Adult film star gets court approval for name change
An adult film star in San Francisco applied to change her name to Candi Bimbo Doll, a name she has used for years, and was turned down by a judge who said “Bimbo” was offensive. But while some people might feel that way, it’s her choice, a state appeals court said Thursday.
People have a right to change their name as long as the new name is not intended to confuse or defraud the public and is not “universally recognized as being offensive,” the 1st District Court of Appeal said in approving a new name for the woman previously known as Samantha Wood.
In denying the name change last April, Superior Court Judge Gail Dekreon quoted an Oxford English Dictionary definition of “bimbo” as “a young woman considered to be sexually attractive but of limited intelligence.” While people have a right to call themselves by any name they choose, she said, a formal name change requires approval by the courts, which should reject any new name that is “vulgar and offensive.”
The appeals court noted an earlier ruling by another appellate court that refused to allow a Black man to change his name to “Misteri N—,” saying the last name was a racial slur and a fighting word. But “Bimbo is not a fighting word. It is not vulgar,” Justice James Richman wrote in Thursday’s 3-0 ruling.
And the name has acquired a more assertive meaning from its use in last year’s film “Barbie,” Richman said, quoting a magazine article by British journalist Harriet Fletcher that described the movie as a “feminist Bimbo classic.”
“As best we understand it, Bimbofication is using the once derogatory term as a means of empowerment, to build a sense of community,” Richman wrote.
Candi Bimbo Doll is now 40. She is transgender and changed her name to Samantha Wood as a teenager. She performs in porn films as Juliette Stray but said she has called herself Candi Bimbo Doll for more than a decade.
“To be denied the opportunity to have my genuine self facing the world was an especially cold blow given the current trajectory of women’s rights in America,” she said in a statement released by her lawyer, James Reilly, after the ruling. “Today is absolutely a personal win — I’m giddy with excitement, really — but it’s a win for all the other dolls out there too, who, when they’ve contemplated showing who they are to the world, are confronted with nothing but rejection and disregard. …You can be stripped of your status, of your success, of your skills, of your home, of your looks — but you can’t be stripped of your name.”