My Night with Alabama

Is Alabamans the name for people from Alabama? I’d imagine so. Let me know if I’m wrong. 

I’d gone with J last Saturday night to a bar in the Flatiron so he could see one of his good friends from his first job in DC for the first time in years and somehow I ended up hanging out at a table that was more than half full of Alabamans. That’s a sentence I never thought I’d say! 

His friend’s fiancee is from Alabama (she was super sweet!) and she met up with four friends from high school/college who were vacationing in the city or lived here. Two of them were not yet 30 and vacationing in the big city for their 5 year wedding anniversary. A different way of life, indeed. 

Politics never came up, and probably for the best. But Fucking A, I have never in my life felt so pressured to be engaged and/or married. When we were asked how long we’d been together and we said our 1-year anniversary was the prior week, the couple celebrating their 5-year anniversary looked at each other and said, “oh, we were engaged after a year!” And then they started discussing engagement rings and how I have to take him shopping for one so he doesn’t get me a bad ring. I smiled and nodded and then changed the topic because I’m in no rush to get married. I don’t see it as a necessary step in a relationship or in life. 

They were super nice people and I had fun, despite my being incredibly exhausted. But man, am I glad I don’t live in Alabama and that I wasn’t married right out of college. Talk about boring. Where’s the room for life experiences if you’re already playing house when you’re 22? 

One thing is for sure: they’ll be fun to drink with at the wedding! 

Different strokes, man….

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Do We Judge Married Women Who Keep Their Last Names?

This video was super interesting, and really surprising, to be quite honest. I hadn’t expected that we’d progressed enough as a society to have as equally high opinions of women who choose not to take their husband’s last names. It turns out the opinions of women who keep their own last name are higher. They’re regarded as more independent, they are assumed to make more money and be more intelligent. 

Of course this isn’t always the case, as a couple of my girlfriends have taken their husband’s last names and they’re not stupid by any means. Though it’s oftentimes to replace their own hard-to-spell last names so they’re more than happy to get rid of it. Perhaps they’re just more traditional, which is neither good nor bad.

I do believe the custom is highly outdated though, dating back to when women were considered property of their husbands being the reason they took their husband’s last name. They pretty much had no choice.

I think that since women, and people in general, are getting married later and later in life, it makes sense that fewer women are changing their last names. Marrying later in life means you probably already have your career established and probably have made a name for yourself in said-field. If you’re going to be perceived as smarter and more independent, you’re probably not going to want to change that perception, especially by male colleagues if you give up your last name easily (as sexist and shitty-sounding as that is, it’s still true).

I never planned on changing my last name if I ever married someone. I’m not traditional and I don’t ever want to be “Mr. and Mrs. (Insert Husband’s Name).” Just because we signed a piece of paper doesn’t mean I don’t get my name on mail anymore. 

That’s also a lot of paperwork and that sounds like a huge pain in the ass. When I sent this to my dude and he said, “Oh wow, that’s interesting. But I wouldn’t expect you to take my last name anyways.” Phew. Glad we got that out of the way. I’m glad it wasn’t a deal breaker for him (just to be clear, we have seriously discussed getting married exactly zero times). 

I told him I expected him to take my last name anyways 😉

Do We Judge Married Women Who Keep Their Last Names?