Becoming Jules
Sunday morning gym class. I walked proudly through the doors in my active wear, no make up, hair all over the place. ‘Morning Jules’ came the ring across the gym. ‘Morning Martin’ I said confidently, tossing my dirty, lumpy hair and ready to sweat.
For the last few months I’ve been living a double life. It happened innocently enough. Committed to go the gym regularly, I became a ‘face’ at regular gym classes and Martin – a friendly and very committed gym instructor seemed overly proud of himself as he one day exclaimed ‘you’ve got this Jules’. I meant to correct him, but at the time I was languishing under two 12kg kettle bells and didn’t see the point in niceties. So I let it go.
For the next few weeks our slippery namesakes kept happening, but at each time I was perched in some unflattering position, red faced, sweating like a Mediterranean man and usually grunting some exorbitant weight in the air.
On the day I vowed to correct his faux pas I entered the class to a ring of ‘Morning Jules’, ‘Nice to see you Jules’ and I realised the gossiping grapevine had spread beyond Martin to his tribe of well-meaning gym women, ready to take me beyond class initiation and accept me into their mortgage wielding, teenage wrangling tribe.
So I became Jules.
At first, I felt deceptive and awkward and realised I must seem like one of those pixie types who vagues out often enough to not respond to her own name. I sheepishly joined conversations about work gripes, local council and new fitness classes. I answered questions around ‘Do you live far Jules?’ ‘How many children do you have Jules?’ and even went so far as to say ‘Oh – You don’t have to call me Julie, Jules is just fine’.
But after a few weeks I found myself sliding into my new persona. I’d walk into the gym and suddenly find the gate in my step slightly change, and I’d become Jules – gym warrior and mystery woman. There was a certain freedom in being able to morph Jules into whomever I wanted her to be and I felt – for that 45 minutes in class – as if I was free of any multitude of connections my identity has been connected to as ‘Trudi’. True – I didn’t feel like me – but there was a certain escapism and freedom that came with being someone who didn’t truly exist.
““What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Says Juliette, but is she right?”
It got me thinking about ‘name’ as identity. What did a name mean to us? What did it do to our identity? And is there science behind what happens to us if we change it? I know people who use one name for work, and one for pleasure and depending on how you know this person will be what you call them. Is that confusing?
Apparently our choice of name can influence our profession, where we live, who we marry and even the quality of our work.
And it seems we all NEED a name to prevent psychological distress. It ties us to our identity, and not knowing ones identity can have a lasting effect on our psychological well being. There’s even a name for the field of study; anthroponymy.
And changing your name does have an effect on the way your behave. The way we are in the world, the way the world is for us, right down to the inertia of whether our name has harsh sounding syllables or soft ones (k and T, or R and S).
My bubble burst several weeks later when he offered to email me a gym routine and I had to ‘fess up’ with a personal email. He looked sheepish and I felt guilty – but the world kept turning, the gym classes kept happening and I returned to my ordinary existance.
And oddly, I recommend trying an alter-ego for a while. I found the experience weirdly free-ing, and I’ll always, always think of Jules as my inner-warrior goddess…. Even if it’s now Trudi sweating under all the kettle bells.
