well, yes and no.
admittedly, i have never fully embraced the name of lynn. the average person might suspect that this ambivalence stems from its complicated gendering properties, ones that certainly have caused all sorts of confusion and complication for your protagonist. after all, what self-respecting male would allow his treasured claims towards masculinity to be undermined by such a feminine name? well, maybe it is my keen lack of self respect talking, but actually this is the only thing about the name lynn that i find even at all tolerable. the gender(ed) confusion that it leaves in its wake allows me some comfort as i struggle with all its other flaws. (hey, look at me! i'm a boy with a girl's name! i wonder what kind of krazy hijinks i can get into, as i play into peoples misconceptions and frolic in the ruins of never-ending cases of mistaken identities! wheeeee!)
no. the problem with lynn is not that it's a girl's name. the problem is the kind of girls name that it is, that is the kind of girls named lynn. and what kinds of girls are named lynn? (please note all women named lynn who might possibly read this: my grand theory of lynn may not agree with your own experiences, and is in no way meant to offend you and your delicate lynn sensibilities. this caveat is not transferable to those named lynne; i have no use for them.)
the beginning of what promises to be a list that will go on for far too long:
1) they have brown hair. while there may be nothing inherently wrong with brown hair, i think it is safe to say that it is always horrible and the crusher of many otherwise strong and worthy souls. why else would we as a culture produce a word such as "brunette" if not to distinguish hair that is pleasant but brown-like in appearance from hair that is simply brown and thus icky and tragic. further investigation tells us that there is no such hair color as "yellow," as blond is thought to do the trick in all cases, requiring no such distinction. red needs no special name, since red as a color is not something most people have a knee-jerk reaction of revulsion towards. while i am sure there are some blond or red/headed lynns walking the earth, deep down in their hearts, their hair is brown. here are a few lynns, showing off their brown tresses (note also that of these (2 mug shots and 2 missing person picture) that all of them have lynn as their middle name. this is another, yet to be explored, problem with the name. stay tuned...)
tracy lynn cross
jessica lynn burns
stacy lynn carson (she at least tried to go blond, but the roots betray her lynnness -- this effort, however, likely explains why she is merely missing and not in trouble with the law like the average lynn)
jamie lynn drake -- she's only missing, and not a "criminal" -- way to rise above your station in life, even if that risk taking was rewarded with abduction! [[update: someone moved the picture -- maybe the found her. anyway, imagine her as every other lynn out there. you already "know" what she looks like...]]
a fate perhaps even worse than brown hair is that all too often these lynns have been known to put their hair "under control" through the most medieval of all hair/care/products: the velvet scrunchy (also spelled "scrunchie")
(while it should remain out of your hair at all times, "velvet scrunchy" remains a very reasonable choice for the stage name for an up-and-coming exotic dancer...)
well, what color is my hair? clever you are, as you try and catch me in a contradiction, exposing my own hypocrisy and thus disposing all my claimed insight into the dustbin where you think it belongs. not so fast: you have clearly forgotten entirely how comfortable i am with the fact that i, like walt whitman before me, contain the multitudes, and thus am only emboldened by my contradictory thinking. (full quote, for the scholars out there: "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.") yes, i admit it: my hair is, by most definitions, brown, and while i am loathe to admit more, it is even a brown that is rather far down the brown scale of tolerability. but i have fought against this natural state, through the combined use of hair dye and hair clippers/razors; fighting back the infestation of brown hair, alternating between spinning it into black gold or simply razing the embarrassment into a desert of hairlessness. no hair is always better than brown hair.
this is merely one more thing separating me from other lynns. they accept their lynnness, sometimes even embracing it. i, while recognizing that i could not be who i am without passing through the stage of lynn, know that this is not my final resting place and that i can only win this battle through continuous struggle not through submission. better to die on your feet as a linus than live on your knees as a lynn.
speaking of submission, that's it for this one. i can't wait for next time, and i'm sure you, my loyal and loving audience, feel the same...
