Published in On Our Selection News June 12, 2014

It is always interesting to hear what words people use to describe you when they’ve forgotten your name.

As a child, your name never really counts to many of the adults you encounter, as demonstrated by the general “and family” label/slap in the face that features on Christmas cards from my parents’ friends. While families with only one sibling have to put up with being called their brother’s or sister’s name, children from a larger litter are often referred to by characteristics they vaguely embody. Their entire being is whittled down to one generalised observation that may or may not be correct. Just as Marcia was the pretty one, Jan was bland and Cindy was the cute one, the Maguire girls each had their labels. My oldest sister was “The Smart One” (proof that generalised observations are not always correct), my second oldest sister was “The Pretty One”, and my youngest sister was “The Cute One”. All of them have hair of gold, except Dannielle, who was blessed with brown. The colour of my hair, apparently was my defining characteristic because it made me stand out from the blonde brood I hung out with.

While it is satisfying hearing a younger cousin guess my name right first go after struggling with my sister’s name, the victory is soon soured by the stab to the ego that is the admission that she knew you because “you’ve got the brown hair” – wounds that are clearly still oozing with disdain and crusting over with the yellowing infection of disappointment after being inflicted just last weekend. All I have to offer this world is my brownness. While my three sisters’ attributes are very positive, mine is incredibly bland. Brown is the colour of cardboard boxes and dirt. If you were to ask 100 people what their favourite colour was, I guarantee you that no one will mention brown. While it’s not the best label, it is the most effective, with 99 per cent of distant relations being able to guess my name correctly compared to my fair-haired womb-mates.

“The Brown One” is a label that has stuck, despite my best efforts. Whether it was dying my hair red or competing in a gluestick eating race when my group of friends went through our Jackass stage (as a side note, I did manage to beat my opponent, but looking back I don’t think any of us were winners in the end…), I made numerous ill- informed attempts to shape my identity. I fear this desire may have very much informed my actions at a subconscious level, which actually really explains a lot about my personality. As such, I have always been a believer in the old saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover”, mostly because if the cover is just “brown”, that book isn’t going to be much of a ripping read. Thankfully, as you get older, I’ve noticed people get better at labelling you.

These days, our labels are a little more attuned to who we are. There’s the nurse (fine, I suppose she had to be somewhat intelligent to get through uni), who can be spotted eying-off people’s veins for cannulation practice; the greenie, who can seen hoarding paper waste from work to recycle in her bin at home; the book worm, who reads in front of the TV; and the cynical journo, who can be spotted sitting in a corner judging people, and making generalised observations about them…