12.30.2008

a not-so-holiday message

We bought these awesome cards from apak to use for our holiday cards this year and then got so busy that we barely sent any of them out.  so, i guess i'm ruining the surprise for next year, but by then you will have forgotten, right?



... and while i'm on the subject, I want to ask about something.  To date we have received four holiday cards from people our own age addressed to "Mr. and Mrs. Husband's Name" and it totally caught me off guard.
Is this some kind of post-modern-Linda Hirshman-backlash-feminism? Is it a Midwest-proper thing? 
I don't go by Mrs., so the use of "Mrs. Husbands Name" seems so dated and parochial.  
Am I wrong?  Am I missing something?  
This coincided with PKM booking a ticket for me to come to her engagement party in NY with my former last name.   And it all reminded me of how the whole name-changing business is both so abstract and yet so real...  It seems merely philosophical until you go to get a new social security card; a process that seemed eerily simple, given what I felt was the gravity of the situation. 
Your name is your identity, but yet you are still you when it changes... and then someone wipes the former you out of it all together with one address label.  It makes my head feel all foggy.  

To each her own, definitely, and I mean no offense to those who prefer it the old-school way. As the Hirshman-haters have pointed out (and I'm no lover, per se), we have at least earned the right to choose.
But for the record, my first name still exists.  

3 comments:

Mary said...

Sorry! I'm still in my proper etiquette, wedding invitation-addressing mode. If I didn't do it correctly, my mom would no doubt swoop down in the middle of the night and put a copy of Emily Post under my pillow. Didn't mean to offend:)

gigirose said...

no, no. no offense taken, it just sends my head spinning when i look down and see that and think "when did i become this person?" i still feel nervous when i buy wine.

EndyFam said...

I am SO with you on this feeling of weirdness...both sets of parents still address mail to Mr. & Mrs. Alex Endy...I made it pretty clear in the beginning that I am NOT Mrs. Alex Endy, but some people just don't listen! What's a married woman to do?!