Of all the things I've got rid of - how important is my name?

I should warn you today's post has nothing to do with clothes, but don't worry - Friday's post will be back to normal.

Over the last few months I've been living with a lot less stuff as a result of the challenge. I've sold some items of clothing that I've loved and felt a real attachment to. This has led to loads of discussions about clothes and feminism with my friends. And it led to one really meaningful question - what was the most important thing I've ever lost?

And I have to say it's my name.

I have a real relationship with what people call me. I believe strongly in people claiming their own names and yet I took my husband's when I married. What does that mean for my sense of identity?

I was born Elizabeth Ruth Charlotte Pearce, the youngest of 5 girls. My mum strongly wanted us to be called by our given names: Karen, Vanessa, Nichola, Julya and Elizabeth - no shortenings no nicknames. And so I was Elizabeth, not Lizzy, Libby, Liz, Beth nor Betty all throughout my childhood.

But by the time I left school I was known as Ed Pearson.

Ed came from a love of the film My Fair Lady, and a close affinity with Eliza Dolittle. As a teenager I went to a school with a wide social intake, loads of the people in my classes came from private schools, and being around these people was a real eye opener. The girls allowances allowed them to buy clothes (lots of them); and the school trips were skiing, watersports and cruises and people actually went! It was madness. My parents had to scrimp and save to afford my bus fare to this hour away grammar school and then in my classroom were people whose lives were completely different from mine. And who thought their lives were normal.

As an adult I've spoken to a number of people whose families were in a similar situation to mine and we've all talked about how weird and alienating it felt to spend time with teenagers who weren't aware of how much the food in the cupboards cost, these people weren't super rich - no one had a boat, or a spare cottage in France but they were largely from families who would describe themselves as 'comfortable'. When they came round after school I'd watch them eat more than the allocated 2 biscuits from the tin and know the impact this would have for the rest of the month on my mums painstakingly budgeted larder. So I felt different - and like most teenagers I didn't want to. So I tried to 'pass', I used the money from my paper round to buy market rip offs of the Topshop clothes my friends wore, and I learned to adjust my accent to the people I was talking with.

I still do it now (unconsciously) my voice gets posher around posh friends and deeply northern when I'm in Sheffield. So Eliza Dolittle became my nickname and that became Ed, and now that's what everyone calls me. I could have dumped the nickname at any point. But I haven't, I took it with me to Sheffield and to China and to every job I've ever had. It doesn't speak to me of the insecure 13 year old who mimicked the clothing and accents of the people she wanted as friends. It speaks to me of the ambitious and socially confident person I've become, the person that is friends with both some frightfully posh people who went to excellent schools, and with loads of people whose families were more like mine. It speaks of the person who is now happy to admit that Die Hard is her favourite Christmas film, and that she'd rather play air hockey than go to the theatre. Someone who is actually really comfortable with herself. I'm not at all ashamed of where I've come from- I am happy that it doesn't define me, any more than it does any of my friends.

So the name Ed is mine in a way that Elizabeth is not. While I love the people I love calling me by my childhood name, Ed is the name that I recognise as who I am now.

So what about my surname?

When I was about 7 my mum met the man I've considered my father ever since. He and my Mum were both single parents, they were introduced by two of their older children, and began to spend time together because their youngest children (Me and Zoe) were the same age. Zoe was 6 months older than me and in many ways much more confident and social than I was, but we became friends quickly and one night in the back of Daddy's space cruiser hatched a plan to become sisters. 

Simply I would call her Dad "Daddy", and she'd call my Mum "Mummy" until they pulled their fingers out and got together. And somehow magically it worked, this summer they renewed their vows after over 25 years of marriage.

I'm incredibly grateful to have Dave in my life - I talk all the time with friends about the impact our relationships with our fathers have on our choices of life partner. I have a wonderful husband, and every man I've dated, slept with or had an unrequited crush on has been essentially decent and treated me well. Some of my very best friends are men, and I haven't got that suspicious attitude to them I see some women possess and largely that's because I expect them to be decent, and like me, and value my sense of humour because the man who raised me did all that, and it's what I'm used to.

So I'd informally taken Daddy's surname by the time I started secondary school, refusing to answer to Pearce when the register was called, and writing Pearson on the top of every paper I ever handed in. I was devastated when my teacher told me regardless of my wishes that my GCSE certificates would have the name Pearce on them. It felt like a death knell - would I really have to carry this name around - that I didn't want or feel any affinity to - for the rest of my life?

So I went home and cried and yelled, and told Mum I was sick of having a different name on my passport than the rest of my family, and basically had a big old paddy. And when I calmed down we had a proper conversation about how when I was 18 I could change my name to anything I liked. But I didn't want to wait, so despite the fact that my biological father had the right to make a case against me changing my name, we went to court. And in a surprisingly quick (and disappointingly undramatic) session, the court agreed I could change my name to Pearson at the age of 15, in plenty of time for my GCSE's and A-levels to have the name I chose on them.  

So the name Pearson meant (and means) a huge deal to me. So why did I 'take' my husband’s name when we married?

Traditionally that change of name is about ownership right? Like crossing someone else's name out of your biology textbook before writing your own in. And that - when you think about it is pretty grim. So why am I a mouthy outspoken feminist now using the name Archer?

I want to be clear now that this is not an article saying that people should or should not take one another's names when they marry. Personally I'm happy with the arrangement we have now - where every woman (and man) takes that decision for themselves, for whatever reason feels meaningful to them. This is just about why I did.

I got married at 24, and by that age had already proactively changed my whole name, what I was called felt relevant to choices I had made, and like it was in my gift. I'd chosen a father, a city, friends who made me happy, and now I was choosing a man who I really loved. 

A man to whom I wasn't promising any of the traditional weddingy things to, he wasn't going to get worshipped or obeyed. I wasn't intending to ask his permission or approval for any life choices I made. In fact the wedding was no more and no less than my stated intention to continue to be his best friend for the rest of our lives, and actually even that came with a caveat - because I believe the option of getting a divorce is a wonderful thing for women, and I am a strong advocate of unhappy marriages ending. I believe we live once and have a responsibility to be happy.

So I didn't 'take' Matt's name, I gave away my own as a gift. As a show of faith that actually I was happy to share a name, and tie my future and my career to this man, that I did believe this was a lifelong choice. As a demonstration that I was prepared to compromise, and to respect the traditions his family valued out of love for them and for him.

Do I regret it? No.

Archer is another choice I made. A choice to have the same name on my passport as my closest family (which he now is), and for me the right choice for this stage in my life.

Do I miss Pearson? Yes sometimes - but giving away something you don't value isn't much of a gift now is it?

Today's post is a bit different - but hopefully it's made you think about what you are prepared to go without for the people you love. Which means it is probably a good time to remind you that parents of disabled children go without new clothes to make sure their children's needs are met, they also go without heating. The counting the costs report is here and here is where you can donate.

Why flimsy falling apart clothes ARE a feminist issue

Those of you that have been following my challenge so far will know that I'm starting to fret about the impact that general wear and tear could have on my ability to manage the full year whilst looking (passably) respectable.

I really don't want to have to go to work in t-shirts with holes in them or anything that has gone limp as a result of too many washes. So I've been asking myself: why do my clothes last so much less time than Matt's?

Seriously.

I work from home or in the office, and he works on a building site. He has 1 pair of jeans, one suit ,some site trousers and a handful of tops. I have (or had) a gazillion items of clothing. So Matt was wearing his clothes more often than me, asked more of them in terms of toughness, and they still lasted longer than mine.

How can this be?

I did a bit of a poll of my friends and it turns out this isn't unique to Matt & I. My friends with a reasonable amount of clothes say their clothes wear out faster than their partners and those who (like me) normally have overflowing wardrobes also say that those clothes they wear regularly tend to fall to bits, and actually lots of women talked about having bought clothes that barely survived one wash. The only exceptions I can find to the falling apart clothes trend amongst my friendship group are the ladies that tend to wear unisex clothing and those that wear vintage.

But none of my male friends said the same about their clothes. In fact several proudly crowed about still wearing t-shirts they bought when they were in their teens and early twenties.

So do women get sold clothes that are worse quality than men's and if so why?

Well (as usual) I think I have a theory. 

My male friends buy less clothes (as a rule) than my female friends. And they expect them to last - so they buy on the basis of quality and manafacturures respond to that. Matt still whinges about a pair of jeans he bought 7 years ago that only lasted one year, and I'm confident he will never buy that brand again. 

One of the reasons men buy less clothes is because mens fashions change much more slowly and subtly than womens. There is no appreciable difference between 'this years shirt' and 'last years' shirt - so why not keep wearing last years?

But women's fashions leap around year to year, with cuts, colours and fabrics coming in and out of trend season apon season. And women buy new clothes in order to keep up, creating a lot more churn in our wardobes. From a manufacturers point of veiw if we're only going to wear an item for one season why invest money in a manufacturing it to last any longer?

The interesting bit of this for me is this- who is it that actually wants us to change our style 2 or 3 times a year? It's not to our benefit as women to have to worry about how to pull off cullotes or Bardot tops for goodness sakes. But it does benefit businesses - manufacturers, retailers, and all of the other industries that blossom around selling us more and different things. And it benefits them because it allows them to make money.

I don't think businesses like womens money more than men's either - I think they'd have boys wearing purple pvc in spring and and felted onesies in autumn if they thought they could make money out of it. But they can't, because men have always been judged by who they are and what they do and so they don't rest their self esteem on fitting in with the way 'everyone' looks this season.

It's different for us as women. It's only a couple of generations back that a good wife was seen and not heard, with the emphasis on seen. The way to tell if a man had good taste, or a good income was to look to his wife, was she pretty, obedient, was she wearing the latest style? Men are (like it or not) still judged by society on the appropriateness of the women on their arms.

And we as women, are emerging blinking into a society that is just beginning to recognise that our value is greater than the compliments that our husbands recieve about us. We're still objectified, our intellect is of far less interest to the media than our boyfriends, babies, diets and shoes. Our mothers have taught us what it is to be appropriate, to dress appropriately and respectably, as their mothers taught them, and their mother's mothers before that.

And so we buy into wearing what everyone is wearing - because fitting in is only polite. And if what everyone is wearing changes season apon season then naturally so is what we wear. And so as a result we get sold crap as men get sold quality.

What to do? Here are the three things that we women could do to change this.

1. Work out what we feel good wearing, and then only buy that. Screw what everyone else is wearing.
2. Complain in writing (& on social media) when our clothes fall apart, and then don't shop in those stores again.
3. Promote the labels that do last, by telling people about them, investing in them again next time and letting them know they've done well.

The only way we get clothes that last is by demonstrating with our shopping habits that that is what is valuable to us and profitable to stores.

Because fashion itself isn't sexist - our culture is. And culture is people and we as people can shape it. So let's.

What do you think?