Nov

Before you read this blog, please waste three minutes of your life reading this: http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/11/05/o.change.name.after.marriage/index.html

I am concerned that the author of this article is so incensed about 80% of women in America choosing to change their surname after marriage. Does she not have more important or interesting things to harp on about, in the realms of feminism? Haven’t we moved on to more important things, ladies? Perhaps the breaking of glass ceilings? Who would have thought that anyone gave a damn, in 2009, about wasting time worrying about what names we choose to give ourselves. Isn’t that what feminism is about; providing women with the equal opportunity to make choices?

Any one of those famous people she used as examples would be no less talented and no less who they are, had they changed their surnames, they just wouldn’t be a “brand” anymore. That’s right, these women are all brands and their names are marketing tools. Isn’t that counterproductive to the feminist cause? Do you not think there were multiple meetings with agents, public relations representatives, and management firms about each and every one of those marriages and how the name would need to stay the same so that the dollar value could be protected with the familiarity of the name? Those women no longer own their names and those names are not who they are – they are the labels for products or services or talents they provide.

My strongest connection to my former surname was my grandfather and he passed away in 2006. My own family is disjointed and scattered to the winds – so why continue to use a surname with which I no longer feel a bond? I am proud to be my husband’s wife and thus, changed my surname after marriage. I did not do that for my first marriage, because it was not a man or family to which I felt especially connected. Short of selecting a new surname for the both of us, one that was not connected to my former surname or to Muzquiz, I felt much more comfortable becoming a Muzquiz than keeping my former surname. I am not a brand. Changing my name does not erase my past, nor does it negate the talents I have or remove the things I have to offer the world. I am still ME. So, yes, it is about personal identity. I just happen to choose to identify as being proud to be Mrs. Muzquiz.

Faith Salie, before you go parading your idealistic and misguided blathering to the rest of the world about how we should live our lives exactly like you, perhaps you should take a closer look at WHY 80% of us do CHOOSE to take on our husband’s surname. We all have our individual reasons and have made a choice to take on a new name for ourselves.

Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title.