Fiction Friday: Empowerment

“Shhh! I want to hear this!” Mary threw a pillow at Jackson’s head. He continued making gargling noises until she sent him an extra venomous glare that promised maximum revenge. “You want me to sabotage your date tomorrow night?”

He yelped and surrendered, settling onto the lounge upside down with his feet draped over the back and his head pointed toward the floor. Mary rolled her eyes, turned the TV up and watched avidly.

“…after a fifteen hour labour Kathryn McFarlane gave birth to a healthy baby girl. No more details have been released.”

“Ugh!” Mary turned the TV off in disgust. “Don’t these people think about names? They have nine whole months to pick one!”

“Why do you care? She’s just a stupid actress. Will probably be some stupid name like ‘Moonfairy Pear Tree Raging Tiger’ or something.”

Mary searched for something else to throw, and settled on donking him on the head with the remote. “Shut up, Jackson. You just don’t get it.”

“Hey, Mary, guess what your precious actress called her daughter?”

“What?! You know!? How do you know?” Mary scrambled for the remote, switching on the TV.

“It’s called the internet, doofus. Check it out.”

Mary jumped over the back of the lounge peered eagerly at the monitor. “Kathryn McFarlane’s personal blog has announced her baby girl as Yoni Peace McFarlane.” She was silent for a moment. “Yoni. I’m sure I’ve heard that before.”

Jackson burst out laughing, and pulled up a Google search window. He typed in ‘yoni’ and pressed enter, a huge smirk on his face. Mary read the first entry and her jaw dropped in horror.

“She can’t! They can’t name her that! Oh my God! Do you think they know?”

“Well if they don’t know, they will soon. Remember when Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes called their kid Suri, and it came out that suri meant ‘thief’ in Japanese?”

“Yeah but, thief is one thing—“

“But naming your child after genitalia is something completely different, right?”

“Hang on, let me read more.” She squinted at the screen. “We want to acknowledge and celebrate the sacred feminine, and have chosen to give our daughter a name that symbolises female Power.” She stepped back. “Are they serious? What the fuck?”

“I guess they know what it means then.”

The housemates stared at the screen for a minute, one shocked and dismayed, the other biting his lip to keep from laughing. He poked Mary in the ribs.

“Still her biggest fan?”

Hypnotised by the screen, Mary shook her head. “That poor kid.”

—-

Prompt: It would seem that celebrities choose some interesting names for their offspring. Write a scene where a (fictional) famous person announces the name of their newest child along with justification or reasons why the name was chosen and their attempt to ‘normalise’ it.

Inspired by a friend who saw this on a nametag at her child’s school. This one was fun to write!!