This amazing documentary is coming out on FRIDAY! You must watch it.

Landmark Sunshine Theater in NYC Dec 5th - 11th

Tickets in NYC: http://www.movietickets.com/theater/hid/8098/ShowDate/2

Trailer: http://vimeo.com/90762657 

Village Voice Rave Review: http://www.villagevoice.com/2014-12-03/film/shes-beautiful-when-shes-angry/

Melissa Harris Perry Interview: http://www.msnbc.com/melissa-harris-perry/watch/film-maps-trajectory-of-feminist-movement-365320259806

Getting To Know Myself Through DNA Testing

I recently took an ancestral DNA test because I’ve always felt like an adopted child of the world. It’s not because I don’t know who my parents are, but because I can barely trace my family tree farther back than my own parents (pictured above.)

My middle school art teacher used to say, “I can trace my family back to the 12th century!”  I was so jealous of her! Meanwhile, I barely knew my grandparents. As much as I’d like to believe that I should just look to the future, I just wanted to know a little bit of my history. Most of the ancestral information I could deduce was not from actual records or genetic information, but by assumption based on the country I was born and my features, which is not exactly scientific evidence. I had spent hours throughout my adolescence in front of mirrors trying to understand myself and how I came to be.

Growing up I was often asked “Where are you from?” because I have ethnically ambiguous features that in New York are typical for a Latina, but in a place like Cairo make people wonder where I came from. My partner is Egyptian, and when we visit his family in Egypt, I seamlessly blend in with his Arab family. If I didn’t speak, no one would ever know I wasn’t an Egyptian woman, so naturally many are confused when I state that I’m Dominican-American. His family has always said they are sure I have some Arab ancestry, but now that I know better I’m sad to disappoint them. I have less than 1% Middle-Eastern ancestry, a drop in the ocean compared to my partner’s nearly 100% Middle-Eastern heritage as dictated by his DNA.

Having an atypical surname did not help either. If I only had a dime for every time someone asked “Valoy? Hmm, where is that name from? Is it French?” And now that I have the evidence, the answer is no, I have no apparent French heritage.

I was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in the United States. I’m Dominican, Caribbean, Latina, and American; I hold all these identities simultaneously and interchangeably. All these identities are equal in my mind. But I know that they are based on a mixture of many races and ethnicities, and that is what I was searching for when I took an ancestral DNA test. To me it wasn’t about confirming what I already knew, but literally finding my place in this world. So while I learned from ancestral DNA that I am mostly of European descent, my lived experiences were not. Being ethnically mixed while not knowing what those ethnicities are has left me in limbo in a society that is eager to fit people into boxes. While my straight hair and light complexion grant me insurmountable privilege within communities of color, the languages I speak, my customs, my likes, and my relations set me apart from Europeans.

For this reason I call myself Latina even more so than Dominican. It’s the closest term to explain an identity that is not homogeneous but that is ambiguous— especially in the United States, where race seems to be White, Black, Asian, or Other. So where does that leave me? The Brown race? Multicultural? Multiracial? These aren’t always options for people like me.

As I wrote this, National Geographic commemorated their 125th anniversary issue with a feature on what we will look like in the near future, after presumably much more interracial breeding. It’s somewhat laughable to me because this racial mixing that National Geographic exalts as something that will help us move forward and presumably past racism has been going on for centuries. As far as I’m concerned — and as far the strange man who said I looked like a cup of café au lait is concerned, too — racism is still very much alive after more than 500 years of mixing, in the Americas. I suspect in the year 2050, people will look just like they do now. Though genealogists understand that race is not defined by genes and the human race is almost genetically identical, race does matter outside our bodies and beyond Petri dishes.

I was born in the Dominican Republic and I know our history, so there is little chance my ancestors were all native to the island. Latin America has a history of colonialism, slavery, and immigration (very much like the United States.) This set the stage for a population with an array of phenotypes and skin complexions, and much racial ambiguity.

Adding to the conundrum, I happen to be from the one island that served as the stomping ground for many idealist conquistadores, voyagers, adventurers, exiles, and missionaries. It is an island that was populated by Taínos who were mostly annihilated by European diseases and forced labor. Eventually the island became the battleground for many powerful European nations looking to get a piece of the New World.

To me, being Latina explains where I live now, my customs, language, traditions, and cuisine, but it doesn’t explain where my ancestors came from. I want to know how patterns of migration and historical events shaped my distinctiveness. Yet it was clear to me that because I’m a Caribbean woman, tracing my history wouldn’t be as simple as looking through some birth certificates, property records, census records, or tracking my surname.

It became evident that ancestral DNA would be the only way of understanding my past. A mitochondrial DNA test (mtDNA) would find my maternal ancestor, and a Y-DNA test taken by a male relative would find our paternal ancestor. Because I was looking for a larger overview of my ancestry, I took the autosomal DNA (atDNA) test that would provide me with all my inherited ancestral information. Unfortunately my genes are not stamped with a country of origin, but some comparisons to known populations would be able to determine a point of origin.

A simple spit test, and a few weeks later I was provided with a list of countries in which my most recent ancestors likely lived. I thought I would approximately know what the results would be, but was I in for a surprise! I expected my ancestry to be split halfway between West African and Iberian roots, but what I got was a lot more interesting and confusing. Nigerian, Italian, and Greek ancestry are perhaps not very far fetched, but what about traces of Scandinavian, Northwest Russian, Western European, Beninese, Togolese, Cameroonian, and Native American ancestry! That’s a lot of people from all over the world coming to live in the DNA of a Caribbean woman.

After the initial excitement I called my parents to share the news. When I asked my father to take a guess his first response was West Africa and Britain. He claims that his family came from a colony of freed slaves that left the United States and made their home in the coastal city of Sámana in the Dominican Republic, formerly Haiti. The Sámana Americans are very aware of their distinct history, so it is entirely possible that my father is correct, but I have no way of knowing. It’s unclear how he knows this information, but one thing I was certain of was African heritage. Now, his wild guess that we might have British ancestry was a little off; about 2% trace origin is not very convincing. We talked about our Nigerian, Ghanaian, and Cameroonian heritage and reflected on the importance of acknowledging these roots with scientific evidence.

When I spoke with my mother, she was reluctant to take any guesses, which is not so surprising. She knows that she has European features, but she was orphaned as a toddler and only knows some of her paternal relatives. When I pressed her for a guess, she said we likely had Spanish origin, and also insisted that most Dominicans have some African heritage and she assumed she must have some, too. I knew this was hard for her because it reminded her that she doesn’t know most of her family and that stirred up a lot of emotions, but she was curious. I confirmed that we did have some Iberian heritage, but that most of our European heritage was Italian and Greek – to which she laughed and said “I suppose someone had an Italian lover, or many!” She randomly decided that my Irish heritage was probably from my dad, and the 4% North-African heritage was likely from her side – no particular reason, just her hunch.

I also called my two sisters, and as I expected, my sisters and I were shocked that we had 7% Native American ancestry. We assume it’s Taíno, who were presumably all wiped off the island, but definitely live in our genes and customs (see, casabe.) To us it was a way to reaffirm our connection to the island and this continent, as tiny as it may be. But even more importantly, it’s proof that colonization, slavery, and war haven’t killed the indigenous inhabitants of the Caribbean. Ancestral DNA serves more than just an interesting bit of information for us, it’s a literal link to a history that was deliberately erased and buried.

This matters a lot! Living in the United States as a Latina means that I have to deal with immigration policies that hurt people like me. Our home countries are wrecked by poverty and corruption so we leave to find a better place, as human nature dictates. But when immigrants are told to “go back to where we came from” it can literally mean not going anywhere or leaving to an entirely new continent.

The personal has become political, and while I find myself I also find others like me.

I still would eventually like to do a mtDNA and Y-DNA test to isolate my hereditary information, but for now I feel happy to have started on this journey. I promised my mom that I would take some time off and travel back to the Dominican Republic with her to trace her family. I might not know for sure what all this information means and why they came to live in my genes, but it has solidified my belief that little parts of me are in every continent, and the entire world lives in me.

I am not African. Africa is in me, but I cannot return.
I am not taína. Taíno is in me, but there is no way back.
I am not European. Europe lives in me, but I have no home there.
I am new. History made me. My first language was spanglish.
I was born at the crossroads and I am whole.

By: Aurora Levins Morales

*I originally wrote this article for Double X Science

Why Immigration is a Feminist Issue

In a recent panel discussion held by the National Organization for Women (NOW-NYC) on feminism for women of Color, I was asked why mainstream feminisms has not considered immigration a feminist issue.

As a transnational Latina feminist, immigration has always been one of my top priorities, right alongside reproductive justice and the wage/professional gap that affect mostly women like me.

As this question was presented to me, I struggled for a response because on the one hand, I don't understand how an issue that disproportionately affects women and children is not considered a feminist priority, but on the other hand, I also understand that when something doesn't directly affect a group of people, they are less likely to regard it as most important.

As transnational women of Color, we understand that if immigration reform is not a priority, our families will be the ones affected the most.

This has been said many times, but I'll say it again: Mainstream feminists must listen to women of Color when they voice their struggles.

In Pursuit of Sexual Pleasure Equality

 Sexual pleasure is not a one-way street.

If you are a woman who has had one, two, or any number of sexual partners, you may know that sex should always feel good for both partners.

If you are a woman who has not yet had sex, you probably hope that your first time, and times subsequent, will be equally pleasurable for everyone involved.

After all, our sexual relationships are outlets for pleasure.

Open Letter To Organizations That Want Me To Speak For Free

Dear organizations that want me to speak for free,

In the past few months I have received several emails from organizations that would like me to speak at an event they are hosting in the upcoming months, particularly for Women’s History Month. Mostly I am invited to speak on issues related to sexism in the workplace, STEM outreach, and transnational/Latina feminism; topics that I feel very comfortable speaking about as I live these experiences in my daily life. It took me forever to feel comfortable saying this but I am expert in these topics and I have years of first hand experience that I can share and use to train other organizations in how to make their workspace welcoming and less hostile to women. I can also speak on what it feels like to be a transnational feminist living at the intersection of two cultures.

But I won’t do this for free.

#SecretLivesOfFeministas - What's it like to be a Latina feminist on Twitter?

I can’t remember a time when people haven’t asked me what I identify as, and the answer to that question changes depending on who is asking and the circumstances.

To me identity is not static, but it says a lot about you. For most of my life I was a Dominican immigrant living in New York. I grew up in a community that was largely Black and Afro-Caribbean - they were my people, and I was one of them. But the genetics lottery awarded me light skin, straight hair, and looks that fit into the tanned-skinned, long hair, and Europeanized Latina stereotype that is so coveted in the United States and Latin America.

In school I was called “white girl” and while it never offended me, I never truly understood what that meant. Sure, my skin was paler in comparison to many of my friends, but I saw whiteness as a cultural identity. I felt very different from the white girls on TV shows, which left me wondering - what does it mean to be Dominican?

As most Dominican families my family members don’t all look the same. We display a variety of features, skin tones, hair types, and phenotypes that change from sibling to sibling, and so on. There was never any doubt in me that my ethnicity comprised of a large and varied mix of people, and to be honest I absolutely loved that. I couldn’t identify with Black or White as an identifier because these are binaries that don’t capture my identity accurately. But that also made it very difficult to identity while living in the United States. So I came to embrace being Latina and Brown, because they were the only words that I felt best described who I am. That is, until I read Aurora Levins Morales’ poem, and was forever profoundly transformed.

I am a child of the Americas,

a light-skinned mestiza of the Caribbean,

a child of many diaspora, born into this continent at a crossroads.

I am a U.S. Puerto Rican Jew,

a product of the ghettos of New York I have never known.

An immigrant and the daughter and granddaughter of immigrants.

I speak English with passion: it’s the tongue of my consciousness,

a flashing knife blade of crystal, my tool, my craft.

I am Caribeña, island grown. Spanish is my flesh,

Ripples from my tongue, lodges in my hips:

the language of garlic and mangoes,

the singing of poetry, the flying gestures of my hands.

I am of Latinoamerica, rooted in the history of my continent:

I speak from that body.

I am not African. Africa is in me, but I cannot return.

I am not taína. Taíno is in me, but there is no way back.

I am not European. Europe lives in me, but I have no home there.

I am new. History made me. My first language was spanglish.

I was born at the crossroads and I am whole.

Morales captures exactly how I feel - like a child of the Americas. And I am certain many of us feel the same. We call ourselves Latinas because it’s the best word we have to explain our identity, but the unique interweaving of our identities are varied and complicated.

For this reason I chose to be part of the #SecretLivesOfFeministas hashtag. I saw it as a way to connect to other women who identify with being Latina yet come from all walks of life. I live in New York City and have a large and diverse community of Latinos that I can communicate and connect with. And yet I still find it difficult to find other Latina feminists that share my commitment to social justice, anti-racism, and women’s rights, not because they don’t exist but because we are spread all over the world.

Using a hashtag we can all discuss important issues and have a nuanced conversation on Latinidad and how that translates to our lived experiences. Our communities become virtual, but also much larger. In turn, it allows us to share our stories with a wider audience and be understood as a diverse group of people with a shared history and culture.

Twitter activism, as demonstrated by #SecretLivesOfFeministas is what gave me a voice. Prior to joining Twitter I was just an opinionated woman without an audience. Sure, I would speak about anti-racism and sexism with my family and friends, but I soon exhausted their attention. I also felt that my experiences, while valid and important, were not experienced in a vacuum. I knew there were more Latinas out there that felt the way I did.

So I took to Twitter and started speaking up about issues that mattered to me, particularly the lack of women in STEM fields as I’m an engineer and often feel isolated at work. Soon I was blogging and interacting with other bloggers and writers, and shortly after I started speaking and participating in events. I candidly spoke about growing up in New York City and feeling simultaneously displaced and at home. I opened a window into my childhood and wrote about domestic violence, mental health, sexuality, and religion - topics that led a religious zealot to write about the shame I brought upon my Latino (and by default, Catholic) community and calling me a “Latina sin sabor.”

When you put your ideas out there you are exposed. People will read your words and many will want to make you feel inadequate and unimportant. You will be shamed, ridiculed, and insulted. But I still recommend that we all use social media to speak up! Without social media I would have never connected with other activists doing similar work. I was able to create a network of women warrior Latina feminists that call me out when I am wrong and build me up when I’m feeling down. They help me think through complicated problems and listen to me when I have to let my opinions flow to come to a conclusion.

I can proudly say that I am a Latina feminist and I don’t stand alone. We are many and we are becoming leaders in our communities by ensuring that we are supported in all our choices from careers to family planning.

I encourage other Latinas to share their opinions boldly and write their stories. Writing to me is therapeutic and necessary, because while our spoken words can drift away our written words are here to stay.

As Julia Alvarez said, "I write to find out what I'm thinking. I write to find out who I am. I write to understand things."

*I originally wrote this post for the Brown Eyed Amazon Latina feminists series.

What's Your Favorite Position? BOOM!

A Testimony On Fat Shaming

CREDIT: www.photo.net

A North Dakota woman, in an attempt to "take a stand against obesity" handed out "fat letters" to children who don't fit her ideal of what bodies should look like. She might have thought her intentions were good, but in reality they were cruel and demeaning. I have always struggled with my weight and never reach the ideal image of what people wanted me to look like. I was always either too skinny or too fat. I got sick with gallstones, was hospitalized and eventually needed surgery to remove my gallbladder, which led to a significant amount of weight loss. But no one cared about my health because I had finally reached the "perfect size." I was congratulated by my weight loss, and some even felt it was appropriate to warn me of future gain weight. And even though I have always felt uncomfortably with my body there are those who have it much worse, like my friend Veronica. Below is a statement she made after reading about the "fat letters" handed to children on Halloween. She gave me permission to share it because she is tired of being fat shamed.

A note to readers...

In the world of blogging you will never be able to satisfy everyone.

Someone will always be pissed because you spoke openly on an issue. Others will be pissed because you didn't. No matter how hard you try you won't be able to speak for all people, and even when you try you will be deemed not an expert on others' experiences (because it's impossible to be.)

My blog is my personal space to write about my life-- the good, the bad, and the ugly. When I want to talk about feminism in the context of the United States I seek out other platforms.

My life is not beautiful, free of violence, and cookie-cutter. My family members have been victims, and sometimes the perpetrators. The only way I can address that is by writing honestly about it.

Does that make me an expert on all Latino issues? No. I am only an expert of my life.

As a woman in science, a Latina born with light skin, an immigrant, and a heterosexual woman, my life is an amalgamation of all those titles. Sometimes they give me the platform to shine, sometimes they relegate me to the status of almost nothing.

I write about what matters to me, knowing very well that I won't and can't make everyone happy. When I mess up, I try to learn from it and move forward. And I work hard every single day of my life to be genuine and empathetic, to acknowledge my privilege, to speak up for myself, to work on my faults, and to remember to tell myself how much I love ME.  If I don't love myself and my achievements no one else will do it for me.

I welcome and listen to all critique, but it doesn't come at the expense of insulting me. If I say something that pisses you off so much you want to call me a whore and a bitch, you've lost the opportunity for dialogue.

If you don't find me interesting, radical, exciting, or worthy of praise...don't. Really, I am not looking for fans. If I wanted to excel at something I would be testing building materials in a lab, because I was really darn good at it! I don't aim to be amazing, I aim to be me.

If my life story speaks to you, I am here for you. If you can't relate to my life, that's ok! My feminism is not about "kumbaya, we are all sisters." We really aren't the same and if I attempt to equalize all women I would fail at the most important part of my feminism: acknowledging women's varied and complicated lives.

On Feminism and Faith

Not a day goes by that someone doesn’t call me a “radical feminist” and accuse me of trying to destroy religion and traditional values.

People on the Internet are both my biggest critics and my most enthusiastic supporters. But because of them, I have been forced to truly question my own beliefs on the compatibility of feminism and religion.

I think that they can coexist. Here’s why.

The thing about feminism is that it’s about empowering women — and that means all women – regardless of differences. And while I may personally find most religions inherently misogynist and oppressive, that does not give me the right to deter any other woman from finding spiritual nourishment in a religious community.

If feminism becomes synonymous with anti-religion, we risk alienating the women we seek to uplift and support.

If anything, feminism and religion are deeply connected because our views on gender are very much based in religious doctrines. And we cannot fight for equal rights by disenfranchising those who reconcile their religious beliefs with feminism.

Conference on Latin American and Caribbean Women Spotlights the Use of Technology for Gender Equity

This week the XII Regional Conference on Latin American and Caribbean Women (XII Conferencia Regional sobre la Mujer de América Latina y el Caribe) took place in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The conference was put together by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe: CEPAL) in order to promote gender equity in the region.

The event was a great success in bringing together influential women such as Alicia Bárcena, Executive Director of CEPAL, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director of UN Women, and Alejandrina Germán, Head of the Ministry of Women in the Dominican Republic.

No, I Will Not Celebrate "Bartolomé Day"

This week The Oatmeal created a cartoon giving some insight into the bloody history of Christopher Columbus and how he captured the Americas and enslaved the inhabitants. It's all great information that I believe is not taught well enough. In fact, we know (or care) so little about the violent genocide of Indigenous peoples by colonizers that we have a federal holiday in honor of Christopher Columbus veiled as an Italian-American heritage celebration.

The second half of the cartoon suggests that instead of celebrating Columbus Day we celebrate Bartolomé Day.

Bartolomé de las Casas was a Spanish historian and one of the earliest European settlers in the Americas. He owned indigenous peoples and had an encomienda. An encomienda is a system in which European settlers were given indigenous peoples as slaves in return for their "protection" and with the understanding that they would be taught Spanish and immersed into the Catholic faith.

What differentiates Christopher Columbus from Bartolomé de las Casas is that Bartolomé had a change of heart.

My Name is My Cultural Identity

When I read Jill Filipovic’s “Why should married women change their names? Let men change theirs,” I immediately felt that she was not talking to women like me. As much I embrace feminism and support dialogue that expands cultures, traditions, and races, once again some women were left out of the conversation. Had Jill Filipovic asked me what I think about a woman changing her last name upon marriage, she would have learned that as a fellow feminist, I have a completely different mindset on what a name means.Since I got engaged the question I get asked the most after “when is the wedding?” is “will you change your last name?” I know this is a question most women get when they announce an engagement, and it doesn’t bother me much. I do however feel that the conversation is very Anglo-centric. I am a Latina woman marrying an Arab man, and in both our cultures women do not change their names when they get married.

Interview for Nicole Clark Consulting's Women Making Moves Series

I was interviewed by Nicole Clark Consulting and wanted to share what I said to her. This interview was original posted on Nicole's website. http://www.nicoleclarkconsulting.com/post/41278256414/women-making-moves-patricia-valoy

___________________________________________________________________________________________

"There are plenty of girls in need of encouragement and eager to find a familiar face. Just seeing one Latina in a non-traditional field is enough to spark a light in a girl’s mind; a girl that perhaps never knew her potential." ~ Patricia

Women Making Moves highlights how women and girls of color are raising their voices to improve the health and lives of many in the areas of sexual/reproductive health, holistic wellness, feminism, activism, entrepreneurship, the arts and sciences, and more.

Meet Patricia Valoy, Women Making Moves spotlight for January 2013. Patricia Valoy is a Civil Engineer and an Assistant Project Manager at STV Inc., an architectural, engineering, planning, environmental and construction management firm based in New York City. She is an advocate for women and girls who wish to enter careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM.) Patricia is also a co-host of a weekly radio show called, Let Your Voice Be Heard! Radio. She has her own blog on feminist issues, Womanisms, and is an avid Tweeter under the handle Besito86.

What I enjoy most about Patricia is how she is succeeding in the traditionally male-dominated field of engineering and is showing young women that they too can step outside of the traditionally held belief that only men can dominate in the maths and sciences. Patricia is busting down the “math is for boys” stereotype, and is inspiring young women to feed their curiosities when it comes to non-traditional career fields, despite what their community may think.

How To Navigate A Multicultural Relationship

When I read articles about interracial or multicultural relationships, I never feel like they’re speaking about my relationship, even though my fiancé and I do not share a culture.

So much of the conversation around multicultural relationships in the United States is about marriages between Black and White individuals – which is great, except for that we’re neither.

I was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New York, and my fiancé was born and raised in Egypt.

I have always been a city girl, and he was raised in a farming village.

My first language is Spanish, and his first language is Arabic.

I am the eldest of three girls, and he is the second youngest out of seven siblings.

I was raised a strict Catholic, and he was raised a Coptic Christian.

I drink coffee; he drinks tea (this one was almost a deal breaker).

We’re like the real life version of the book Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.

MY REACTION TO GETTING NOMINATED FOR A SOCIAL MEDIA AWARD BY THE WOMEN'S MEDIA CENTER!

So, I got an email saying that I have been nominated for a Social Media Award to be presented by the Women’s Media Center. 

VOTE HERE! 

Below is my reaction!

 I think I'm going to faint.

Is this for real?

Maybe I was wrong. There is a god.

(prayer circle)

Just kidding!

OMG! I need to call my mom! No, my fiance! NO! My mom, yes, definitely my mom.

Let's celebrate! AAAHHHH.

Wait? People actually listen to what I have to say?

Yes they do! I'm brilliant.

Yup, yup...I'm fabulous.

Ya'll better vote!

VOTE HERE! 

Why Feminism Can Be Scary for Some Women

This post was originally published for Everyday Feminism.

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Feminism is a polarizing term.

You either fully embrace it as a way of life or want nothing to do with it.

Personally, I’ve always led a feminist lifestyle. But until recently, I would often start conversations about women’s right with the dreaded phrase “I’m not a feminist, but…”

Why was I so hesitant about calling myself a feminist?

The truth is: I simply didn’t understand what feminism was about, let alone how freeing it could be.

I had misconceptions that feminism was about usurping men’s power and dominating them. I truly believed that being a girl required protection from harm, and that I should be content to have men that could offer me that security.

But more importantly, I didn’t think that I, as a woman, was oppressed.

Our Body Hair Dilemma

If you don’t know me personally you should know that I’m a sassy, liberal, Dominican, engineer, raised in New York City who is supposed to be planning a wedding with my Egyptian fiancé. We haven’t gotten to the actual planning a wedding part yet, but I have a Pinterest board (yay, progress!) Since most of his relatives live in Egypt and won’t be able to make it to the wedding we decided to visit them and have an engagement party there.

Admittedly, I was a little afraid of having an engagement party in Egypt. I’m not into events where everyone is paying attention to me, and my idea of primping for a special event consists of tweezing a couple stray hairs between my eyebrows, a grooming habit that I foolishly thought was good enough.

LITTLE DID I KNOW THAT I WAS EXPECTED TO REMOVE EVERY INCH OF HAIR ON MY BODY, BELOW THE HAIRLINE.

It all started the day before my engagement party, when a female relative made a casual remark about the need to buy a depilatory cream for me. I looked at her with a confused face and asked “why?!”, truly not understanding what she meant. She said that I needed to remove my body hair, especially the soft, almost nonexistent hairs on my arms and face. I told her I didn’t think it was so noticeable I had to remove it, and that I would prefer not to, but she insisted that it wouldn’t look appropriate for the engagement party.

I won’t lie, I was offended. I felt criticized and ugly, and wondered if everyone in the family wBas thinking the same thing. I left the room in a fit of pent up frustration and did what I do best, started to cry.

It got worse the day of the engagement party. I was scrutinized by every hair stylist and woman in the hair salon. They all asked (via my friend/Arabic interpreter) if I wanted to remove my body hair. When we said “no” I was looked at with pity, she was told that maybe I had not understood the question. A woman even asked if my dress was long and had sleeves, and as I replied that it was a sleeveless dress, I immediately knew why she was asking me that question.

Latinas, like all other women, have body hair. As an art teacher in high school told me once “if you have thick, dark, wavy hair on your head, it’s probably the same everywhere else in your body.” And indeed, it is, but it’s also soft and baby-like, and until I was a teenager I never felt ashamed of my body hair.

IN LATINO CULTURES BODY HAIR IS CONSIDERED BEAUTIFUL.

Growing up I was encouraged to never shave or wax, and was constantly told how beautiful my thick eyebrows were. Admittedly, I never had a humongous unibrow, but the reason why we consider soft, unshaven body hair to be beautiful is because it’s reminiscent of adolescence and youth. Little girls don’t have waxed upper lips and perfectly arched eyebrows, and we think they are the prettiest humans that have ever walked this earth. That notion, however, does not exist for adult women in our society.

As a Dominican immigrant living in the United States I had to find the middle ground between two completely different and opposing beauty standards. This middle ground is a common theme in my life, because it shapes every single one of my actions. When it came to the removal or appreciation of body hair, it was the same story. As a teen I badly wanted to shave my legs and shape my unruly eyebrows so that I can look like the women I saw on magazines and TV. My mother refused, even confessing that she had never removed a single hair in her body to show me that if I could just endure my teen years I would learn to appreciate my body. But I relented, and shaved my legs and waxed my eyebrows.

Long story short, I regretted that decision almost immediately. Not only did I find that I am incredibly sensitive to wax, but I am now a slave to the razor. Years later I have to shave my legs at least every other day because it grows prickly and feels uncomfortable. I let go of wax and now only tweez a few stray hairs, and trust me, I look fine.

The removal of body hair in Middle Eastern societies is considered proper hygiene. I don’t attempt to change centuries old traditions, and I don’t want to. What I do expect is to be accepted the way I am. I firmly believe that every culture considers its practices and customs the norm and everyone else is just, “different.” When I tell my Dominican family that women in Egypt remove all their body hair, the response is astonishment, and so is the opposite, as evident in my experience in Egypt.

WE SHOULD STRIVE FOR A MORE FLUID DEFINITION OF BEAUTY; ONE IN WHICH WOMEN WHO WAX AND WOMEN WHO DON’T ARE EQUALLY RESPECTED AND ADMIRED FOR THEIR CHOICES.

There are a lot of role models for hairless beauties out there, so I understand not wanting to feel ostracized for refusing to submit to a socially accepted beaty standard. But if you are looking for inspiration, look at Frida Kahlo, a Mexican painter who took the world by storm with her gut wrenching and perfectly honest self portraits in the 1920s. She had a unibrow, a little peach fuzz over her upper lip, and her arms were covered with soft hairs that perfectly blend in with her caramel skin. I can only assume that she also never shaved her legs or underarms, yet Frida was considered a beautiful woman with sex appeal, rumored to have had female and male lovers.

Throughout the years I have had to readjust my own idea of beauty. The level of comfort I feel with my body was hard earned and I fight daily to not relinquish that. I just hope one day we can all feel comfortable to show our own idea of beauty– to release our inner Frida Kahlo.

*This post was written by me and originally posted on Sex and Fessenjoon.

Sorry Catholicism, I'm Pro-Choice!

I was raised in a strictly Catholic household, and while my mother was fairly liberal, and my father had no particular attachment to the Church, we lived with the implicit knowledge that we were Catholic and that everyone else was practicing the wrong religion.

It was not my parents who instilled Catholicism into my upbringing, it was just the way things were. We had no choice and we knew nothing else. My family was very open to talking about sexuality, but only using euphemisms. The women would sit around the kitchen table sipping coffee and giggling over which one of them ate carne cruda, which translates to raw meat, but means to give oral sex. I could hear them talk about other people's daughters and how they saw the girls wearing a mini skirt or showing off her mid-riff, kissing a boy a few blocks away, or with a condom in her purse. And much later at night, when they thought all the children were sleeping they would gossip about the women they knew who had abortions. They never used the word abortion, but it was obvious. They would say things like "she bought the pills that make your period come back" or "she made her husband punch her in the stomach" or "her mom sent her a special tea from the Dominican Republic" and sometimes it went to the extreme, "she punctured herself with a knitting needle" or "she used a coca-cola bottle."

At the time I was not allowed to questions, but I was a curious child and my mother always tried to answer anything to the best of her abilities. When I realized that what the women in my family were talking about was abortion I felt disdain for the women they gossiped about. My mother would rarely talk about other girls, in fact, she would warn my aunts and cousins about comparing their daughters to others. Her favorite saying was "nunca digas 'de esa agua no beberé'" which translates to "don't ever say you won't drink from that glass of water" but means that you should not assume you will never be in a certain situation.  When I asked her about abortion she just said that I should never feel that I cannot talk to her. From early on it was clear that my reputation as a good girl was tied to my sexuality, and although my mother did not want that to be my reality, she knew it was how my culture would value me.

Whenever I was asked what I thought about abortion I would bravely defend the potential for life. For a high school project I stood in front of the classroom and spoke about the way an embryo has tiny fingers and a heartbeat, how the mother could become depressed after an abortion, and to bolster the sentimentality of a pregnancy I showed a lot of pictures of beautiful babies with their caring mothers. I truly believed that a pregnancy was a miracle and that no person in their right mind would want to hurt their baby, but while my intentions were in the right place I was very naive.

At the time I was not sexually active and I had every expectation to save myself for marriage. I considered my virginity the most valuable asset I held. I imagined with disdain having to tell my husband I had been with another man and feeling sorrow for his dissatisfaction; the thought that he was probably not saving himself for me did not even cross my mind. I had never heard of a man being valued for his virginity, in fact, it seemed that men who were sexually inexperienced were mocked by society. My father had a child when he married my mother, but he boasted about my mother being a virgin on their wedding night. I was under the impression that saving oneself for marriage was the morality quick-fix, but only for women. This left me feeling guilty for being curious about my sexuality and terrified at the possibility of getting pregnant before I was married.

Living on my own and meeting people from other walks of life gave me a different perspective on sexuality and abortion. Our society sees sexuality as only acceptable within the rigid confines of heterosexual matrimony and for procreation. Sex for pleasure is offensive and irresponsible, unless you have signed a legal document with a partner of the opposite sex. Yet as much as socially conservative groups insist that the only safe sex is no sex, their ideals do not match our reality. Social conservatives reminist of times when good girls remained pure and waited for marriage, yet they forget that women had no other choice. Women in these scenarios were, and still are in many places, confined to the home, escorted to activities, and under constant watch. If we have to chaperone sexuality until the participants sign a legal marriage contract, what are we trying to prove? Our fascination with an intact hymen results in the demonization of sexuality and puts the entire worth of a girl dependent on whether a man has had sex with her or not. Furthermore, what message are we sending our boys and men? We tell them to value women based on their sexual history and speak of their genitals as if they had damaging powers.

Directly tied to sexuality is the ability, as women, to make decisions about our bodies. Sex is nothing new, people have been having it for generations. We can try as much as we want to say sex should only be acceptable within the confines of marriage, but that was not always the case. Traditional marriage was a simple declaration of intent. The only reason Churches were told of marriages and births was because they were the record keepers in any given city or village. Slaves in Latin America and the United States were not legally allowed to marry. There were no religious ceremonies and contract signing, two people were in love and decided to be with each other against all odds. Slave men would be separated from their families as punishment and the women were raped at their master's whim. We'd like to believe that we have moved on from this mindset, but we have kept the same ideals for women.

Women have had access to contraception and abortions throughout history. The Talmud mentions inserting a sponge soaked in lemon juice into the vagina as a spermicide. Hippocrates wrote about using the plant Queen Anne's Lace seeds as a sort of morning after pill. The need for women to control how and when they have children is imperative to equality, fairness, and limiting the amount of children that are abandoned and unwanted. No one wants to have an abortion, and in an ideal world no woman would need one. But in the world we live in women are sometimes raped and impregnated against their will. This is a world where we shun comprehensive sexual education in schools and in our homes and then blame a pregnant teenage girl for her suppose lack of morality. In this world, we posit motherhood as the single most important achievement for all women, without realizing that some women simply do not want to become mothers and some are not financially able to do so. If we truly care about motherhood we should want women to enjoy their sexuality and have children on their own terms. If we want to decrease the number of abortions then we should make motherhood easier for women. Fund daycare centers, ensure that parents get paid maternity and paternity leave, give young men and women the access to sexual education and contraception, and most importantly, let's value women as individuals, not potential baby makers.

Being pro-choice means that I get to decide what I want for my own body. I do not get to tell another woman that she should or should not have sex based on my beliefs. I do not get to judge women on how they lead their personal lives. Those who want to be bound by religious moral standards have every right to do so, but they do not have the right to force their stoic lifestyle on anyone else.

Putting science aside, those who passionately oppose abortion on the idea that the rights of a fertilized egg or an embryo trump the rights of a woman try to make me feel uncomfortable and dirty by calling me a "baby killer." They use words to attempt to dehumanize me and tug at my sentimentality, and for a long time those words hurt. But you know what hurts more? Crippling poverty, hunger, sex slavery, honor crimes, child brides, rape, human trafficking, and far too many other things. If you truly want a better world fight for social justice and human dignity.