{"id":68,"date":"2017-03-29T00:40:24","date_gmt":"2017-03-29T00:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/?p=68"},"modified":"2018-08-15T23:54:29","modified_gmt":"2018-08-15T23:54:29","slug":"whats-in-a-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/2017\/03\/29\/whats-in-a-name\/","title":{"rendered":"WHAT&#8217;S IN A NAME?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Julian Sun, &#8217;17,<\/strong> College of Arts and Science<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn-dev.vanderbilt.edu\/t2-my-dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2446\/2017\/03\/JulianSun.jpeg\" alt=\"Julian Sun\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/>One night last semester, I went to Kissam\u2019s Munchie Mart to get my routine\u00a0midnight\u00a0swipe: blue Powerade, a bag of chips (barbeque flavor), and the best red apple I could dig out of the remaining bruised ones. This was so automatic for me that I didn\u2019t notice there was a new employee behind the cash register. I absent-mindedly gave her my ID, already holding up the Powerade at the right angle to be scanned.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can\u2019t use this card,\u201d she said. I snapped to attention. Oh no. Did I run out of meals? \u201cWhy?\u201d I asked in a panic. I can\u2019t function without my usual\u00a0midnight\u00a0snack. \u201cThis isn\u2019t you,\u201d she said. \u201cYou aren\u2019t Julie.\u201d I relaxed. \u201cOh\u2026yeah, no, that\u2019s me.\u201d I took the card, held it next to my face, and matched the smile in the picture. \u201cI just got a haircut.\u201d The worker next to her, who has rung me up many a time, reassured her that yes, it was me.<\/p>\n<p>After resolving the misunderstanding, I walked happily back up to my room munching on my unhealthily timed snack. I love it when my appearance confuses people. I do it a lot, because even though I present really masculinely, I have a feminine body and voice so sometimes people can\u2019t decipher my gender as quickly as they are used to.<\/p>\n<p>I think about my ID again and chuckle. Julie in the picture was from about a year ago, when I still identified as female. She had long wavy hair (which she hated to take care of), tight-fitting clothes (which she liked looking at but didn\u2019t particularly enjoy wearing), and a huge collection of heels that she never wore (which probably accumulated from trying really hard to overcompensate for a lack of femininity).<\/p>\n<p>Julie was always just an idea\u2014a fa\u00e7ade designed to convince myself and everyone else that I was a girl, destined to do girl things. I\u2019m proud to say that I don\u2019t need Julie anymore. In her place is a stronger, truer me, who is more a boy than a girl, who actually likes my clothes, who is more confident, and who doesn\u2019t feel so out of place anymore.<\/p>\n<p>The cashier at Munchie was right. I\u2019m not Julie. I am\u00a0Julian, looking forward to becoming the best me that I can be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Julian Sun, &#8217;17, College of Arts and Science One night last semester, I went to Kissam\u2019s Munchie Mart to get my routine\u00a0midnight\u00a0swipe: blue Powerade, a bag of chips (barbeque flavor), and the best red apple I could dig out of the remaining bruised ones. This was so automatic for me that I didn\u2019t notice there&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,21],"tags":[16,14],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-personal-wellbeing","category-self-discovery","tag-college-of-arts-and-science","tag-vu2020"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions\/129"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.dev.vanderbilt.edu\/commons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}