He could have been six-two, movie-star gorgeous, brilliant of brain and side-splittingly funny; he could have adored me, but I still couldn’t have walked down the aisle with a Kevin (passionate Man United fan), a Darren (climbing his way up the estate-agency ladder), or a Wayne (dreams of breeding pit-bulls). Because after years suffering the stigma of being Sharon, no way was I going to compound the misery by hooking up with what society might perceive to be my ideal mate.
For a few years in the late Sixties, all was well. In the working-class north of England, Sharon was a cool name, more unusual than the Susans (chunky thighs and NHS glasses), Eileens (quiet, reliable, bit dumpy), and Lindas (more time behind the bike sheds than in the classroom) who littered the playground like discarded free-milk bottles. But the Seventies saw a blossoming of Sharons: in TV shows, lampooned in our newspapers. And these Sharons were rather common (to use the parlance of the day), not terribly bright, given to public displays of flesh, possibly a bit loose about the morals. They were the vacuous, uninterested shop-girls, the cheaply dressed bar-maids, the council-estate-dwelling single mothers. The name Sharon became synonymous with a) background, b) character and c) lifestyle. To this day it conjures up images of Pauline Quirke slouching around Chigwell in a shell-suit.
I learned the hard way that people are quick to judge; will jump at the chance of a cheap ego boost at another’s expense. For a shy and rather sensitive girl it became agonising. I was introduced at social gatherings and saw instant judgment forming. Had there been a socially acceptable way of refusing to give my Christian name, I’d have found it. Guess, I could have said. Oh, you think I look like a Camilla? (Horsey type, dirty sense of humour.) How kind. Call me Camilla.(Let’s be honest,though, I’d have sounded like a hooker.)
“I don’t want to talk to any old Sharon,” a disgruntled caller once told my secretary, as though I were a species, not an individual.
In an accountancy evening class an Irishman called Roger (lives with his mum, thinks she doesn’t know about his porn collection) asked my name. “And do you dance round handbags in your white stilettos with your mates Tracey and Wendy,” he replied upon learning it. WTF! This was an educated man who considered himself intelligent. He wouldn’t have dreamed of being openly racist, blatantly sexist, or making a disparaging remark about a disabled person, but I – on the basis of a choice made years ago by OTHERS – was entirely fair game for his snap judgment and instant derision.
I’ve learned to modify my behaviour so as not to be the Sharon that others expect, at the same time dreaming of the fun-loving extrovert I might have become had I been called India (frightfully posh, rather deliciously bohemian) or Felicity (captain of Trinity College Ladies’ coxed eight). They can misbehave and be considered great gals, but if I get drunk and fall over at a party, well, isn’t it just what you’d expect? In my cash-strapped twenties, I shopped at Austin Reed because Sharons went to River Island. I steered away from bright colours, flouncy fabrics and anything tight, over-compensating for my acquired inferiority complex with sensible, sober suits. Amandas (plays tennis, mixes a stonking Moscow Mule) could wear white, high heels. Sharons had to stick to elegant black courts.
What’s in a name, well-meaning folkwould say. Everything! I wanted to yell back at them. Our names are an integral part of the faces we show to the world. If we’re judged first on outward appearances, we’re assessed next on our names. Change it then, they’d urge, but without considering how difficult it would be to do so.Or how pretentious I’d seem were I suddenly to announcethat I was to be known as Octavia? (Posh names always end in “a”, have you noticed that?)
Nobody, I’ve learned, can resist a Sharon and Tracey quip, and I’ve yet to hear a funny one. I’ve met charming, intelligent, amusing women called Tracey and avoided them like suppurating sores because I will not be a part of a real-life Sharon and Tracey.
I’ve never once corrected someone who got my name wrong. Want to call me Sarah? (It’s usually Sarah.) By all means. So flattered you think I look like a Sarah.
So in 2006, when my first book was about to be published, I had qualms. Sacrifice had been described as “a dark, serious, exhilarating thriller”. I already knew that men in the UK could be reluctant to buy a book by a female author. Could I honestly expect anyone to buy one written by a Sharon? So on the advice of my UK publishers I chose a sexless anonymity and published my first five books under the semi-pseudonym, S J Bolton. I was happy. I could hide behind a genderless, classless persona and let my creepy, psychological murder-mysteries speak for themselves.
But you know what, I’m over fifty now and I’ve had enough. Keith Waterhouse, who was responsible for the stigma in the first place, is dead and his stupid prejudice should die with him. The Sharons (and Traceys) of today aren’t vacuous girls in their twenties with perma-tans and X Factor obsessions, they are grown women in their forties and fifties: married, mothers, educated to various degrees and in diverse occupations and I just happen to be one of them.
So here it is, my coming out. My name is Sharon. My books are published (and reviewed favourably) all over the world. They’ve been shortlisted for numerous awards and even won one or two. Above all, they are written for people who believe the quality of the story is more important than the gender, social standing, background or given name of the author.
My husband’s name, by the way? Andrew Charles: posh enough for the both of us.
Like This, For Ever by Sharon Bolton is published this week (Corgi, £6.99)
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