Sense of Womanhood
Title
Sense of Womanhood
Date
05/26/ 2022
Text
Going to an all girls school with a predominately Hispanic student body and faculty should be empowering, should it not?
Speaking from experience, it was… but it also wasn’t.
For me, it was as though I had been a student at this school for over half of my life. This particular educational system taught multiple members of my family, beginning with my mother and her sisters, to my sisters and I, and our cousins. Before I even became a student, I had gone to plenty of school plays, masses, school fundraisers, summer camps, and I was constantly surrounded by stories about my relatives' experiences in this high school.
From the outside looking in, it seemed to be a perfect high school experience that would empower my faith, sense of womanhood, and Hispanic heritage.
In many ways, this was exactly what my high school experience entailed.
The schools’ mission statement highlighted the importance of educating young women to have confidence in achieving their career goals and having a future strengthened by their Catholic faith- which is something that all students past and present can agree with. While it had its traditional educational values stemming back to when my mother and her sisters attended, the faculty and staff also strived to make the school more modern and enjoyable as the years progressed. With each passing decade, the school has enforced modern ideas and technology and implemented them into the curriculum. As many of the teachers at the school had also been a part of the student body at one point or another and had grown up in Miami, they knew first hand how unique and important it was to create a sisterhood among us and would encourage this every single day.
However, this mirage would often falter.
“I was going to wear that dress tonight.” “Why didn’t you? It’s super cute!”
“When I turned it in to the dress-check, they said I couldn’t wear it. Something about it being too revealing.” “But she’s wearing the exact same dress?”
“The words from my mother were: estás indecenté. I’m too curvy for it, I guess.”
After having this conversation with a classmate of mine, I truly began to question if it were fair for our school to promote how empowered its students are. No matter how many international women’s day rallies were held or how many of us repulsed misogynistic ideals, the school was still meant to abide by the teachings of the Catholic Church.
Unfortunately, this union of the hispanic culture and Catholic faith, would often find that this normally progressive school would regress to outdated and patriarchal values.
The switches between wanting to have a school filled with empowered young Hispanic women and consistently falling upon old-fashioned gender stereotypes were harsh and sudden, leaving my peers and myself in a constant state of whiplash.
The Hispanic culture and Catholic faith often share ideals, especially when it comes to specific gender roles.
In the Catholic church, women are expected to cover-up as showing too much skin is sinful- this translated to our day-to-day school lives. If the bottom of our school shorts did not meet the two-finger length requirement, we would face repercussions and multiple uniform infractions. Classrooms were filled with the likes of: “Don’t sit like that, you’re a lady, not a boy”, or “You talk like a trucker. Does your father know you speak like that?”
Not only were our school dance dresses heavily scrutinized so as to adhere to dress codes that varied depending on body-type, we were also not allowed to attend our school dances if we did not have a date- a male date.
This mirrors certain expectations that you will often find in many Hispanic homes in Miami.
While more and more generations of Hispanics are growing their families in Miami and are becoming increasingly open to modern ideas and ways of life, there is still our culture- which runs deep.
We are in a constant state of balancing this new Miami-Hispanic culture and our true hispanic heritage and customs.
“Y tú novio? Abuela, I don’t have a boyfriend remember? Mami told me to focus on school. Of course. What are you studying anyway? I’m studying psychology now, but when I graduate I’m going to apply to the police academy. En serio? You don’t think it's too machismo? Abuela, there are plenty of female police officers. Aye, pero parecen lesbianas. What man would want to date a police officer? You want people to think you are manlier than your husband?”
Being a young woman in Miami, conversations like these are not hard to happen upon. If they are not as obvious as that one, you would come to notice that these gender stereotypes were always lingering.
Being a young woman in Miami- regardless of being a student in the school I attended or even being Hispanic at all- you become familiar with those stereotypes looming over your shoulder.
Being a young woman in Miami, especially among the peers at my school, you learn to lean on one another.
My classmates and I, as we related to each other’s stories and the want to become empowered Hispanic women in faith, learned to take all these confines that our heritage and school placed us in and encourage one another regardless.
“You aren’t too curvy, you’re curvy because you are Latina and that’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Yea, this school’s just a bit outdated. You look great in the dress you're in and I’m sure you would’ve looked great in that dress too.”
And so I ask myself:
Can I call myself an empowered Hispanic woman, if many of the deeply instilled ideas and values I learned through my home-life and education were built upon a patriarchy?
Yes I can.
Speaking from experience, it was… but it also wasn’t.
For me, it was as though I had been a student at this school for over half of my life. This particular educational system taught multiple members of my family, beginning with my mother and her sisters, to my sisters and I, and our cousins. Before I even became a student, I had gone to plenty of school plays, masses, school fundraisers, summer camps, and I was constantly surrounded by stories about my relatives' experiences in this high school.
From the outside looking in, it seemed to be a perfect high school experience that would empower my faith, sense of womanhood, and Hispanic heritage.
In many ways, this was exactly what my high school experience entailed.
The schools’ mission statement highlighted the importance of educating young women to have confidence in achieving their career goals and having a future strengthened by their Catholic faith- which is something that all students past and present can agree with. While it had its traditional educational values stemming back to when my mother and her sisters attended, the faculty and staff also strived to make the school more modern and enjoyable as the years progressed. With each passing decade, the school has enforced modern ideas and technology and implemented them into the curriculum. As many of the teachers at the school had also been a part of the student body at one point or another and had grown up in Miami, they knew first hand how unique and important it was to create a sisterhood among us and would encourage this every single day.
However, this mirage would often falter.
“I was going to wear that dress tonight.” “Why didn’t you? It’s super cute!”
“When I turned it in to the dress-check, they said I couldn’t wear it. Something about it being too revealing.” “But she’s wearing the exact same dress?”
“The words from my mother were: estás indecenté. I’m too curvy for it, I guess.”
After having this conversation with a classmate of mine, I truly began to question if it were fair for our school to promote how empowered its students are. No matter how many international women’s day rallies were held or how many of us repulsed misogynistic ideals, the school was still meant to abide by the teachings of the Catholic Church.
Unfortunately, this union of the hispanic culture and Catholic faith, would often find that this normally progressive school would regress to outdated and patriarchal values.
The switches between wanting to have a school filled with empowered young Hispanic women and consistently falling upon old-fashioned gender stereotypes were harsh and sudden, leaving my peers and myself in a constant state of whiplash.
The Hispanic culture and Catholic faith often share ideals, especially when it comes to specific gender roles.
In the Catholic church, women are expected to cover-up as showing too much skin is sinful- this translated to our day-to-day school lives. If the bottom of our school shorts did not meet the two-finger length requirement, we would face repercussions and multiple uniform infractions. Classrooms were filled with the likes of: “Don’t sit like that, you’re a lady, not a boy”, or “You talk like a trucker. Does your father know you speak like that?”
Not only were our school dance dresses heavily scrutinized so as to adhere to dress codes that varied depending on body-type, we were also not allowed to attend our school dances if we did not have a date- a male date.
This mirrors certain expectations that you will often find in many Hispanic homes in Miami.
While more and more generations of Hispanics are growing their families in Miami and are becoming increasingly open to modern ideas and ways of life, there is still our culture- which runs deep.
We are in a constant state of balancing this new Miami-Hispanic culture and our true hispanic heritage and customs.
“Y tú novio? Abuela, I don’t have a boyfriend remember? Mami told me to focus on school. Of course. What are you studying anyway? I’m studying psychology now, but when I graduate I’m going to apply to the police academy. En serio? You don’t think it's too machismo? Abuela, there are plenty of female police officers. Aye, pero parecen lesbianas. What man would want to date a police officer? You want people to think you are manlier than your husband?”
Being a young woman in Miami, conversations like these are not hard to happen upon. If they are not as obvious as that one, you would come to notice that these gender stereotypes were always lingering.
Being a young woman in Miami- regardless of being a student in the school I attended or even being Hispanic at all- you become familiar with those stereotypes looming over your shoulder.
Being a young woman in Miami, especially among the peers at my school, you learn to lean on one another.
My classmates and I, as we related to each other’s stories and the want to become empowered Hispanic women in faith, learned to take all these confines that our heritage and school placed us in and encourage one another regardless.
“You aren’t too curvy, you’re curvy because you are Latina and that’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Yea, this school’s just a bit outdated. You look great in the dress you're in and I’m sure you would’ve looked great in that dress too.”
And so I ask myself:
Can I call myself an empowered Hispanic woman, if many of the deeply instilled ideas and values I learned through my home-life and education were built upon a patriarchy?
Yes I can.
Collection
Citation
Giovanna Valdes, “Sense of Womanhood,” Everything Speaks To Me , accessed September 18, 2026, https://everythingspeakstome.com/items/show/80.