Quickies
Skepchick Quickies 10.18
- Men who insist you change your name make terrible husbands – Lindy West once again hits it out of the park.
- Marvel was happy to answer diversity questions at NYCC. DC was not – From Eric.
- Skull of Homo erectus throws story of human evolution into disarray – The headline is an exaggeration but the skull is amazing. From Criticaldragon1177.
- Proud dad of two geek girls talks superheroes, Disney princesses, and Barbie – From Daniela.
- Cute Animal Friday! This baby Indian rhino looks like he’s wearing a tiny suit of leather armor (from Ray). From nowoo, this ultimate dogshaming video is hilariously cute.
Wish I got this one to you yesterday, many people are trying to figure out if this worked as an effective campaign:
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/touch/story.html?id=9048602
In 1983 I first came across the work of cartoonist William Messner-Loebs, whose surname is a mash up of his birth name and his wife’s (Nadine).
One of the incredibly frustrating things about DC (and there are many, currently) is that they are horrible at PR. Their co-publishers (Dan DiDio particularly) excel at bad PR, and as seen in the article above, so does their marketing director! At least they don’t seem to have openly mocked their fans this time around. The way to deflect diversity questions isn’t to dismiss them but to point out the diversity that already exists, promote examples of things to come – you know, what the Marvel panel actually did.
Knitty: love the Edmonton Journal link!
And how adorable are those superhero girls?
My wife and I kept our respective last names — she felt very strongly about it and it certainly didn’t bother me — but we decided that if we do ever have kids (which is unlikely, but it’s good to have a plan) we would want everyone to have the same last name. Now, rather than erase either of our last names, we’d want to combine them. Some names hyphenate elegantly, but ours really don’t, partly because my last name sounds like an adverb. Instead, we decided that we would blend our names together, Frankenstein-style, taking the first five letters of her name and my whole four-letter name to make a brand new one. Again, not all names lend themselves to this, but in our case we end up with something that sounds like it should belong to an old-school European count. If we do ever do it, there will be a serious conversation about putting a “von” in front of it.
In other news, the tiny Squirrel Girl is KILLING me.
That’s what Kelly Smith (from Science, Sort of…) and Zach Weiner (of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal) did, they even have a podcast named The Weekly Weinersmith after their new portmanteau of a last name.
I know a family that did that, actually. Well, they had two very short last names that they just mushed together into a last name, no hyphen, no letters out even. It worked pretty well. Another family I know, the parents both kept their last names when they married, and they gave their children a completely different last name (The wife’s mother’s maiden name, I think.) … I admit, having three last names in the family makes it kinda hard to refer to them collectively, but it works all right.
I have friends that did that, keeping their original surnames for professional use but legally changing it when they had kids so they’d all have the same smooshed name. Apparently now they slightly regret it because it’s turned out to be more of a hassle than it was worth, but it’s still pretty cute.
Thanks Zylla. People still are trying to figureout if it was a good campaign or not. It certainly made a lot of people angry and has made people more aware of the significant problem.
The dad is awesome!!! Love dads like that. I keep comparing my dad to Malala’s dad. Very supportive and encouraging me to be and express myself.
Also I always wanted to change my name to my granny’s last name if I decided to have children as it is no longer used anywhere in the world.
Baby rhinos are sooooo cute!
It’s interesting how much baggage goes with changing or not changing your last name. I didn’t change mine, and my husband never asked me too. However, my good friend decided she really wanted to change her name to her husband’s, even though he didn’t care if she did or not. Now he has the problem of other people thinking he made her change her name. Being the progressive, feminist type of guy he is, other men would say things to him like “well, I’m glad you finally stood up for yourself and stopped being whipped.”. Ugh.
She had the right to do what she wanted regarding her name. but why do others feel the need to constantly judge the decisions you make in your family.
My ex wanted to change her name when we got married, it made absolutely no difference to me. She seemed to think it made a difference to her father.
East and west culture:
Chinese (the culture) women do not take the husbands name, but all the children from that marriage do take the fathers family name. Although the family can still be known as “Mr and Mrs Wong” for example.