Christina feels forgettable. She has evidence of this. Sometimes someone will smile at her and sincerely say, “It was so nice to meet you.” She will grimace and put on her best grin to beam back, “Yeah, this was a great first impression.” Inside, she knows full well that she met this individual a month prior at a networking event. Clearly made a huge splash.
She is all too familiar with people trying to covertly figure out her name. The same old tricks to rescue that forgetful one from an awkward interaction,“How do you spell your name?” or “Sorry I keep calling you that, you really look like an Ashley.” Even Christina Aguilera had the sense to change it to Xtina during her Dirrrty phase.
Social Scientist John Pengrove weighs in: “We’re seeing an uptick in the more basic names being easier to forget. The more basic the name, the more quickly it goes in one ear and out the other. We call it Basic Baby Syndrome. Ironically, because they have basic names, they seek out many basic experiences to prove how ‘original’ they are, hence the candle sales, anecdotes about backpacking through Europe and comments like, ‘I am really craving a salad right now!”’
Christina has tried various ways to be memorable- all of which have backfired. She tried to go by Tina for a while, but it didn’t stick. She got tired of correcting people after a few weeks. In her teens, she tried dying a blue streak in her hair to rebrand herself. After two washes, her blue streak had transformed into a faded green albatros framing her face awkwardly. After her cousin Nikki fixed it, she moved onto the drawn-on mole phase, but she kept forgetting where the mole went and someone called her out. Turns out, moles are stationary.
The more she didn’t want to be basic, the more basic she became! She started juicing and suddenly her personality became the Peloton bike. She joined a multilevel marketing scheme and got stuck with a boatload of leggings, so she became the “broke, fun leggings girl.”
This Green Hair-Fake Mole-Juice-aholic- Peloton Personality- Legging Pyramid Scheme Girl was tired. She was tired of fighting her basic instinct. Basic isn’t so bad.
These days, she leans in to her basic ways. You can catch Ashley- [ I mean Christina! Whoops! She really does look like an Ashley right?] – living her very best life. #mood
