Saturday, December 2, 2006

So...one of the people in my lab group at school asked me if I was going to change my last name after I got married.
The answer is yes, but the question itself got me to thinking about the whole "tradition" of the woman changing her name and why answering that question always makes me feel a little prickly.

I guess the way I feel about it is that it's a tradition with unpleasant historical connotations, but that I can acknowledge that without having to make some politically correct statement by hyphenating or keeping my own name.

Almost every symbol surrounding marriage stems from America's paternalistic, and sometimes chauvinistic roots, anyway...

1. Mrs. vs. Miss. vs. Ms. whereas guys just have the anonymous Mr.
2. The fact that (at least in the South) only women wear an engagement ring.

All of these things (in addition to the name-changing thing) require a woman to announce her relationship status as a part of her identity. Under this system, women always have at least one more symbol than men informing the world of her relationship status than men.
The implication being that a woman's identity depends far more on whether she has a significant other or not than a man's.

I think nowadays most of these things have either turned into unthinking tradition, or obsolete, i.e. the whole Mrs./Miss thing.
But it's interesting to think about.

The wierd thing is, someone mentioned that in Asian cultures, last names don't change after marriage at all. And from my experience, gender relations are much more static in Asian cultures than American.

What do you think about all this?

4 comments:

Rachel said...

I think it's kind of nice to change your name when you get married, even though it is still a symbol of a paternalistic kind of society. The thing about miss, ms., mrs., mr. is strange...it seems kind of unfair...I'd like to know who the available men are just as much as they'd like to know the marriage status of women by their titles.
It will be strange getting used to signing your new name. Or perhaps you've been practicing since back when silly girls like us wrote our first names with the last names of our objects of affection on binders and notes to our friends...

Elissa said...

We have an anonymous prefix too: ms. It's what I always list myself as, and that's why it came about, b/c women wanted the same thing akin to "mr", but we never got rid of the whole miss/mrs thing. I had always hoped to trade up my name for something beautiful and elegant, but now I'm just going to be a ball...man....yeah, that's a great name for a women.

Anonymous said...

You have broached a topic in a blog post, that entire graduate study courses cover. I do not feel qualified as a single male to broach the subject in depth. However, I will say that I have reached the age where I will compulsively check the left hand of every woman I run across, just for good measure. So I for one am happy about the ring as an institution (As Im sure alot of women are as well) and feel that it is a nice little signal that politely informs me : "move along, dont ask her out".

I will say however, that I do not trust women with Hyphens in their last name. If you are going to get married and go through the ritual in the first place, why not go the whole way?

Monica said...

this is so funny though i dont think you meant it to be. anyway, if you're not sure if you want to change your name or not, i've taken the liberty of making a list of pros and cons of becoming a yarbrough in title.

PROS:
- people will finally pronounce your last name right without any americanization.
- you can claim scottish-ness and bitch about how the scots are being mistreated in addition to bitching about how asians are being mistreated. (i actually dont know if there's much to complaining about in either group since im not up to date in our bitching rights.)
- you get to have a family tartan.
- people cannot immediately assume that youre asian. (maybe negative but i dont know.)

CONS:
- when you write your name on a test paper and your teachers file them alphabetically, you have to wait till the end of the alphabet to get it back.
- when teachers want to be fair and start at the end of the alphabet with the presentations, you have to go first.
- you have more letters in your name so you will waste a lot of time on tests just filling out the "NAME" blank.
- people will not know that we are related.


i hope this helps with your problem... if you can call it that