In the actual play podcast (if you’ve never heard the term, think improvised radio play) Chapter and Multiverse that my teen introduced me to, one of the characters, Mini Smithson (played by Lydia Nicholas) is an alien pretending to be human – but not succeeding very much (and it is hilarious).
Her insistence to always say something along the lines of “Hi, I’m Mini, just a perfectly ordinary human individual” is our first clue.
But then there are other little things that give her away, as she struggles to grasp the weird rules of navigating life that we, humans, have internalised. Things like why we tend to some flowers, but others consider weeds (Mini’s garden hosts dandelions lovingly planted in pots), why certain accessories are considered cool and others not, or what are the rules of gift giving, or, in Mini’s own words, “what is the right level of gift to provide at a birthday party without, you know, embarrassing the host or crashing the local economy. You make a statue of them out of tin foil – that’s embarrassing; but if you make a statue out of them out of solid gold, that is apparently a problem. It’s so confusing because they are so close to each other on the periodic table, how can it make such a difference?!”. (I relate Mini, I do – the unspoken rules of gift giving have always baffled me, too).
Increasingly, I’ve noticed that I struggle with how to introduce myself at various gatherings. How can I encapsulate my wholeness in what is essentially an elevator pitch? I could say I’m a photographer (award-winning, blah blah), an artist, an educator, an activist. That I work on this project or that I run this workshop. I could also say a mother, an unschooler, an auDHDer. I could say I’m Russian (but “not the stereotypical kind of Russian, you know”) and that I’m also British but I couldn’t care less about the Union Jack – or any other flag, for that matter. That I love Scotland most of all places in the world. That I love writing but sometimes words just don’t come.
I could say all that and a million other things that feel true or relevant in that moment – but mostly, I end up starting (and finishing) with “I’m a human”.
That resistance to describing myself solely by what I do or what I can offer has been building up for a while. It’s the resistance to branding myself for public consumption – especially so as I consider the inherent violence of the term, with its origin in a practice of claiming ownership over not just things, but also animals and people with a permanent mark. When I hear the term “personal branding”, I now envision stamping myself on the forearm with a hot branding iron.
Ultimately, I don’t think people are meant to be brands. We are not meant to make ourselves into commodities to win at capitalism.
(I have written much more about my thoughts on personal branding in this essay so I won’t repeat them here).
But also, in the time when powers that be do all they can to divide us into smaller and smaller groups, there’s a certain power in refusing categorisation and starting with: “I’m a HUMAN”. There’s a certain power in reminding that to ourselves – and others. In claiming our humanity above else. Because sometimes, I fear, we forget that.
