The thing about Those White People Baby Names is the way they so poetically express the tension between individuality and rigid conformity. These parents all want to name their child something unique, because they value the concept of uniqueness, yet simultaneously they abhor it in practice… ergo, 30 different spelling variations on the most normative possible names. This homogeneity-masquerading-as-diversity is inseparable from capitalist consumer culture and in fact is directly analogous to the experience of walking into a grocery store and being asked to “choose” between 50 varieties of toothpaste with the same exact ingredients, 12 brands of laundry detergent, etc.
Somebody’s third eye is WIDE the fuck open??!!!!!!!
okay so there’s actually a reason behind this that isn’t just “white people are terrible and really really boring!” it’s to do with Mormon culture. specifically: the fireworks you get when sexist expectations and terrible petty drama collide.
most of Those White People Baby Names are originally Mormon baby names. they’re chosen (or invented) by women in Utah; they tend to filter out to the rest of the world through things like “mommy blogs” and “baby name books” and “parent forums.”
you know how every culture has a “hey, welcome to the world, lil baby!” ritual? the mormon version of that is called a baby blessing. the baby’s father, and a handful of other men in the family, go up in front of the congregation during a Sunday service and say a special prayer. it begins by reciting the baby’s full name and then saying “I give you a name and a blessing.” It’s not something you can avoid doing- if you try, people will think that you’re trying to hide something. baby blessings are mandatory, and everyone in the congregation will watch and judge you.
because of this, your baby’s name gets a good bit more of a spotlight in Mormon culture than it does in secular culture, and that’s saying something.
Mormon women start picking out names for their hypothetical future kids in fourth or fifth grade and snipe at each other for picking “weird” or “bad” ones. it’s something that’s supposed to be in the back of your head long before you have a kid. and because people will judge you if you pick a name that’s “too boring” or “too weird”, it is already an intricate dance of finding something that’s “interesting” enough to pass muster but not so “interesting” your kid won’t survive kindergarten.
and that dance becomes even more intricate when Baby Name Drama gets involved.
see, because you’re supposed to put so much time into your baby’s name, a lot of women get… overinvested, let us say. the perfect name they picked for their baby is THEIR baby’s name and NO ONE ELSE’S. if you so much as dare to BREATHE that you’re naming your baby/pet/favourite laptop the same thing, you have STOLEN their BABY’S NAME.
so here’s the thing… say you really wanted to name your daughter Amy. You love the name, it’s classic, it’s cute, it’s perfect for your little girl-to-be… and then your sister-in-law gets pregnant and LOUDLY ANNOUNCES that she’s naming her baby Amy! and you know for a fact that she’s the type of person to throw a massive petty shitfit over you STEALING her BABY’S NAME. your family will take sides. her family will take sides.
if you want to avoid the drama, and you’re dead-set on naming your daughter-to-be Amy… well, then you name your daughter Aimee, or Aimi, or Aimy. It’s not the same name, it’s pronounced the same but it’s not the exact same name, so you can shut up, sis-in-law.
from what I understand a lot of the Crazy Name Spellings came from this root- “it’s not Kaylee, it’s Kayleigh, I swear I didn’t steal your idea”- and then once it became a trend, people named their kids that to be ~trendy~ just like they did with every other stupid trend.
but the root cause of Terrible Trendy Misspelt Baby Names has very little to do with white people being boring and conformist, and certainly nothing to do with capitalism. it’s a good old fashioned case of a) sexist expectations warping women’s behaviour into really really stupid shapes and b) Petty Small Community Drama.
I think it is worth noting here as well that Mormon culture is hyper conformist. Like you think the rest of western capitalist culture is stiflingly conformist? You have seen nothing. There is a reason people frequently call Mormonism a cult, and having been raised Mormon myself I think it is an accurate assessment.
I mean to give you some idea, the male mormon ‘uniform’ for sunday worship is white button up shirt, two piece suit, conservative haircut, and a tie. Your allowed points of personal expression are the knot you chose to tie your tie in and the color of said tie. If you are in a casual mood, you might wear slacks - people will look down on you for doing so. And wearing a not white button up shirt? Say you are in a blue shirt mood? You might legitimately get pulled aside by your Bishop (think congregation leader, all congregations are led by a bishop) and told that doing so is bad behavior. I know this because it happened to my brother when he wore a light pink shirt one time. And our bishop was a relatively relaxed guy with that sort of thing.
It is bad enough that Mormon congregations have to be reminded on a regular basis not to look down on visitors and treat them poorly if they show up in clothes that don’t match the allowed conformist uniforms because they either don’t know or don’t understand the seriousness of the conformist rules in Mormon culture.
And more than this these social rules matter a lot in a society like that. So you break the two piece suit rule? A good portion of the most influential people in your life will think poorly of you and it will effect your life going forward.
With so few allowed outlets for personal expression they are warped to be of much greater importance than they would be in any sane society. This level of conformity fucks with your mind. It warps how you see the world and other people.
There is a whole culture of expression based on tie color and tie knots among mormon missionaries because that is basically the only thing they actually get to chose about their own appearance. I had a friend who used a quadruple windsor knot and it was like his signature thing. Other people could use a quadruple windsor, but Elder Bird, he was the quadruple windsor guy.
I was notable among missionaries because the way I tied my tie caused a small but consistent wrinkle just below the knot, which was notable enough that I got many complements on it and was asked how I achieved the effect multiple times. I was just being lazy and tying the easiest knot I knew, but in mormon missionary culture tie appearance is so significant that it became known as my unique style. I was also notable because I managed to get special permission to wear my hair neatly trimmed to a half inch long, which is extremely rare and generally not allowed among mormon missionaries. I was the only missionary out of over 200 in that specific missionary group that had special hair permission, and it was widely understood that this was sort of a reward for my generally exemplary missionary behavior.
Think about how fucking insane that is. I had to get special permission to wear a highly conservative hair style because it wasn’t conformist enough. I still have regular nightmares about how oppressive and stifling mormon culture is. Christ I am glad I got out.
Anyway, the point of all this is that naming your child is one of the biggest points of personal expression a mormon will ever have. This is why “stealing” the name is such a big deal - it is devaluing an important choice of self expression. This will cause big divides in your family. It is going to be a problem, and a problem that will last for years if not the rest of your lives.
So it isn’t white people capitalist conformity. It is religious cult like hyper conformity that gave rise to the trend of stupid name spellings.
his transmasc swag
im not even just saying shit
I’m sorry milord, but the peasants are nailing erotic artwork of you and your court jester to the church doors again
No joke you guys NEED to get more comfortable blocking people. No more insulting people in public over different blorbo opinions no more making 2k long posts on how whatever ship you don't like shouldn't exist we've grown past that shit. Consistent posts about shit that make you uncomfortable? Block. Rancid blorbo opinions? Block. Is mildly annoying in your replies? Block. Pisses you off for reasons so petty you could never admit it publicly? Block. YOUR mental health will improve from not being upset 24/7, THEIR mental health will not be at risk of you lashing out because you happened to catch their posts on a bad day, and EVERYONE ELSE will benefit from not seeing the most embarrassing arguments known to man on their dash. "Oooh but they didn't deserve it-" dude you're presumably running a personal blog as a hobby not a public service. Who fucking cares.
me messaging a casual acquaintance: hello, how are you?
me messaging a best friend w/zero lead-in:
(guy who was raised in a slumber party talking to his coworkers for the first time) does anyone want to tell secrets
what most people don’t understand is that ooh girl shock me like an electric eel baby girl turn me on with your electric feel
summer thunderstorms are one of the most romantic things in the world, actually
everyone check out my new ya fantasy novel called a court of blood, bone, ash, roses, thorns, fire, ice, stone, ravens, enemies to lovers, fake dating, two number 9s, a number 5 large, and an extra large fries
Listen to me. Listen to me. Listen to me. Listen to me.
I know there is a lot of discourse (tm) around this right now but listen to me
sometimes you do just have to lie to children.
If, when my toddler is, you know, toddling around saying “mama? Big ball?”
If I were lean down and say “unfortunately the big beach ball for some reason fills you with such an unadulterated rage that is beyond human comprehension that you scream until you pass out, so mama had to remove the beach ball from the premises until you can better regulate your emotions” she would simply stare at me like I had 3 heads full of equal betrayal.
So, for now, instead “big ball went night night!”
Please understand when I say “removed the ball from the premises” I mean I popped it in a fit of exhausted confusion. I murdered the beach ball.
See I’ve lied to you all too and it was better this way.
you can’t just leave this in the tags etc.
You can’t be funnier then me on my own posts, I’m in tears from laughter
I just remembered one time in like sixth or seventh grade (we had the same teachers and class both years so hard to remember which) somehow we got into a debate of “who is better, boys or girls?” and instead of stepping in to stop it our teacher formalized it and egged us on by providing thoughtful prompts and counters to each side and by the end each group had built a barricade of desks on either side of the classroom and we were throwing balls of paper at each other and screaming about personal hygiene while our teacher just watched and enjoyed a Baby Ruth candy bar.
This was the same teacher that got the cops called on our school like three times and would reward us for being good by spraying our hands with rubbing alcohol and setting them on fire.
He was the best teacher I ever had.
STUFF MR ROBINSON DID THAT WAS VERY GOOD:
One time Mr. Robinson closed the door to the classroom furtively and asked a student near the door to keep an eye on the door’s window in case anyone from the administration was coming.
He explained the next curriculum was one he had been explicitly disallowed from, but he didn’t know how we were going to cover the next portion of our history work fairly without covering it first. He said if any of us were offended by it or felt it threatened our beliefs to be discussing it, please talk to him and he would gladly find alternative work for us to do instead. But he asked if we would be okay not broadcasting too loudly to the administration (our parents were fine) about it.
At this point we’re on the edge of our seat. Forbidden curriculum? YES PLEASE.
“All right, do I have a promise from you you won’t tell on me to the principal?”
We, of course, promised.
“Good. Then let’s talk about World Religions.”
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(A side note here, if you ever have a not-forbidden courseload you want your students to really enthusiastically consume, I think pretending it’d forbidden will up interest levels immensely. The work was informative and we loved it, but the Secret Agent-ness of doing a SECRET ASSIGNMENTS and having SECRET PROJECTS and LOOKOUTS FOR THE FUZZ upped our investment in the material beyond description. Even if you DON’T have secret coursework, PLEASE DO THIS WITH YOUR CLASS SOMETIME. IT’S FUN.)
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At the start of the Great Gender Debate when someone would try to say boys and girls aren’t different and they can do whatever the other does, he’d super respectively ask them if they really thought that, or if they were saying it because they thought that’s what they were supposed to say, and encouraged us being honest about how we actually felt about the difference between between boys and girls and who was better.
Then lots of super fun shouting and throwing paper at each other and making desk barricades and more yelling.
(Keep in mind, this was 1999/2000. A lot of people didn’t even have internet at home. This was a small conservative town. Being trans or nonbinary wouldn’t have even been an option we knew about.)
Then he eventually stepped back into the fray of the Great Gender Debate and made us break down our points, which he had been taking notes of, on the white board and then had us carefully and intentionally refute or discuss them one at a time. Until we had reached a real and honest consensus that actually we’d been tricked into thinking gender was anything at all. Now when we said we thought neither was better than the other and being a boy or girl didn’t mean anything about what you could or couldn’t do, we fucking meant it.
One of our male classmates started wearing nail polish the next week and we told him it looked rad.
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One time it was a nice day out and even though we weren’t doing trig at that point he was like, “Wanna learn something cool? I’m gonna show you how to calculate how tall something is using shadows” and then we went outside and learned how to find out how tall things are by measuring their shadows and measuring the shadows of stuff we knew the length of, and then for fun we also independently worked out the world was round and how big it was.
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One of the times the cops were called on us it was because we were having a Hot Air Balloon making contest and people thought there were UFOs or spy planes.
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Another time we were just setting off dry ice bombs, lol.
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They changed the milk at lunch and we hated it and Mr. Robinson may have given us ideas about civil disobedience and direct action that led to the lunch room sit-in the schoolchildren ended up staging until they would switch the milk back. At the time it felt like he was being really cool, and he was, but thinking on it he may have also been using us as props to prank the administration and also give himself an afternoon off while all the administration tried to get a hundred 11-12 year olds to leave the damn cafeteria while we chanted about milk.
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We grew up in a town that was about 2% black. It was not uncommon for people living there to not know any black people at all.
One day Mr. Robinson told us we were going to be having a very important speaker come talk to us, and that he expected us to treat her with respect and deference. That she was one of the most important people we could be learning from, and we were honored to have her come to us. We all sat up, wondering who this important woman could be.
And he opened the door and it was one of the ladies who worked the front office, accepting our tardy slips and making us wait for the school nurse. A black woman, one of the only black people you’d find in the school.
She then sat down with us and talked to us about the racial history of our town. Explained to us what a Sundown Town was. Explained to us the racism she experienced growing up there. Explained the mistreatment of the police.
She wasn’t even that old. It struck us all. But you’re not even old. Is this still happening? Why didn’t you leave? Did anyone help you?
It was an incredibly powerful day.
When I went home to talk to my parents about it, they had no idea about any of it, even though this was the same town they had grown up in.
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Mr. Robinson would occasionally repeat this habit of special guests were not academics, just people who had lived in our town for a while, bringing in a lunch lady or a janitor, making us talk to them, learn our town’s history, learn to respect their jobs, learn manners and deference for the working class.
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One time he gave us bread, water, and ziploc bags and set us loose on the school to rub the bread on stuff, drip water on it, seal it, and watch what mold grew. The kid that got the grimiest piece of bread with the most enthusiastic mold would win.
We learned that many of the surfaces we consider the most dirty get the most regular cleaning, and so are in fact the least likely to produce mold. While many of the surfaces we eat off of and touch regularly are nasty as hell.
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Similar to the Great Gender Debate, one time he let class go wildly off course while we debated hotly for over an hour about The Lion King. I do not, for the life of me, remember the substance of this debate. I think The Little Mermaid may also have been a point of conversation? I just remember it got HEATED, and Mr. Robinson always thought these heated debates were REALLY ENTERTAINING and would quietly sit back and egg them on.
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One time he gave me detention and I cried through the whole thing thinking my parents were gonna kill me when I got home and instead when I got home my mom hugged me and told me how he’d called her and said I’d been really honest and showed moral fiber in standing up for a friend and taking the detention in the first place and she was really proud of me for being a good person or whatever and idk if he actually was impressed with my actions or if he saw that I was stressed about my parent’s reactions and wanted to mitigate that, but that was such a good move.
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IDK. I just have a hard time thinking of any teacher I ever had both as capable of chaotic dry amusement and completely upright righteous anger. He modeled for us what it was like to evaluate things based on merit rather than based on rules and expectations, and you felt that energy constantly.
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Plus like getting to set your hand on fire for good behavior is a way better reward than whatever dumb stickers or candies or whatever it is teachers usually use. “Behave and we will play with fire” is the BEST incentive.
I really love the convention here of referring to people as ‘tumblr user [username]’, it has the same energy as ‘citizen’ or ‘comrade’ but with the additional top-heavy gravity of 4 entire syllables
I literally spit water all over my screen.
Is it lost? Is it trapped? Is it home? Is it innocent? Is it hunting you? Can you feel it watching you? Is it the house?
None pizza with left leaf
- An unusual quiet descends on the house.