Questions of a Young Feminist

You think about it all the time. It’s a new topic for you, as you and your friends start thinking about the future and all the questions you have to answer. The conversations come up as you’re sitting on your friend’s floor, drinking wine and watching whatever rom-com is new on Netflix. You don’t know how it starts, or why, but you’re talking about how you all imagined your futures, your plans and your dreams and what you want out of life.

Stay-at-home mom or working mom? Well, your mom worked, and you like to think you turned out alright even though your mom wasn’t home to fix you a snack after school or drop you off at playdates. As you got older you started to admire your mom for the choices she made, and the time and memories she sacrificed. You’ve only just now started admitting to the twinges of hurt you couldn’t quite prevent whenever you saw your friends being picked up by their moms while you were shuffled along to your afterschool program. But those small hurts and wounds, you realize now, made you independent far earlier than some of your friends. You learned how to be self-reliant at an earlier age, and now when your mom talks about how guilty she felt for working full-time you try to stop her mid-sentence and thank her.

How many kids do you want? As everyone does, you think the way you were raised is the best. Two kids, you decide. After all, roller coaster rides usually have rows of two or four, so three kids would always leave someone out. Two is the perfect number. You’ve even figured out an answer to the boy/girl question. I want a daughter, but I want her to have an older brother, wanting your daughter to have what you never did but always wanted. Of course, you know how invaluable an older sister is, but also how quickly and easily the relationship between sisters can go wrong. But don’t worry, you have an answer to that too. My daughter needs an older girl cousin, you laugh, telling your sister that she better get on it.

Will you take your husband’s last name? You go quiet, your gut response silenced by questions you’ve only just learned to ask. What about my name, you ask yourself, what about my identity? It took going to college for you to realize that “feminist” is not a slur or a dirty word, that it’s okay to be outspoken and smart and loud about fighting for what you want. But, deep down, you think you love the idea of taking your husband’s last name. Does it make you a bad feminist for wanting to take your husband’s name? No. Stop. You have time to think about these questions, to think up an answer. You’re only just about to graduate college. You have your whole life ahead of you.

But then it happens. You meet a nice boy—or man, you should say—at an event for young alums. Your first date is rocky, your nerves causing you to cycle through over talkativeness and complete silence as you sit in the café near Fenway. Condensation starts dripping down the sides of your iced tea, mirroring the sweat you can feel dripping slowly down your back. Eventually, the conversation starts flowing when you tease him about being a Yankees fan living in Boston, and then it’s been three hours sitting in that small coffee shop. You regretfully get up, explaining that you have to meet your sister to go grocery shopping. And as he kisses you on the cheek as he says goodbye, you feel the butterflies promised to you by every romance novel you secretly devoured in high school. You tell your sister about your date, and how I could really like this guy but don’t want to get your hopes up. You’ve never really done this before, so you don’t know how this goes. But later that night he texts you, telling you how he had such a great time this morning, do you want to go out again next Friday?

And that Friday night date is remembered fondly after months have gone by. He meets your parents and thank god he understands my family’s brand of humor oh my god I’m so happy that’s over and done with. You take him to a Red Sox game, laughing as you force this proud New Yorker to wear a Sox hat. The picture taken by the drunken stranger is blurry and off-center, but you both look so happy that you frame it anyway. You fall asleep on his shoulder on the T ride back to your apartment, him riding the train five stops in the opposite direction just to walk you home. He goes to kiss you goodnight but is abruptly stopped by the collision of the bills of your baseball caps. You laugh as he rips the hated “B” hat off his head and dramatically dips you, kissing you right there on your doorstep as your downstairs neighbor’s dog barks. God, I love you he sighs as he pulls you up, and you go red because you realize that you haven’t said the words yet. Your mind is still scrambled when he turns away to walk back to the T stop, but as he gets down the sidewalk you run down your steps. I love you too, you yell, disturbing the quiet night, even though you are a Yankees fan!

A year later he proposes in the same coffee shop you had your first date. You call your sister and demand that she accepts your offer to be Maid of Honor, and you both squeal as you show off your ring. You don’t call your parents, wanting to tell them when you meet them for dinner later that night. Your mom starts crying and your dad clears his throat, a suspicious gleam in his eyes.

I thought you were going to say no, he jokes to your dad, when I went to ask for your permission.

His permission? You sit up straight and arch an eyebrow. What is this, the thirteenth century? Yet, even though outwardly you bristle, you’re confused by the warmth in your chest at the thought of him meeting one-on-one with your dad to ask his permission. You like it, you realize. You like the small traditions of a man paying for the first date and asking the father’s permission to propose, even though it reinforces the gender roles and inequality you profess to be against. The realization rattles you, that your identity as a feminist isn’t as clear cut as you thought it would be.

Well, he laughs, pulling you out of your head, I know how much you like those historical romance stories. You smile and can’t help the urge to grab his hand under the table, needing something to hold onto as you try to forget the questions swirling around your head.

That night you’re lying in bed with your boyfr—fiancé, you correct yourself—the lights off and the night quiet. He pulls you close and throws his arm around you, and you settle against him. He squeezes you tight; I can’t wait until you have my last name, he says. He starts snoring as you lay there, wide awake. You remember those nights in college on your friend’s floor, asking these questions you now have to answer. Do I take his last name? Since you’ve been young you’ve never considered that there was any other option, but then you grew up through the first female presidential candidate and the #MeToo movement, and the traditions you believed in as a child aren’t as unshakable now. You’re not quite as sure as you were.

You have, if not your first fight, definitely your worst one. I just need some time, you say to him, to decide if I want to change my name or not. His face falls but then contorts in sadness.

Are you saying you don’t want my name? To be a family?

No, you say, trying to avoid any further fight, it’s just that I don’t know if I can lose that part of my identity. You try to make him understand, that your name is the one thing that has always been yours and how much it has defined you, from your Irish heritage to your high school nickname to even your Instagram handle. It’s how you’ve defined yourself for your whole life, and you’re finding that you can’t part with it as easily as you’d imagined. I do want to take your name, I do, but there’s a part of me that can’t say yes so easily, you tell him, crying now. You try to find the words to explain that you’re trying to reconcile your own beliefs about feminism and equality with tradition and with the love you have for him.

Well, why don’t you take my name? you yell. Why does it always have to be the woman who changes herself? Don’t you know how hard it is to change your name? You’ve seen it before, in friends who’ve had to get whole new passports, licenses, official documentation, business cards. An eight-syllable hyphenated last name isn’t appealing either. You’re scared too, you realize. Your dad has only sisters and daughters and no cousins, so changing your name means that your name, your family’s name that has survived through famine and war and a trip across the ocean, ends with you.

His side of the bed is empty that night for the first time since he proposed. As you lie in your bed you realize that no matter what you choose, someone loses.

And then the screen in your mind goes dark, the story ends. Your future is a gaping black hole, a blank curtain where your imagination should be. You finish your wine, get up from your friend’s floor, and go to bed. As you lay there on the hard dorm mattress and your roommate snores softly, you can’t fall asleep. You still don’t have an answer.