One of my favorite mom duties is making costumes for my kids. When they were younger, I made it a month long event, spreading materials out over every work surface in the house, using any free moment to glue on another plastic leaf. When my oldest was too young to decide on his own costume, I made him into a dinosaur by altering a brown sweatsuit. I added a stuffed tail and spikes that ran up his back onto the hood. As he toddled along, lollipop in hand, the tail swished back and forth adorably. This Halloween, I only got to make a Minecraft sword, which was fun, but doesn’t have the same payoff as a head to toe transformation. My youngest chose a simple costume, a YouTube gamer, my daughter purchased her costume online so she and her bestie would match, and my oldest has been over it for years. They like Halloween well enough, they walk the neighborhood and collect candy, but as soon as they come home, the costumes come off. They prefer being who they are.

I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable as myself, no matter what role I’m playing. I’m even uncomfortable with the sound of my own name. My mother told me I was given the name of the yellow lab she would have preferred, but she had me instead. I don’t like saying my own name out loud, especially if I am talking about myself. I get the feeling of wanting to turn inside out with embarrassment. I’m working on it. I thought about changing it for a while, not drastically, it was even a little shorter. (Really you were making out on the deal.) But the thought of annoying people with an awkward explanation, and annoying myself with having to craft them, kept me from going through with it. I’m aiming to love my name, instead.

Most of the time, I feel nameless. I don’t introduce myself to others and I spend a lot of my time alone. I don’t think of my self by name. If anything I think of myself as Lady that takes care of the dog, because that’s how she sees me, and we spend a lot of our time together. It’s fun to think of myself as a royal Lady assigned to care for the regal mutt. Being a Lady of the Mutt is something to be proud of. I do a good job, I think. The vet goes on about how shiny her coat is.

I wonder what it’s like to be covered in fur? I guess I have some idea. Do you think if we stopped shaving our legs, we could affect climate change? Since I have been living on my own I have been shaving much less frequently and, now I know it’s anecdotal, but I feel warmer. Is it possible that collectively we could lower the amount of energy we use to heat our indoor spaces in the winter if we let the nature of our bodies do some of the work? I shaved yesterday as an effort to care for myself, and my lower legs are markedly cooler today. Factor in the cost of materials; the shaving cream and the razor, the extra water usage, and the labor I use to complete the task, and I think I might be on to something. If billions of hairy leg owners just let them be, could we cool the planet by .0000001% of a degree and potentially offset some of the damage being done by those crypto farms? Why did we start shaving in the first place? Does anyone know? I’m sure someone does. Some historian probably knows about a king who traveled to a warm country where people had less leg hair naturally, and when he came back home, he demanded his wife and mistresses try it. He probably told them they’d be cleaner. Soon it became fashionable for the ladies of the kingdom, and then the peasants started doing it so they could feel like royalty. It caught on like wildfire. That’s my guess anyway. Nowadays, I sit alone in my apartment disgusted by the hair that grows from my skin, trying to rationalize a reason to skip shaving by telling myself it’d be better for the planet. Letting myself get hairy is not an option. It’s unladylike, and I have a reputation to uphold.

Of course, it is an option, isn’t it? I choose to shave to feel feminine and I wonder what that says about me? Does it say anything? I prefer to feel feminine by my own definition, and I am perpetually discovering what that is, while I experience life as I live it, like shifting sands. If I can’t pin down my feminism for me, how can I have any hope of capturing it for you? I can tell you I am who I am whether or not I shave. I’m that self I don’t name, but I would be mortified if anyone caught a glimpse of my hairy ankle. Isn’t everyone that way? Do you think that’s what the men wearing face masks are thinking? He hides his identity because if we clearly see him break the ribs of our elderly neighbor as he “questions” her immigration status, we might think differently of him. He doesn’t want to be defined by his work. I can understand that.

It’s important I use my name and define my feminism, because I need to be able to talk about myself. I need to get comfortable using my name, so that I can exist in the story of my life. A lot of meeting new people is telling them about yourself, describing your interests and beliefs, and if you are someone who likes to keep concepts amoebic, letting someone get to know you is difficult. There isn’t a whole lot to talk about. So I try to make small declarations, I am a woman who likes her legs smooth, but could be easily convinced to let them grow hairy if it’d help move the mercury. Is that a weird thing to identify with?

We need to name things to tell stories about ourselves so we can know who we are. We name all our shared places; theaters, schools, and community centers so we know where we belong. We name restaurants and coffee shops, so we know where to gather. We name airports, and train stations so we know where we are going. I’m a fan of aspirational, or descriptive names, rather than a personal dedication, but I understand it’s sometimes unavoidable, we can’t always expect creativity. Telling someone I attend my Community College says something different about me than if I say I attend Stanford. It gives away a data point. If I don’t provide you with the numbered dots, you can’t connect them to see my picture. I can preserve my anonymity. It feels safer to be anonymous, but it feels lonelier, too.

This last paragraph is supposed to be the one where I tell you I’m am thinking about things differently now, and I’m ready to say who I am, and join the community, but I am feeling far from that. I have things about myself that I hope to change, some of them feel hopeless. I make a practice of believing, and I stay focused on the long term. I hope that when I die someone defines me as a force for good in the world. I hope I do something good. Every day I work to reconcile my life with that goal, and try to trust that that is the way to do it. I don’t know that it is, but it’s my best guess. So, there you go—a mini declaration. I would feel devastated if my life’s highest aspiration was to build a big room, fill it with gold, and then stamp my name on it, but I’ve never been much into material goods. What’s left for you once you attain it?