One day last year, I grabbed the mail from the mailbox and started leafing through the junk when one letter stopped me in my tracks.
It was from the music department alumni association of my college alma mater asking me to make a donation.
There was one problem.
It was addressed to “Mrs. Ryan Lowe.”
In case you didn’t catch my name in the byline, it’s Goldie. Not Mrs. Ryan. I have never gone by Mrs. Ryan, nor will I ever go by Mrs. Ryan. I have my own name and my own identity that has nothing to do with my husband.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my husband and am immensely proud of him. He’s one of the kindest, smartest, funniest and most caring, genuine and even-tempered people I’ve ever met. He’s a perfect partner for me and is such a great parent to our son that I want to scream with envy at how easy he makes it look. I picked a winner, folks.
But as wonderful as he is, I do not exist to be his accessory or his plus one. I’m not the Robin to his Batman. And he didn’t marry me to fill that role for him. We are both Batman at our house. Our son is also Batman. (Am I taking this Batman metaphor too far?)
What made the letter worse was that I wasn’t married when I attended college. I didn’t even meet my husband until I was 27, five full years after I graduated. So they went through the effort to update my married name, simply to erase my identity.
Well, I did as any reasonable person would do and immediately got on Facebook to complain about it. I started receiving messages from other women sharing that their own alma maters had done the same thing to them. One woman shared how the university she obtained her doctorate degree from sent mail to Mrs. (Husband’s Name).
“They could have at least called me Dr. (Husband’s Name)!” she joked.
Another woman shared how her own employer had addressed her mail to Mrs. (Husband’s Name).
Obviously, addressing mail to women this way has mostly fallen out of fashion, but boy, it really sticks in my craw every time I see it. It isn’t easier, it doesn’t save time or space, and at this point it seems like it would almost have to be done purposely to offend the receiver.
I’ve always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with my name. I was named after a great-grandmother I never met by a parent that I’m not close to. I don’t have a meaningful connection with the name.
My name, which is very often misheard or misremembered as Colby, Rosie, Gloria, Heidi or Daisy, has brought about many questions from interested parties, the most common of which is “Are you named after Goldie Hawn?”
If I had a dollar for every time I’d been asked that question, I could take myself on a very nice vacation.
But at the end of the day, it’s my name, and I already have been a good sport and given up half my name for marriage. I don’t need to give up the other half. I have had a very full and rich life with my name. I’ve done so many things of which I am enormously proud.
I graduated at the top of my class. I received a full academic scholarship to a university where I graduated magna cum laude. During college, I was the leader of my section in marching band (go baritones!). With the band, I even got to perform in the Edinburgh Military Tattoo in Scotland in front of 10,000 people every night for a month straight. Mrs. Ryan Lowe was not there. Goldie was.
After college, I saved money waiting tables to take myself backpacking alone through Europe twice for a total of six months. Do you know how scary it can be traveling alone as a 22-year-old woman for months at a time? I taught myself enough French to be able to survive in France for three months while couch surfing with strangers and working for free lodging and food. Mrs. Ryan didn’t scrub floors and pull weeds to earn a baguette for supper and a cold scratchy twin bed for the night. Goldie did.
I hiked through the Pyrenees. I helped restore a medieval castle. I watched the sun rise on the steps of the Sacré-Cœur in Paris. I ate gelato at the Trevi Fountain in Rome. I looked up in awe at the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. I drank beer and ate pretzels while listening to a Bavarian oompah band in Munich. I walked the entirety of Inisheer, an island off the coast of Ireland. Never once did I catch sight of Mrs. Ryan during that time.
I moved to San Diego on a whim and bicycled to the ocean every day. I’ve slept on the beach and got to see wild dolphins up close during a weeklong sailboat trip. I hiked across Catalina Island. Was Mrs. Ryan there? If she was, I didn’t see her.
I have run two half-marathons and completed a Tough Mudder. I have gone skiing in the mountains, kayaking in the Hudson River, helmet diving in Mexico, took a ghost tour in New Orleans, swam in Lake Michigan, and went whitewater rafting and zip lining in the Appalachians. I’ve jumped out of an airplane. I’ve flown in a hot air balloon. Me, Goldie, not Mrs. Ryan. I don’t even know who this Mrs. Ryan is.
Nobody wants to be addressed by somebody else’s name. The last time I had the desire to be called “Mrs. (Husband’s name)” was in 1999 when I was 12 and signing all the notes I passed to my friends in class with “Mrs. Freddie Prinze Jr.”
Addressing women by their husband’s name has become less and less common during my lifetime, but it’s time to put the final nail in the coffin and end the practice altogether.
I contacted the alumni association and pointed out that if they were going to come to me hat in hand to ask me for donations, they ought to at least call me by the correct name. And guess who my next donation request was sent to? Goldie Lowe. See, was that so hard? Why wasn’t that the default to begin with?
Ladies, I know most of us hate to feel like we’re making a mountain out of a molehill, but I encourage you to take the time to make a stink about it if and when it happens to you. Your identity matters.
Your accomplishments matter. You aren’t a sidekick.
You are BATMAN!