A woman named
Marijuana Pepsi refuses to change her name and takes a thesis on unusual names.
Marijuana
Pepsi Vandyck is a 46-year-old American whose unusual story is circulating
around the world. Victim of difficult adolescence, Marijuana Pepsi was constantly
mocked because of her evocative name. A name was chosen by her mother who says
she simply followed her husband's suggestions.
A given name
Because of
its uniqueness, her name became the subject of all the rumors, sometimes, the
fact that his mother was addicted to marijuana and Pepsi, or that her parents
only consumed these two products before her birth.
After a long
period of mockery, Marijuana Pepsi embarked on a doctorate at Cardinal Stritch
University and decided to take the opposite of her friends by choosing a thesis
on the unusual names given to children.
She will put 8 long years of research
to validate her thesis entitled "Black Names" in the
"white" classes where she develops issues related to the behavior of
teachers and the perception of students in a difficult context of non-mixed
social.
The name of
the forty-year-old, whom she had previously struggled to admit, will eventually
become a real strength. She decides to start to take full responsibility,
advocating self-mockery, even going so far as to find great success on social
networks thanks to her atypical name: Dr. Marijuana Pepsi.
She was known until
she became a small local star in her small town of Beloit, Wisconsin.
While she
prefers to be called Pepsi by her family and friends, to avoid having the same
name as a staggering product, in a conservative country where it might be
misperceived, she still decides to use this name to assume her difference, and
to become a strong woman.
She assures
them that you have to take life with hindsight and humor and confirms that she
has never used drugs. Her job now is to educate her students about the impact
of names in the school environment, especially for the names of
African-sounding children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and focuses on the fight
against discrimination.