Woohoo!!! What a mom.
But she never called me Cynthia, even when she was mad at me. I was always Cindy.
(And just for the record, I haven’t been able to find any beautiful girls in the movies named Cindy)
The funny thing is…I don’t feel like people actually call me by my name…directly. I know they refer to me as Cindy (to others), and once in a great while…someone begins a sentence to me by starting out with “Cindy….” But it doesn’t happen all that often.
It actually feels strange when someone calls me Cindy (to my face). I feel like I jerk my head up and wonder who they’re actually talking to. It’s like an out of body experience somehow.
I know I’m Cindy. I sign my name easily as Cindy. I respond to it on those occasions when someone uses it. But I still don’t really relate to it.
It’s just kind of there. A label separate from me, but somehow, a part of me.
I wonder if others feel the same way about their name?
I wonder what Alexandra B thinks about her name?
There’s nothing wrong with my name.
Alexandra is beautiful and elegant and unique.
But I’m not called Alexandra (unless I’m in trouble; when Mom breaks out the full name, it’s bad news).
Until I was 14, my name was Alex. Growing up, I was the only girl named Alex that I knew. I was made fun of constantly because I had a “boy’s name”.
(Especially from boys named Alex. I think they felt threatened meeting a girl with the same name.)
(Knowing that didn’t make it any easier for me, though.)
On top of being a source of ridicule for me, the name “Alex” was also a pain in the ass. In elementary school, it was hard to do those poems where you write your name down the side of the page and then use the letters to write words to describe yourself.
Like A is for Awesome.
And L is for Likable.
And E is for Excellent.
And X is for… well, shit.
(My teacher once told me to just pick a word with “X” as the second letter, like “eXcited” or “eXtra special” or “eXtremely uncomfortable in social situations”. It totally ruined the poem’s flow.)
So when I got to high school, I changed it. I wanted high school to be different, and I didn’t think I could do it with Alex as my name.
So I asked everyone to call me Ally.
(Truthfully, I don’t really see myself as an “Ally” either, but I liked it better.)
Now that I’m “grown up”, I actually like Alex, especially for a girl. But I still don’t think that I can pull it off. I just don’t look like an Alex or Ally.
(I’ve actually had one girl say that I make a terrible Ally and should really be an Autumn or something. I didn’t really know what to say to that.)
Now my middle name? My middle name kicks ass.
My middle name is all mine.
It’s “B“.
It doesn’t stand for anything, so it’s “B” with no period after it. (And even though I told both my high school and college that a period after the B wasn’t correct, they insisted on putting it on my diplomas.)
It symbolically represents my maternal great-grandmother’s names (they were both named Bessie) (yes, both), but “Bessie” doesn’t really go with “Alexandra” (seriously, “Alexandra Bessie”?), so my parents just made it B.
Plus, with a super long first name like “Alexandra”, and an eight letter last name, a single letter middle name is pretty necessary.
(Do you have any idea how long it takes me to fill in the bubbles on those standardized testing sheets?)
I love it. I’m the only person I’ve met with a middle name that’s one letter (so if you have the same thing, please don’t tell me and burst my bubble).
I may not identify very much with my first name, but my middle name has become a huge part of my identity.
And with B as my middle name, I’m ABC (just like my daddy), and that? Makes up for any problems I’ve ever had with my first name.
Topic: What food best describes your family?
{ Topic submitted by A. Mann }
Cindy Thinks
Ally Thinks
Nuts. A Big Pile of Mixed Nuts.
Anyone who has had the absolute pleasure of meeting my family (and I’m talking my immediate as well as my ever growing extended family) would have to agree that they are all nuts.
But what family isn’t?
We’re not a big family. My grandparents had three girls and each of them only had two kids each. So we were manageable in size. But that just exemplified the nuttiness of each individual.
Way before I was born, my dad decided to take my mom away from the rest of her nutty family in the hopes (I believe) of gaining some sanity. They moved more than 2,000 miles from the closest nut, but it didn’t work.
The nuttiness seeped through.
But as a kid, I loved it. I loved the way we would all get together for family gatherings and everyone talked at the same time, yet were able to hear the juiciest details from the other conversations.
I loved the way the older generation would tell the same family stories over and over and over again as if they were telling them for the first time. And when the stories got too many to remember…they assigned numbers to them and would shout out “number 23!” or 48 or 51…and everyone would laugh hysterically.
I loved the way we would spend hours on end trying to decide which restaurant to go to…and always ended up at the exact same place each time we visited.
And, I loved the way each person had their own unique nutty quality about them that we would discuss openly and exploit whenever possible.
Now I feel like I’ve created my own little nutty family that’s grown into a hodge podge of family members and close friends, with its own little mixed up nutty combinations.
There’s our nuclear family, my extended (well documented) nutty family, Brian’s family -which added a whole new breed of nuts to the mix, Matthew’s wonderfully nutso family, and our combined friends who quite literally could keep mental health professionals busy for a lifetime.
But when you put them all together in one big pile…you get a richly diverse mix that feeds me every day of the week…and nourishes my soul. And I don’t know what I’d do without that.
Because it’s the week of Thanksgiving, I’m going to say my most favorite Thanksgiving food EVER.
Mashed sweet potatoes with melted mini marshmallows.
(It’s not just my favorite because it’s DELICIOUS, but also because it’s pretty much the only time it’s totally acceptable to put marshmallows on your veggies.)
How does this awesome concoction describe my family?
First of all: it’s a little odd. I mean MARSHMALLOWS? On POTATOES? It’s weird. It makes some people tilt their head to the side and raise their eyebrows and shake their heads…
(I just can’t be friends with these people.)
My family is the same way. We’re wonderfully – awesomely – weird. We freak people out. We make people drop their jaws. We get ourselves a whole lot of raised eyebrows.
(And not just when we explain the whole #divorcedkidneys extravaganza.)
And I love us for that, just like I love the sweet potatoes and marshmallows.
Secondly, the sweet potatoes and marshmallows make me happy. I mean, how could they NOT?? They taste yummy, they’re pretty, and I can convince myself that I’m being healthy because sweet potatoes are really, really good for you.
(Right?)
My family makes me happy. We laugh and smile and have a great time.
(They’re also really pretty.)
And we’re good for each other.
Really, really good for each other.
Finally, sweet potatoes and marshmallows are special. You don’t get to have them all the time.
(Well, I guess you could eat them more often, but you don’t get a free pass from judgment like you do on Thanksgiving.)
(Which is kind of sad… but also kind of good… you know, health wise.)
(ANYWAY.)
Even though I do get to be with my (immediate) family whenever I want, they’re still incredibly special.
We’re totally unique.
We’re not like any other family I know.
My family is full of really good people covered in sweet, gooey goodness.
(I mean that in the best possible way.)
And that? Is extraordinarily special.
Me.
I consider myself to be a feminist but I honestly don’t think about it very often.
It’s just a part of who I am.
When I was a teenager, the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was in full force. My mother was an adamant supporter of the ERA and attended public rallies and marches to push the cause forward (with me in tow), but the movement took another turn toward public policy, instead of a constitutional amendment.
Even so, the effect on our family was dramatic.
Until then, we had been a pretty traditional family. Dad went to work. Mom stayed home. The kids kept quiet.
And then my mom started listening to the Gloria Steinem’s and Jane Fonda’s of the movement, and soon after…we all became feminists. My dad, my mom, my brother and me.
It changed the way we thought about traditional roles and responsibilities.
We adopted new ways of thinking and new ways of acting toward each other. As a consequence, the stereotypical roles of women and men in a family, in business, in politics and in life in general, began to explode wide open.
And for the first time, I was told – OUT LOUD – that as a woman…I could do anything. Be anything. Want anything. And from that…my potential – my future – was blown wide open.
So to me, a feminist is someone who:
- Thinks a woman offers value to the world, as a woman.
- Doesn’t believe a woman must compete to BE a man…because BEING a woman is perfect as it is.
- Believes women are fully capable of doing anything they want to do, assuming they are willing to work at it to become proficient.
- Believes that compensation should be paid fairly for the quality of work done…regardless of sex.
- Strives to be tolerant of others and expects tolerance in return.
- Believes there is no such thing as inequality between the sexes…just lovely differences that offer value and fullness to both.
Being a feminist is a part of who I am. I don’t think about it. I don’t feel I have to fight for it. But I have spent my entire adult life trying to honor the gift of feminism that was given to me by my parents and by the times.
I don’t take it for granted. I guard it with my life. And I raised my children to be feminists so that they would be the type of people who tolerated others, believed in equality and realized that they could do anything, be anything and want anything, regardless of their sex.
So far, I think I’ve done a damn good job with that one!
I have my degree in Women and Gender Studies from the University of Colorado. I didn’t choose that as my major because of the crazy amount of career opportunities (obviously). I chose it as my major because I loved it. I loved studying people and society, and the things that we all do that we don’t even think about. I loved looking at the world through a different set of lenses. A pair that’s more attuned to the rights and wrongs that we all commit. A pair that sees things differently than most people.
That lens, most of the time, was Feminism.
Being a Women and Gender Studies major got me a lot of shit. I heard every joke and rude comment in the book.
“Oh really? I studied women in college too.”
“So is that, like, sewing and cooking and stuff?”
“Does that mean you’re a lesbo?”
I think that the term “Feminist” scares a lot of people. I met lots of people in college who hated that word, for a variety of reasons. Some hated it because, in their mind, it was too radical. Some hated it because it was too “hippie”. Others wouldn’t use it because, originally, Feminism (First Wave) was incredibly racist. And some held the idea that Feminism was something to hate, to look down on, to not take seriously.
I learned dozens of definitions of types of Feminism (most of which I forget because I loathed my Feminist Theory class… I am in no way claiming to be an expert). And I learned what “being a Feminist” means to me.
And there’s a big, huge point I’d like to make about Feminism.
I truly believe that it’s about more than just a definition that somebody else makes for you. It’s more than a one-size-fits-all label.
It’s what you make it.
Of course, I believe that there are certain things that Feminism must include. Most notably the belief that women and men are created equal.
(NOTE: I’m not saying women and men are the SAME. That’s an important distinction.)
The other thing that all definitions of Feminism must have, I believe, is the belief in a woman’s right to choose.
Now, I’m not JUST talking about abortion, here. I’m talking about Choice for everything.
Which brings me to my personal definition of Feminism.
I believe that women have the right to choose anything that they feel is right for them. As long as that choice doesn’t hurt others (and let me be clear that I do not include “fetus” in the definition of “others”), then I believe that women have that right. (I also believe that men have that right, but I feel like we rarely deny (straight) males their right to choose.)
If a woman wants to have babies and marry her high school sweetheart, that’s her choice.
If a woman chooses NOT to have kids, or to never get married, that’s her choice.
If a woman wants to join the army, become a teacher, a lawyer, or model, that’s her choice.
If a woman wants to dye her hair, pierce her nose, go barefoot, or never wear a bra, so be it.
And, what a woman does with or to her body, is HER CHOICE.
When it comes down it, THAT is feminism.
Treating women any less than men is inherently NOT Feminist. Believing that women should strive to be men is inherently NOT Feminist. Hurting women is inherently NOT Feminist. Judging women because they are women is inherently NOT Feminist. Being racist, homophobic, or classist is inherently NOT Feminist.
Of course, it’s much more complicated than that. We can debate whether or not a woman can actually choose to be in adult films, or get paid for sex. And we can debate whether or not a Feminist can be a conservative Christian or stay in an abusive relationship. There are even theories that one cannot be a Feminist and eat meat.
(Me and my salami sandwich tend to disagree with that one, but still…)
But I’m not here to debate.
At least not right now.
I grew up in a household that never overtly defined itself as “Feminist”, even though we all are. My personal definition of Feminism includes components and beliefs that I’ve been taught my entire life. Equality. Choice. The right of every single person to live in a safe environment.
I never had to question those things. They were the rules of my world. It wasn’t until I got to my later years of high school, and then college, that I realized that everyone isn’t raised with the same values. That there are (lots and lots) of people out there who are AGAINST all of those things. I think it really hit me when my family and I (plus Mike) went to D.C. for the March for Women’s Lives. Walking through the capitol, having very angry MEN yell that I was a horrible person, really made it clear to me that my family wasn’t the norm.
And I think that’s why I gravitated to Women and Gender Studies. Because I wanted to know why people fight so hard against those things that I think are basic fundamentals of humanity. Why people hate.
(In case you’re wondering, I never found those answers. I found clues, but the truth is, I don’t think I’ll ever figure it out.)
But I did learn why it’s important for me, and others, to stand up and believe in equality, choice, safety, and everything else that Feminism stands for. Because it’s important. It’s important for women AND men, little girls AND little boys. It’s important for everyone.