How I Feel About: The Term "Bougie"

I get called bougie sometimes, or stuck up, or whatever. My little sister was telling me when I was home for Christmas that "I think that just because I go to Princeton, I think I'm better than everybody else." I tried to explain that no, because I go to Princeton, I'm realizing that things I never thought were possible are within reach, and I want other people to have the same epiphany, but I'm getting off topic...

I get called bougie. It used to bother me, but this semester I had a professor (Imani Perry) tell me that no matter how much we (Black Princeton students from humble backgrounds) try to distance ourselves from the Black elite, just by virtue of being here and eventually being in the places being here will bring us, we have become the Black elite. And that kind of rocked my entire worldview.

But even if I don't let professors (even really cool ones I want to be like when I grow up) dictate my life, I have observed that people usually throw around the term bougie (and its synonyms) when they want to address the fact that you're not living like they're living, not in the same mindset or coming from the same place. So that's all I take it to mean, because it's usually true (even if only with regard to the specific context you're dealing with at that moment), and I let whatever insult they were trying to throw at me roll right off.


(In response to this post from Clutch Magazine)

How I Feel About: Taking Your Husband's Last Name

I've decided that I often leave comments on various other sites on topics I don't really address on my blog, and that's the opposite of cute, so I'm going to start reposting my comments here! They'll be identifiable with the "How I Feel About" tag.

So I used to be entirely, firmly, totally, and completely against it. I thought it was an archaic patriarchal ritual (much like weddings themselves) and that I would slap my husband if he dared feel some kinda way about me keeping my own damn last name.

And as a righteous Princeton student, I accordingly flipped a shit when Professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell adopted Harris-Perry after her marriage. But when this somehow came up in a class, another professor of mine said that Melissa’s counterargument was simple: it’s not like she chose her original last name. It was just the name of another man, her father, and so anyone who tried to argue that taking her husband’s last name implied some form of ownership must have believed she first “belonged” to her father.

I wasn’t about to support that, and thus was thoroughly and completely shut up.

I think my plan for if and when I get married is to keep my name professionally, because it will hopefully be a brand by then, and to take my husband’s name personally IF AND ONLY IF I like the way it sounds after my first name.