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ARTICLES
“One Time for My Girls”: African-American Girlhood,
Empowerment, and Popular Visual Culture
Treva B. Lindsey

Published online: 8 May 2012
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012
Abstract In this essay I examine how popular/public culture
depicts African-American
girlhood and adolescence. Primarily using a hip hop generation
feminist theoretical
framework, I discuss both the limitations and progressive
possibilities of popular visual
culture in representing African-American girlhood and
adolescence. The essay moves
from a discussion of a video that highlights the disempowering
possibilities of mass,
digital, and social media for black girls and adolescents to a
discussion of two videos
propelled by a black girl-centered discourse of empowerment.
Each of the videos
discussed offers insight into the lived experiences of African-
American girls from
historical, aesthetic, and expressive perspectives. I use visual
media text analysis, hip
hop generation feminist theory, and social and cultural theory to
discuss how these
videos contribute to the formation of a contemporary discourse
of empowerment for
black girls and adolescents. Ultimately, I assert the importance
of popular/public culture
for empowering black girls and adolescents, while
acknowledging extant limitations and
obstacles in mass, digital, and social media.
Keywords African-American . Girlhood . Empowerment . Hip
hop feminist . Popular
visual culture

Popular, digital, and social media are primary sites for engaging
with social and
cultural norms and racial, gender, sexual, and class ideologies.
For marginalized
communities, in particular, representation in mass media can
both reify and challenge
stereotypes of their respective communities. Politics of
representation often play a
significant role for individuals and communities seeking
equality and inclusion. In
US-based mass media, a history of derogatory and
dehumanizing representations of
African-Americans exists (bell hooks 1999). According to bell
hooks (1999), very
little progress has been made in mass media towards debunking
damaging stereotypes
J Afr Am St (2013) 17:22–34
DOI 10.1007/s12111-012-9217-2
T. B. Lindsey (*)
University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, MO 65203, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
of African-Americans of all gender identities. bell hooks’ focus
on racial, gender, and
sexual representation from a black feminist standpoint pivots
around the African-
American adult experience. Adulthood is central to her analysis
and, more broadly, to
many discussions about an “African-American experience.” She
interprets represen-
tations of African-Americans as a community without honing in
on the particularity

of damaging stereotypes that circulate about black children.
Although similarities
exist between stereotypes of black children and adults, it is
important to acknowledge
differing stereotypes as well as age-inscribed responses to
harmful representations.
How would analysis of representation shift if the focus were on
African-American
children and adolescents? What are the core and subtle
differences and similarities
between the politics of representation for African-American
adults and for African-
American children and adolescents? Do representations of
African-American children
and adolescents require different theoretical frameworks to
uncover the particularities of
their experiences with representational politics in mass media?
African-American girls
are largely absent from mainstream popular visual culture,
whereas African-American
women are overrepresented in popular mediums as
hypersexualized objects of desire,
postmodern mammies, or “sistas with attitudes.” These
stereotypes inscribe the lives of
African-American girls. The relative invisibility of black girls
speaks volumes about their
place within popular visual culture. A few black female
child/adolescent driven shows
gained commercial success in the twenty-first century. Raven
Symone’s That’s So Raven
and Keke Palmer’s True Jackson, VP depict black girl
adolescence without explicitly
pandering to or addressing racial and gender stereotypes of
African-Americans.
These shows, although propelled by young, black female stars,

rely upon an implied
de-racialization of their protagonists. These black girl
characters can empower black
girls and adolescents through their visibility, but do not
necessarily provide racially
specific models or narratives of empowered African-American
girlhood.
Empowerment is integral to the self-schemas of black girls and
adolescents. Depic-
tions of African-American girls and adolescents that circulate in
popular culture can both
disempower and empower. Self-empowerment can be defined as
being both knowl-
edgeable of and able to act in healthful, safe, and self-
determined ways that affirm one’s
humanity. When considering black girls and adolescents,
however, empowerment must
be framed to specifically address black girlhood and
adolescence. Very little humanistic,
black feminist scholarship specifically explores the unique site
of black girlhood and
adolescence. Kyra Gaunt’s The Games Black Girls Play:
Learning the Ropes from
Double Dutch to Hip-Hop (2006) is one of the few examples of
scholarship that
approaches black girls, black girlhood, and empowerment from
a humanities-based,
black feminist perspective. Gaunt explores black girlhood and
their tools of empow-
erment as an ethnomusicologist. Black feminism provides a
point of departure for
exploring the possibilities of empowered black girlhood and
adolescence, but hip hop
generation feminism may offer a unique set of tools for
addressing the particularities

of contemporary black girlhood and adolescence.
Hip Hop Generation Feminism: A Theoretical Framework
For thinking through contemporary black girlhood and
adolescence, I offer hip hop
generation feminism as a conceptual and theoretical framework
for exploring
J Afr Am St (2013) 17:22–34 23
empowerment of black girls and adolescents through mass,
digital, and social media.
Hip hop generation feminism or hip hop feminism, as an
articulated standpoint arises
from Joan Morgan’sWhen Chickenheads Come Home to Roost:
A Hip Hop Feminist
Breaks It Down (2000). Morgan (2000) thoroughly discusses her
relationship with
hip hop and its gender and sexual politics from a perspective
grounded in the social,
political, economic, and cultural realities of marginalized
women in the late twentieth
century. Her work also identifies hip hop as an expressive
multigenerational culture.
Currently, hip hop’s audience spans from those coming of age
during the post-Civil
Rights era to those born in the post-9/11 era. In 2011, the Crunk
Feminist Collective
digitally published a “Hip Hop Generation Feminist Manifesto.”
Adding “genera-
tion” to their feminist moniker, this collective acknowledged
that although hip hop
generation feminists,

Appreciate the culture and the music, we do not have a blind
allegiance to it (hip
hop), nor is our feminism solely or in many cases even
primarily defined by Hip
Hop. Hip Hop links us to a set of generational concerns, and to
a community of
women, locally, nationally, and globally (Crunk Feminist
Collective 2011).
This set of generational concerns is foundational to
contextualizing contemporary
images of black girls and adolescents circulating within mass
media.
Similar to black feminists, hip hop generation feminists often
approach the expe-
riences and representations of black females by focusing on
adults. Hip hop gener-
ation feminist analyses tend to emphasize empowerment of
adults. For example, hip
hop feminism uses a sex-positive analysis when grappling with
the role of sexual
pleasure and sexual expressivity in empowering adult women
and trans-people. This
analysis shifts in application to children and adolescents.
Although similarly sex
positive, it must account for different age-specific issues of
consent, maturity, re-
sponsibility, and agency. Hip hop generation feminists utilize
what hip hop feminist
Joan Morgan identified as a “fuckin’ with the grays” framework
(Morgan 2000). This
framework provides critical tools for grappling with female
sexual desire within the
complicated spaces of hypermasculinity, misogyny, and

heteropatriarchy. This anal-
ysis challenges the policing of black women’s sexual identities
that often emerges
when black women publicly engage in explicit sexual behavior.
Black politics of
respectability within a US context, although grounded in late
nineteenth century and
twentieth century African-American women’s activism and
discourse continues to
inscribe both the lives of black women and the responses to the
circulation of (hyper)
sexualized images of black women (Harris-Perry 2011;
Henderson 2010; Hobson
2005; Jones 2007; White 2001).
Hip hop generation feminism recognizes the specificity of
experiences of the hip
hop generation, while attempting to navigate the complicated
but interwoven terrains
of racism, classism, patriarchy, sexism, ableism misogyny,
homophobia, and a pol-
itics of pleasure and sexual erotics. It also promotes
empowerment. From a hip hop
generation perspective, what constitutes empowered black
girlhood and adolescence?
More specifically, what are the possibilities for this empowered
black girlhood to
exist within public/popular cultures that continue to perpetuate
damaging and con-
trolling images of black womanhood? These images often
disempower and dehu-
manize African-American females, regardless of age. Because
popular culture,
particularly social and digital media culture offers
unprecedented access to images

24 J Afr Am St (2013) 17:22–34
of black girls, adolescents, and women, it becomes a dynamic
site for thinking
through how particular narratives and scripts about black
females circulate. I consider
the possibility of public/popular culture space being liberatory
and empowering for
black girls. Despite the limitations of the trafficking of images
of black girls that
contribute to a continued complicity with the exploitation and
denigration of young,
black females, public/popular culture can and has offered spaces
for empowering
black girls.
The Limitations: A Brief Case Study in Disempowerment
In October 2011, a video was released of a black adolescent
female having oral sex with
a black adolescent male. The taped, consensual sex act was
placed on the internet and
immediately became available on a number of websites. Over
the course of the week in
which the video was released, the female adolescent’s name
became a top trending topic
on Twitter, child pornography freely circulated, and a barrage
of commentary assaulting
the humanity of the young female and her “invisible” parents
commenced. Few in the
world of social and digital media commentary addressed the
adolescent boy in the video
or the reality that people watching and sending the video were
spectators and traffickers

of child pornography. Tweets, blog postings, and other social
media commentary
disparaged the female adolescent with words such as slut,
whore, hypersexual, and
stupid. Within the confines of a week, this female teenager
became central to extant
conversations about the oversexualization of children and
teenagers.
In most of the social media responses to the filmed sexual act,
the adolescent girl
was multiply situated as a helpless victim, an example of black
female hypersexuality,
a transgressive and morally misguided teenager, and as a
teenager lacking proper
parental guidance and supervision. Although concerns about her
safety, her health,
her pleasure, and her agency arose, she, like many other black
women and girls
whose images circulate within mass media, fueled discussions
about hypersexuality
and black womanhood. Despite her status as an adolescent, the
racialized, gender
stereotype of the hypersexual black woman became central to
her framing within
digital and social media. A victim of child pornography and
speculatively of sexual
coercion (it has been stated that she may have performed the
sexual act as a means to
reinstate her relationship with her former, intimate partner),
questions about sexual
violence and coercion remained on the margins of dialogue
(Ade-Brown 2011). There
is an array of potentially negative outcomes associated with
sexually coercive
experiences of black girls: lower self-esteem, decreased mental

health, and engage-
ment in higher risk sexual behaviors (authors).
Histories of the sexual exploitation of black women and of the
depiction of black
women as hypersexual beings continue to structure responses to
popular culture
representations of black women engaging in sex acts. If the girl
on the video were
an adult, I could use a hip hop generation feminist analysis to
discuss a politics of
empowerment that encompasses an adult female deriving
pleasure from embracing a
sexual self-schema that includes engaging in oral sex and
exhibitionism. I could also
shed light upon issues of consent and coercion that can inscribe
the sexual lives of
black women, but would make sexual agency and transgression
from established
racial, cultural, sexual, and gender norms central to close
readings of consensual,
J Afr Am St (2013) 17:22–34 25
adult activities. This analysis in its entirety, however, cannot be
applied to a girl or
teenager. Children and adolescents are not adults, and an
analysis of the female
adolescent’s actions must be situated within an analytic
framework of black girl
and adolescent empowerment. Centering on black girls and
adolescents shifts the
analysis to a discussion of consent, coercion, self-esteem,
empowerment, and the role

of popular culture in the lives of black girls and adolescents.
The adolescent girl in
this video was disempowered through popular visual and digital
culture. Despite the
reality of disempowering possibilities associated with mass
circulation of images of
black girls and adolescents, popular visual mediums such as
social and digital media
and television can afford black girls and adolescents with
empowering narratives and
images of themselves.
Using two particular black girl-centered popular culture
moments that occurred
exactly a year prior to the massive circulation of the video of
the young woman
performing oral sex, I introduce a black girl-centered discourse
of empowerment
within popular culture. On Tuesday, October 12, 2010, the long-
running children’s
program Sesame Street premiered a special musical segment
featuring an unnamed
African-American girl puppet entitled “I Love My Hair.” The
video showcased a
black girl puppet singing about the natural beauty and
versatility of her hair. The short
segment appeared to specifically target black girls through the
primary character and
the lyrical content. On Monday, October 18, 2010, Willow
Smith, child recording
artist and daughter of popular actors Will and Jada Pinkett-
Smith, released a video for
her debut single, “Whip My Hair.” The song encouraged the
celebration of an array of
hairstyles and celebrated individuality and expressivity. As of
October 2011, these

videos garnered over 65 million combined views on YouTube.
Through close readings of these moving visuals, I offer key
elements to the
formation of a hip hop generation feminist discourse of
empowerment for black girls
including healthful expressivity, media literacy, self-affirming
social networks, and
the tools and resources to develop self-schema that affirm the
uniqueness of black
girlhood. Employing these key elements, I briefly turn my
critical lens back to the
hypercirculation of the pornographic video of the female
adolescent to further
complicate my discussion of this discourse of empowerment.
Grounded in hip hop
generation feminist theory, praxis, and interests, I seek to
approach these moving
images of black girls from a critical perspective that recognizes
the necessity of
examining black girlhood on its own terms and arguably, with
its own tools.
“I Love My Hair”
For over 40 years, Sesame Street has served as a leading
children’s program with a
far-reaching global audience. Currently broadcast in over 140
countries, each version
of the show attempts to incorporate culturally specific
references, sequences, and
characters. Although originated in the USA, Sesame Street, in
its numerous country-
specific incarnations, implicitly speaks to childhood as
simultaneously culturally
specific and universal. By developing characters and sequences

that address nation-
specific issues to using a relatively comparable format
regardless of the viewing
audience, Sesame Street builds upon its stated commitment to
educating children
about diversity, while celebrating both commonalities and
differences among people.
26 J Afr Am St (2013) 17:22–34
From an HIV-positive puppet named Kami on the South African
and Kenyan
versions of Sesame Street to the African-American human
family, the Robin-
sons on the US version, Sesame Street has served as one of the
few television
shows featuring both leading and supporting characters of
African descent. Subtly
touching upon the reality of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in sub-
Saharan Africa and upon
the prevalence of stereotypes about African-American families,
this children’s show
introduced its audience to lived experiences of people of
African descent. Although
arguably not groundbreaking in its content or approach, Sesame
Street provides a
unique platform for African-American children to see
themselves represented in
popular culture.
In October 2010, a special segment aired on the US version of
Sesame Street. The
segment, created and written by the show’s head writer Jim
Mazzarino, featured a

brown puppet (presumably African-American) singing an
original song titled, “I
Love My Hair.” With lyrics professing love for her hair and the
wide array of styling
possibilities for “African-American hair,” the song, as
Mazzarino noted, responded to
a growing lack of self-esteem in his adopted, Ethiopian
daughter caused by her desire
to have long, straight blonde hair (Davis and Hopper 2010).
Although Mazzarino
produced the segment to affirm the beauty of his own daughter,
the song touched
upon several extant narratives that pivoted around black girls’
and women’s relation-
ship to Eurocentric and white hegemonic beauty standards.
Mazzarino’s lyrics do not
challenge these hegemonic beauty standards, but do encourage
black girls to embrace
their hair in spite of prevailing racialized and gendered norms
of beauty.
Black hair, as both an industry and as a discourse, has a long
and contentious
history within the African diaspora, and specifically within
black communities that
encounter white/Eurocentric beauty standards as aesthetic ideals
(Banks 2000; Byrd
and Tharps 2001; Rooks 1996). What becomes particularly
salient in both historical
and contemporary black hair discourses is the processes black
females utilize to
achieve these hegemonic beauty ideals. Those who choose to
maintain the “natural”
state of their hair often confront the possibility of being
ostracized and marginalized
from prevailing standards of beauty that uphold long, straight

hair as a universal ideal
and of being stereotyped as militant and aggressive. Natural
hair is a racially and
gender-specific term that most commonly refers black women’s
hair that has not been
altered through chemical and or other products and processes
(Rooks 1996). These
products and processes include: perms, relaxers, texturizers,
hair-straightening treat-
ments, and flat and curling irons. Those who opt for products
and processes that
straighten their hair can face accusations of racial
inauthenticity, of reinforcing white
cultural hegemony, and of trying to culturally assimilate
through aesthetic practices
(Byrd and Tharps 2001; Lake 2003). Debates among and about
black women
regarding their hair offer a rich site for examining how cultural
ideals and historically
rooted standards affect the lives of individuals and
communities.
Despite the ongoing discussions within and about black
females’ hair, popular
culture, both nationally and globally, continues to propagate a
cultural ideal of long,
straight hair. The majority of the most notable black female
popular culture stars of
the twenty-first century reflect this cultural ideal. From
Beyoncé to Ciara to Oprah
Winfrey, straight black hair has become both a default and
active ideal of black
beauty within mass media. This message becomes particularly
poignant for black
girls and adolescents, who often aspire to mimicking their
favorite popular culture

J Afr Am St (2013) 17:22–34 27
stars. The straight hair ideal for black girls and adolescents is
equally present in
shows targeting youth audiences. Disney and Nickelodeon stars,
Raven Symone and
Keke Palmer, respectively, primarily showcase straight
hairstyles. Consequently,
black girls and adolescents who imbibe both adult- and youth-
oriented popular
culture that features black females will typically only view
black women and girls
with long, straight hair. The predominance of these images of
black women’s and
girls’ hair coupled with popular images of non-black girls and
women’s long, straight
hair delivers a powerful message for young black girls: long,
straight hair is essential
to being beautiful.
“I Love My Hair” focused upon black girls embracing their
“natural” hair. From
books to blogs to salons, black women’s hair is often a focal
point for discussions
about black beauty. More recently, a growing number of voices
weighing in on
discussions about black hair emphasize the beauty and health of
black hair in its
“natural” state. The emergence of black hair businesses that
specialize in products and
processes for natural hair textures of black women has been
central to an increasing
number of black women deciding to “go natural” or refusing to

undergo processes
that alter the natural textures of their hair (Jacobs-Huey 2006;
Prince 2009). Although
mass media outlets such as advertising continue to primarily
promote texture-altering
products and processes, digital and social media have created a
platform for “natural”
hair manufacturers and stylists to build a stronger consumer
base. Despite the
growing number of natural hair-affirming outlets in digital and
social media, adver-
tisements for black girl-specific hair products typically promote
relaxers and other
texture-altering products and processes. “Kiddie Perms” are the
primary products
targeted at black girls. These relaxers produce the same effects
as “adult perms,”
which are to temporarily straighten more tightly coiled, kinky,
or curly hair textures.
The most prevalent of the “kiddie perm” genre is Just For Me.
Its commercials
feature the voices and faces of black girls and its packaging
includes images of black
girls. Just For Me commercials provide examples of the
importance of the content
and messaging of advertisements featuring and targeting black
girls. While these
commercials use black girls, it also represents a version of
black girlhood that must
conform to particular ideals of beauty and normalcy.
The “I Love My Hair” segment disrupted the “black girl hair”
landscape by
lauding the beauty of black girls’ hair without trumpeting the
necessity of
texture alteration. Following in the footsteps of black feminist

scholar bell
hooks, who in 1999 authored the children’s book, Happy to be
Nappy, this
Sesame Street segment affirmed the beauty, freedom, and
empowering possibilities
of natural “black girl hair” (bell hooks 1999). The African-
American girl puppet
proudly singing about the versatility of her hair provides an
affirming discourse about
girls with nappy, kinky, and tightly curled/coiled hair textures.
Additionally, the song
addresses the creativity of black girls by touching upon the
variety of “natural” hair
styles black girls can and do exhibit. Within a two minute
segment, this musical video
incorporates two of the key elements of a discourse of
empowerment for black girls:
healthful expressivity and the representation of a self-schema
that affirms the unique-
ness of black girlhood.
Although full autonomy is not a primary or age-appropriate
element of a black
girlhood discourse of empowerment, the formation of a sense of
self-determination
and relative autonomy is significant in the development of black
girls and
28 J Afr Am St (2013) 17:22–34
adolescents. In the lyrics of the song, the African-American girl
puppet proclaims that
she does not “need a trip to the beauty shop” to have her hair
styled (Mazzarino

2010). The black beauty salon is a fixture in many black
communities, and having
one’s hair styled is often viewed as a rite of passage for black
girls and adolescents
(Gill 2010). The proclamation by the girl puppet in the video,
however, subverts this
tradition by lauding her lack of dependence on a beauty salon
for validation or
production of her unique beauty. Not all black girls in beauty
salons are altering their
natural hair, however relaxers and “press and curls” are the
most common processes
being performed on black girls’ hair in beauty salons.
By situating herself outside of black beauty salon culture, the
puppet also presents
herself as an authorial figure with regards to her hair. She does
not need or desire a
salon because she believes in her abilities to healthily maintain
and style her own hair.
The puppet becomes a mistress of her own “hair destiny,” and
consequently estab-
lishes herself as an autonomous subject, as it pertains to her
hair. The self-affirmation
displayed by the puppet stems from both the celebration of her
hair as well as her
ability to maintain and style her hair in creative and innovative
ways. Furthermore,
she asserts her need to share her love of her hair. This sharing
allows her to connect
with real, black girls confronting images and rhetoric that
explicitly and implicitly
devalue black girls’ “natural hair” and privilege straight hair as
the ideal for female
beauty. The potential connection between the puppet and black
girls watching the

segment facilitates the development of a mass media-based
community/social
network that affirms the uniqueness and beauty of black girls.
Although a white male wrote the song and thus provides the
creative space for the
establishment of this affirming network, spaces created for and
about black girls are
integral to black girl empowerment. Black girl empowerment
within public/popular
culture stems from the creation and centralization of black girl-
centered spaces in
mass media. It is important that black girls serve as authors and
producers of the mass
media-circulated content; however, affirming and humanizing
representations of
black girls and black girlhood can also provide sites of
empowerment for black girls
engaging with public/popular culture. The circulation of
representations of empow-
ered black girls can inspire them to both see themselves as
valuable and as potential
producers of content that foregrounds their experiences as black
girls.
I Whip My Hair Back and Forth
In the week following the first airing of the “I Love My Hair”
segment, another video
featuring a black girl became a viral sensation—Willow Smith’s
“Whip My Hair.”
Prior to the video’s release, the song played in heavy rotation
on urban and pop
format radio stations. The popularity of the song created a high
level of anticipation
for the official release of the video. Preempting the release of

the official video were
several videos posted to YouTube featuring girls, predominantly
girls of color,
performing to the song. One of these videos, which featured
several young girls of
diverse racial backgrounds but had an African-American girl as
the lead or stand-in
for Willow Smith, garnered millions of views and thousands of
comments applauding
the abilities and beauty of the young dancers (Ware and Kae
2010). The song proved
inspirational for girls and sparked the creation of a distinct
creative moment that
J Afr Am St (2013) 17:22–34 29
pivoted around the musical and kinetic expressivity of black
girlhood. Gaunt (2006)
examines the everyday music culture of African-American girls
and argues that black
girls subvert extant power relations of race and gender through
the counterpublic of
the everyday popular sphere. Because the subversion of these
relations is often
rendered invisible or insignificant in popular culture, it is
important to explore the
moments in which the expressivity of African-American girls
becomes explicitly
central to popular culture and mass media.
With the official release of the video, fans and critics of the
“girls’ anthem”
acquired a sonic/visual text with which to engage African-
American girl expressivity.

Visually vibrant and colorfully captivating, the music video
offered numerous images
of girls and adults resisting conformity. The opening sequence
depicted Willow Smith
walking into a drab cafeteria with a boombox filled with her
song and paint for
“coloring” the space. Through whipping her hair, she literally
paints the room and its
occupants in an array of colors. Her disruption of the space
allows for the cafeteria
occupants to become enlivened. The hair whipping becomes a
metaphor and a
weapon for challenging conformity and established conventions.
More specifically,
Willow Smith, as a black girl, situates herself as an empowered
figure that can
disrupt, subvert, and incite.
Unlike the “I Love My Hair” segment, “Whip My Hair” does
not directly target
black girls. Smith is surrounded by a multiracial and
multiethnic cast who become
empowered to embrace their individuality and self-expressivity
through her demand-
ing that people “Whip your hair back and forth.” The message
of the song and the
video are therefore deracialized and posited as universal and
cross-racial. Further-
more, “Whip My Hair” features girls and young adolescents. By
encompassing “pre-
tweens” in her representation of youth, Smith depicts an aspect
of adolescent devel-
opment, autonomy, and self-definition. In an interview on the
Ellen Degeneres Show,
Smith explained that her song articulates that, “I’m me, I’m
doin’ what I wanna do”

(Dionne 2010). Although Smith did not write the song, her
ability to articulate
what the song means to her and how she wants it to resonate
with her audience
aligns her song and video with a discourse of black girlhood and
adolescent
empowerment. The inclusivity and diversity extant in the video
does not detract
from the fact that the protagonist/lead singer and performer of
the song and
video is a black girl. Her status as the central figure provides a
space for other
young black girls and adolescents to identify with both Smith
and the message
she believes the song conveys.
The idea of “I’m me, I’m doin’ what I wanna do,” is not
particularly groundbreak-
ing. The desire to do what one wants to do can be viewed as
selfish, childish, or
immature. However, when thinking through a standpoint in
which a black girl
demands the space to be herself and to express herself on her
own terms, Smith’s
declaration of being herself without rigid norms or ideals of
selfhood resonates as
rhetoric of black girl empowerment. Within a hip hop
generation feminist framework,
her words suggest that Smith is attempting to articulate a way to
affirm her humanity
on her own terms. Her usage of hip hop generation words and
phrases such as “turn
my swag on,” “haters,” “my grind,” and “shake them off”
situate Smith within a
generationally distinct public/popular culture space. While on
the surface, her decla-

ration may appear anti-authoritarian, a critical read of her
understanding of her song
and video reveals her desire for a space to resist conforming to
established ideals and
30 J Afr Am St (2013) 17:22–34
norms for girlhood, which is at the theoretical core of hip hop
generation feminism as
it pertains to adults (Morgan 2000). For her empowered
standpoint, Smith embraces
non-normativity and individuality. Smith’s defiance of ideals
becomes apparent
through her avant-garde natural hairstyles, her unconventional
fashion choices, and
her celebration of individualized expressivity.
A (in)visible text in the music video for “Whip My Hair” is the
presence and
performance of trans-woman and Vogue culture icon, Leyomi
Mizrahi. Playing the
role of a teacher, Mizrahi offers her queer of color body and her
Vogue-inspired
movements to her students. Her presence is subversive on
several levels. Most
viewers may be unfamiliar with Mizrahi, her trans-identity, or
the queer of color club
culture from which her movement originates. By presenting
Mizrahi as the teacher of
the students whom Smith encourages to “be themselves,” a
space of empowerment is
subtly created for youth to think through their identities and to
consider the possibil-
ities transcending established boundaries. Mizrahi literally and

figuratively subverts
gender norms through rejecting her gender assignment and
embracing a gender
identity and expression that permits her to assert her humanity.
Whereas Smith offers
girls a space to think through individuality and expressivity,
Mizrahi provides a
visible example of self-determination and of a self-authored
identity schema.
Mizrahi’s presence in the music video further validates Smith’s
anthem as space of
empowerment stemming from self-affirmation, particularly for
selves often margin-
alized and devalued within the context of popular culture and
the public sphere more
broadly. Fulfilling the role of “teacher,” Mizrahi presents
possibility for the youth in
the video as well as the video’s spectators. Her illegibility may
limit the potential
impact of her presence; nevertheless, she affords spectators with
an opportunity to
heighten their media literacy and to challenge a rigid gender
binary. Smith’s video
makes available the opportunity to discuss a progressive model
for gender and sexual
identities that is premised upon the validation and valuation of
self-authored identities
and expressions. Similar to Mizrahi resisting her gender
assignment, the video for and
lyrics of “Whip My Hair” draw attention to resisting identity
assignment based on
prevailing norms. The moving visual text also offers its
audience an opportunity to
imagine a space that validates the significance of individuals
choosing to express and

identify themselves on their own terms.
Bridging the Gap Between Loving and Whipping My Hair
From a generalizing standpoint, the common thread between
these black girl songs is
hair. The dual release of these moving visuals within a week of
one another, however,
signaled a presence of a distinct and significant cultural moment
that placed black
girls at the center of popular culture. Although literally
encouraging black girls to
love their hair, “I Love My Hair’s” affirmation of the unique
physical beauty of black
girls resonates as a cogent anthem for young girls struggling
with questions about the
meaning of beauty and if they feel comfortable and confident to
identify as beautiful.
Amidst the barrage of images of black girls and women with
long, straight hairstyles,
“I Love My Hair” offers black girls an alternative discourse for
processing the
meaning of beauty. “I Love My Hair” can become a tool in their
arsenal for self-
affirmation and expressivity.
J Afr Am St (2013) 17:22–34 31
This musical segment supplies a text for building media literacy
among black girls
encountering a relative abundance and scarcity of particular
images of black women
and girls. In Popular Culture, New Media, and Digital Literacy
in Early Childhood

(Marsh 2005), scholars discuss the importance of media literacy
in early childhood
and young adolescent development. Children engage with media
texts on their own
terms, and consequently, the insertion of a text that deviates
from common repre-
sentations of a particular group broadens the scope of children’s
experiential inter-
actions with mass media. More specifically for black girls, the
brief move from the
margins to the center could inspire black girls to think about
other ways their unique
identities can and should be affirmed. Both black feminism and
hip hop generation
feminism emphasize the importance of moving black bodies,
and particularly black
female bodies from the margins to the center of representation
and theory (Crunk
Feminist Collective 2011; bell hooks 2000; Morgan 2000). “I
Love My Hair” is a
gateway to consider the numerous ways in which black girls can
and should be
represented in popular culture. It is also suggestive of the
arguably greater potential
that exists in black girls both creating and being the primary
subjects of mass media
representations of themselves.
“Whip My Hair,” although not solely focused on black girls’
hair, contributes to
this short-lived popular discourse in which the creativity and
beauty of black girls
thrived. Smith’s song openly promotes that young people should
not be concerned
about the negativity of others and urges her audience to “keep
their heads up” and to

“keep fighting,” even when they feel like “giving up.”
Embedded within this song is a
call for perseverance, tenacity, and confidence. “Whip My Hair”
calls for audacity in
the face of adversity. While the song may not be a viable,
primary force for instilling
confidence or tenacity in black girls, its popularity indicates
that black girls, and
young people more broadly, seek popular culture texts that
impart affirming mes-
sages. Although she appeals to young girls, the more explicitly
defiant aspects of the
video and the song encompass a broader female-based audience
comprised of girls,
adolescents, and adults.
Critically considering the numerous representations and forums
of representation to
which young people of the twenty-first century will be exposed,
the significance of
developing a cadre of texts in popular culture that foreground
children’s creativity and
expressivity cannot be undervalued. Both “I Love My Hair” and
“Whip My Hair” are a
part of this burgeoning group of media texts. Their emphases
(both implied and overt)
on black female youth acknowledge the particularity and
universality of black girlhood
and adolescence. By exploring the politics of hair and the
politics of individuality and
expressivity, these videos enter into a discourse of black
girlhood empowerment. Hip
hop generation feminism provides a critical lens for
understanding this discourse.
Conclusion

Unlike the child pornographic tape that circulated in October
2011, the videos for “I
Love My Hair” and “Whip My Hair” emerge as examples of the
empowering
possibilities of mass and social media for black girls. These
mediums facilitate an
“imagined community” of black girls that are seeking to define
and articulate
themselves (Andersen 2006). Twenty-first century digital and
social media culture
32 J Afr Am St (2013) 17:22–34
can fulfill multiple and often contradictory purposes. The
popularity of internet-based
child pornography coupled with an inglorious history of sexual
exploitation of girls
presents a potentially dangerous media context for black girls.
The ease with which
images and information circulate in mass media can entail
negative and dire con-
sequences for black girls and adolescents being exploited or
being discussed within a
digital universe that continues to rely upon harmful and
dehumanizing racial, gender,
and sexual stereotypes of black girls and women.
Debunking these stereotypes and the development of a cogent
and cohesive
discourse of black girl empowerment requires an intervention
led by and on behalf
of black girls and black girlhood. Creating a counterpublic,
popular culture space for

dismantling stereotypes and challenging established ideals and
norms is one of many
ways this discourse is created and propelled. In a discussion of
a black counterpublic,
Richard Iton (2010) illuminates the political importance of
black popular culture.
Extending this understanding of black popular culture to black
girls, I replace
“political” importance with “empowering possibilities.” As
subjects, black girls and
adolescents do not have traditional political power such as
voting or holding political
office. Similar to other disenfranchised communities, however,
black girls can use
popular/public culture to depict their lived experiences and to
challenge stereotypes
that negatively affect their lives. Being visible, being heard, and
being fully actual-
ized through representations are equally important to the
empowerment of black
youth as it is to black adults. Media texts featuring, focusing
on, and targeting black
girls create a space in which empowerment can emerge.
Combating media texts that dehumanize and devalue black girls
necessitates an
arsenal of media texts that derive from a discourse of
empowerment that includes
healthful expressivity, media literacy, self-affirming social
networks, and the tools
and resources to develop self-schema that affirm the uniqueness
of black girlhood.
The formation of organizations, groups, and collectives that
promote media literacy
among black girls and adolescents, that train black girls to
create and produce content

focused on their lived experiences and that provide a space for
black girls to forge a
sense of community is a necessary step in establishing a black
girlhood-centered
discourse of empowerment. Hip hop generation feminists have
addressed and must
continue to address the specific needs of black girls. Popular
culture is one the
primary sites of critical engagement for hip hop generation
feminists. It is also a
formative site for girl and female adolescent development. By
focusing on some of
the potential outcomes for representations of black girlhood and
adolescence in mass,
digital, and social media from a hip hop generation feminist
standpoint, the value of
public/popular culture for black girls and adolescents becomes
particularly salient.
The adolescent who was filmed during a sexual act was a victim
of one of the most
dangerous crimes of twenty-first century, child pornography.
The digital and social
media era relies upon mass circulation of infinite images and
does not always account
for the damaging effects these images have on children and
adults. The video of this
adolescent and the subsequent mass media response exemplify
the disempowering
possibilities of public/popular culture. Her victimization,
however, provides a rich
opportunity to dialogue with black girls about racial, gender,
and sexual stereotypes,
black girls’ emergent sexual self-schemas, the positive and
negative possibilities of
social and mass media, and the importance of embracing a

discourse of empower-
ment. Pairing a discussion of that girl’s victimization with
examples of empowering
J Afr Am St (2013) 17:22–34 33
public/popular cultural texts epitomizes how hip hop generation
feminists and society
more broadly must continue to think about the range of
possibilities, both positive
and negative, popular/public culture affords black girls and
adolescents.
References
Ade-Brown, L. (2011). “Leave Amber Cole alone: Social media
is victimizing our young people.”Global Grind.
http://globalgrind.com/news/leave-amber-cole-alone-social-
media-victimizing-our-young-people.
Accessed 30 Dec 2011.
Andersen, B. (2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the
origin and spread of nationalism. New
York: Verso.
Banks, I. (2000). Hair matters: Beauty, power, and black
women’s consciousness. New York: New York
University Press.
Byrd, A. D., & Tharps, L. L. (2001). Hair story: Untangling the
roots of black hair in America. New York:
St. Martin’s Press.
Crunk Feminist Collective (2011). Hip hop generation feminist

manifesto. Crunk Feminist Collective Blog.
http://crunkfeministcollective.wordpress.com/. Accessed 8 Nov
2011.
Dionne, Z. (2010). Willow Smith explains ‘whip my hair’ on
TV, performs live. http://www.popeater.com/
2010/11/02/willow-smith-ellen-degeneres-show-whip-my-hair/.
Accessed 12 Oct 2011.
Gaunt, K. D. (2006). The games black girls play: Learning the
ropes from double-dutch to hip-hop. New
York: Routledge.
Gill, T. (2010). Beauty shop politics: African American
women’s activism in the beauty industry. Urbana-
Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
Harris-Perry, M. V. (2011). Sister citizen: Shame, stereotypes,
and black women in America. New Haven:
Yale University Press.
Henderson, C. E. (2010). Imagining the black female body:
Reconciling image in print and visual culture.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hobson, J. (2005). Venus in the dark: Blackness and beauty in
popular culture. New York: Routledge.
bell hooks. (1999). Black looks: Race and representation.
Boston, MA: South End Press
Hooks, B. (2000). Feminist theory: From margin to center.
Boston: South End Press.
Iton, R. (2010). In search of the black fantastic: Politics and
popular culture in the post-civil rights era.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Jacobs-Huey, L. (2006). From the kitchen to the parlor:

Language and becoming African American
women’s hair care. New York: Oxford University Press.
Jones, M. S. (2007). All bound up together: The woman
question in African American public culture, 1830–
1900. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Lake, O. (2003). Blue veins and kinky hair: Naming and color
consciousness in Africa America. Westport:
Praeger.
Davis, D., & Hopper, J. (2010). “I Love My Hair” video
inspired by father’s love of daughter. ABC News.
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/sesame-street-writer-inspired-
daughter-creates-love-hair/story?
id011908940. Accessed 6 Nov 2011.
Marsh, J. (Ed.). (2005). Popular culture, new media, and digital
literacy in early childhood. New York:
Routledge.
Mazzarino, J. (2010). “I Love My Hair.” Sesame Street.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v0enpFde5rgmw.
Accessed 12 Oct 2011.
Morgan, J. (2000). When chickenheads come home to roost: A
hip hop feminist breaks it down. New York:
Simon & Schuster.
Prince, A. (2009). The politics of black women’s hair. Ontaria:
Idiomatic.
Rooks, N. M. (1996). Hair raising: Beauty, culture, and African
American women. New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press.

Ware, M., & Kae, J. (2010). Whip my hair choreography.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v0C5L1TrqhUJ4. Accessed 12 Oct 2011.
White, E. F. (2001). Dark continent of our bodies: Black
feminism and the politics of respectability.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
34 J Afr Am St (2013) 17:22–34
http://globalgrind.com/news/leave-amber-cole-alone-social-
media-victimizing-our-young-people
http://crunkfeministcollective.wordpress.com/
http://www.popeater.com/2010/11/02/willow-smith-ellen-
degeneres-show-whip-my-hair/
http://www.popeater.com/2010/11/02/willow-smith-ellen-
degeneres-show-whip-my-hair/
daughter-creates-love-hair/story?id=11908940
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enpFde5rgmw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enpFde5rgmw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5L1TrqhUJ4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5L1TrqhUJ4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5L1TrqhUJ4“One Time for
My Girls”: African-American Girlhood, Empowerment, and
Popular Visual CultureAbstractHip Hop Generation Feminism:
A Theoretical FrameworkThe Limitations: A Brief Case Study
in Disempowerment“I Love My Hair”I Whip My Hair Back and
ForthBridging the Gap Between Loving and Whipping My
HairConclusionReferences

NYU Press
Chapter Title: The Sexual (Mis)Education of Latina Girls
Book Title: Respect Yourself, Protect Yourself
Book Subtitle: Latina Girls and Sexual Identity
Book Author(s): Lorena Garcia
Published by: NYU Press. (2012)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qfhq7.6
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Yourself, Protect Yourself
This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun
2019 23:07:12 UTC

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
>> 57
3
The Sexual (Mis)Education of Latina Girls
For our first scheduled interview, I met Samantha, who had
character-
ized her mother as “old-school Puerto Rican,” at Centro
Adelante, where
she was organizing poster-size diagrams for a presentation she
was prepar-
ing on safe sex.1 The professionally printed diagrams illustrated
female and
male reproductive organs and different birth control and safe-
sex methods.
Samantha, along with Carolyn, a young African American
woman, had been
training to be a peer health educator at the Chicago Committee
on Youth
Health (CCYH). Under the supervision of a CCYH youth
coordinator, the
two young women of color led an engaging one-hour workshop
on safe sex
for a group of fifteen to twenty young women and men that
afternoon. Their
audience, composed mostly of Latina/o youth, listened
attentively and asked
pointed questions about access to sexual health resources in the
community
and about safe-sex methods. A young man asked where one
could obtain an

HIV test and whether parental consent was required for such a
test, while
a young woman inquired about parental consent for access to
birth control.
With minimal assistance from the youth coordinator, Samantha
and Carolyn
2019 23:07:12 UTC
58 << T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G
i rl s
confidently addressed questions directed at them. Later, I asked
Samantha
whether she had been nervous during the workshop. She
confidently replied,
“I’m just trying to spread some knowledge other teens might
want to know
about. Please, especially when a lot of these schools don’t
really do a good
job of telling it like it is, they don’t care about what we wanna
know or need
to know, just what they think we should know and shouldn’t be
knowing and
doing.”
Samantha, like the majority of girls I spoke with, expressed her
dissatis-
faction with school-based sex education.2 Describing some of
her own expe-
riences with sex education in the classroom, the honor roll
student stated,

“Everyone is always telling us, like, ‘Knowledge is power,’ this
and that. But
when it comes down to it with some things, like sex ed., some
teachers are
like, ‘Uh-uh, that’s too much information for you. You only
need to know
this.’” School-based sex education, whether abstinence-only or
comprehen-
sive, left much to be desired in terms of the knowledge that was
imparted to
the Latina girls who shared their experiences with me.
Research on sex education has revealed that sex education
policies are
informed by national and local struggles over the meanings and
conse-
quences of gender, race, class, and sexual categories.3 The
implementation
of sex education has generally been guided by the perceived
need to protect
the sexual innocence of youth or to protect youth from the
dangers of their
own sexual curiosity. Decisions about which objective to pursue
are often
guided by assumptions about race/ethnicity.4 While middle- and
upper-class
white youth are often perceived to be in need of intervention to
guide them
through their “normally abnormal” hormone-besieged
adolescence, youth
of color are typically constructed as always “at risk” and a
source of dan-
ger.5 And feminist scholars have pointed to the ways that
gender and sexual
inequalities are produced and maintained through sex education
lessons.6

Thus, it should not be assumed, as the sociologist Jessica Fields
contends,
that all young people encounter sex education curricula in the
same manner.7
In this chapter, I explore Latina girls’ accounts of their school-
based sex
education experiences in middle school. Their interactions with
teachers and
sex educators were tied to various assumptions about Latinas
and were cen-
tral to their stories of school-based sex education in middle
school. Their
experiences reveal not only how sexism, racism, and the
presumption that all
girls are heterosexual structure the content and delivery of
school-based sex
education for Latinas girls but also how these young women
relate their need
to be informed sexual subjects to their educational plans. Their
narratives
indicate that their ability to be academically successful is also
an important
component of their crafting of femininity, a process that entails
negotiation
2019 23:07:12 UTC
T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G i rl s
>> 59
of their sexual subjectivity and respectability. The intersection

of Latina
girls’ multiple identities—as U.S. Latinas, as daughters of
immigrants and/or
migrants, as students, and as sexual subjects—shapes their
understandings
of the role of education in their lives and the importance they
assign to their
future success.
Sex Education and Public Schools
Presently, sex education curricula are grouped into two broad
categories:
abstinence-plus (also called comprehensive sexuality education)
and absti-
nence-only-until-marriage (also called abstinence-only).
Comprehensive
sex education does cover abstinence but also teaches about
contraception,
sexually transmitted diseases, HIV, and abortion. Slightly more
than half of
the girls I spoke with described access to this type of sex
education. The rest
of the young women were provided abstinence-only education.
Abstinence-
only education does not teach about contraception or abortion.
When sexu-
ally transmitted diseases and HIV are referenced, it is typically
to highlight
the negative consequences of premarital sex.
With the exception of two girls, all of the young women who
participated
in this study were or had been at one point Chicago Public
Schools (CPS)
students.8 Since the average age of young women at the time of

interview was
sixteen, their middle school sex education generally occurred
between 1998
and 2002, a period marked by increased federal funding for
abstinence-only
programs. Although the Reagan administration had made federal
funding
available for abstinence-only sex education beginning in the
early 1980s, the
support and promotion of abstinence-only programs intensified
in the mid-
1990s. More than $1 billion were channeled to abstinence-only
sex education
programs between 1996 and 2006, while federal funds were not
made avail-
able for comprehensive sexuality education.9
Although girls discussed their sexuality education experiences
at all grade
levels, it was their experiences in the sixth through the eighth
grades that
they elaborated upon in great detail.10 During the years, while
these young
women were middle school students, the Board of Education of
the Chicago
Public Schools did not take an official stance or provide
guidelines on sex
education. Thus, it was possible to have variations in the quality
and content
of sex education in CPS. However, there were similarities in the
girls’ descrip-
tions of their sex education in terms of how they participated in
it and who
was designated to teach it. For example, the majority of the
girls said that
female and male students generally received sex education

together in the
classroom, whether it was comprehensive or abstinence-only sex
education.
2019 23:07:12 UTC
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Guest speakers, most of whom were women, typically taught
sex education
in middle school, according to most of the young women.11 But
teachers also
figured prominently in the girls’ discussions of their sex
education.12 In what
follows, I discuss themes and patterns that cut across both types
of sex edu-
cation curricula, allowing us to further understand how
inequalities emerge
and are reinforced through sex education in general.
Maintaining Inequality through School-Based Sex Education
The girls’ narratives reveal that heteronormativity was central
to the content
and delivery of both types of sex education curricula. In girls’
descriptions of
their sex education experiences, lessons were crafted around
heterosexuality
and heterosexual norms. And heterosexuality was most often
discussed in
relation to masculinity and femininity. In other words,

masculinity and fem-
ininity were tightly linked to heterosexuality, and femininity
was connected
to the good-girl/bad-girl dichotomy within sex education
lessons. However,
the institutionalization of heterosexuality via sex education also
entailed the
incorporation of racialized gender stereotypes to produce
specific lessons for
Latina youth about how they should engage sex education in the
classroom
and what kind of sex education information was most relevant
to them.
Lessons about Engaging Sex Education in the Classroom
Whether they were speaking of abstinence-only or
comprehensive sex educa-
tion experiences, many girls told of interactions with teachers
and sex educators
in which students were invited or expected to ask questions but
were then dis-
ciplined for their level of engagement with sex education. Much
as my friends
and I did when we were middle school students, they
characterized their male
peers as “acting foolish,” “not taking it seriously,” or “saying
ignorant things.”
Quite often, girls told of incidents in which boys were scolded
or disciplined by
teachers for misbehaving during sex education. Girls, on the
other hand, were
described as being reprimanded for their active engagement
with sex education
in the classroom. In other words, it was possible for female
students to be too

interested in learning about sex. Such was the experience of
seventeen-year-
old Minerva, whose mother, Carmen, rejected the idea that
Minerva was a lost
cause because she was no longer a virgin. Not one to shy away
from speaking
her mind, the talkative young woman often made comments that
elicited either
laughs or gasps from her peers at Hogar del Pueblo. Raising her
arm as she
described doing to ask a sex educator whether it was “true” that
the morning-
after pill could prevent pregnancy, Minerva said, “Anyways, she
[sex educator]
2019 23:07:12 UTC
>> 61
was starting to answer me when Ms. Phyllis [her eighth-grade
teacher] was like,
‘Now why do you want to know about that, Minerva? You don’t
got anything
to worry about if you’re behaving and, anyway, we are out of
time.’” Other girls
told of similar exchanges with teachers and sex educators in
which their inqui-
ries were met with suspicion, suggesting that they were
perceived as “knowing
girls” and therefore assumed to be sexually active because they
displayed some

knowledge and/or curiosity about sexuality.13 By publicly
questioning Minerva
about the motives behind her inquiry, her teacher communicated
to the stu-
dents not only that certain questions were invalid but that they
could shift girls
unto the wrong side of the good-girl/bad-girl dichotomy.
The young women vividly recalled that their teachers and sex
educators
prefaced or followed lessons with a statement about the need for
girls to be
mindful of their respectability, emphasizing that they should
behave like
“good girls” or “young ladies.” A young Puerto Rican with
pink-streaked hair
and a small silver hook ring on her eyebrow, seventeen-year-old
Imelda, told
me of how her eighth-grade teacher interjected this message
during a guest
speaker’s comprehensive sex education presentation:
Like the woman [the sex educator] was talking about sex as
being a per-
sonal choice and not letting anyone pressure us, and that when
we were
ready we should remember to be safe, and all that, you know?
And Mrs.
Damenzo [the teacher] is like, “Yeah, but they shouldn’t be
doing it, right?
They should act like young ladies so that the boys will respect
them.”
According to girls, these contradictory lessons left them
uncertain about
what to do with the information presented to them. Inés, whose

mother
slapped her when she found out about her sexual behavior,
frustratingly
explained, “I don’t get it, they tell you all about being safe,
then turn around
and tell you, ‘But you really don’t need to know this, unless you
a hoochie.’”
Teachers and sex educators were never described as warning
boys that
their respect was tied to their sexual behavior. These gender-
specific mes-
sages implicitly communicated to girls and boys not only that
girls were the
intended recipients of sex education but that there are limits to
their sex edu-
cation, given that the knowledge sought should reflect sexual
modesty.
Yet, the girls’ narratives also suggest that these gender-specific
messages
were fused with perceptions about them as Latina girls.
Teachers and sex
educators inscribed the good-girl/bad-girl dichotomy with
racialized sexual
stereotypes of Latinas that functioned to specify the kind of
“bad girls” they
should avoid becoming (i.e., the pregnant Latina teen or the
sexually pro-
miscuous Latina). The majority of young women described
interactions with
2019 23:07:12 UTC

i rl s
teachers and sex educators in which references were made to
these particular
“bad girls.” Olivia, who desired to be a social worker,
encountered such a les-
son from her seventh-grade abstinence-only sex educator:
The lady [the sex educator] talking to us was all about how true
love
waits. Every time I asked a question she didn’t like or whatever,
she would
say, “That is not something someone your age should even be
thinking
about.” . . . I think I was annoying her ’cause she just said,
“Maybe a lot of
girls you know are having sex, but you need to be better than
that. When
you ask things like that, it makes people think you are like
those girls.”
Like Olivia, other young women reported that teachers and sex
educators
assumed that they already knew or were acquainted with “those
girls,” who
were perceived to be prevalent in students’ neighborhoods. This
was seven-
teen-year-old Elvia’s experience. A cadet in her high school
JROTC (Junior
Reserve Officers Training Corps) program, Elvia shared how
her eighth-grade
sex educator responded to her when she questioned her
suppositions about
Latinas: “She got all embarrassed . . . and just said, ‘Well,

I’m just telling you
how it is. Numbers don’t lie, there are a lot of teenagers in your
community
who are making real poor choices when it comes to sex.’” The
mention of
“those girls” and “a lot of teenagers” by these young women’s
teachers referred
not to girls or youth in the general sense but specifically to
Latina youth.
Latina girls’ sex education experiences reveal that their
interactions with
teachers and sex educators constituted a heterosexualizing
process that sup-
ported gender inequalities between boys and girls and among
the girls them-
selves. Teachers and sex educators not only presumed that all
students were
heterosexual but also invoked a good-girl/bad-girl dichotomy
that kept boys’
sexual behaviors invisible and unchecked. Furthermore, this
dichotomy was
racialized, in that it both borrowed on and supported the notion
that Latinas
are culturally predisposed to fall on the “bad” side of it.14
Lessons about “Latino Culture” and Pregnancy Prevention
Another point that was widely discussed in the girls’ accounts
of their
school-based sex education experiences was the emphasis
placed on preg-
nancy prevention lessons. Although these young women were
warned not
to be like “those girls,” their narratives suggest that they were
still viewed as

a particular type of girl—a Latina teen always at heightened
risk for preg-
nancy. Minerva articulated her awareness of how this perception
of Latinas
figured into her sex education:
2019 23:07:12 UTC
>> 63
Sometimes they come at us like we are these ghetto-ass kids
who just make
babies and drop out of school . . . like we all have single moms
on welfare
that don’t show us how to be responsible so they talk down to
us, like,
“OK, we know that in the Hispanic culture it’s okay for girls to
get preg-
nant young and become mothers, but not in American culture,
okay?”
Minerva, like many other young women, criticized teachers and
sex
educators for often connecting Latina girls’ risk for pregnancy
to a “Latino
culture” in which not only were Latinas presumed to be sexually
oriented
toward Latino men but also gender relations among them were
assumed to
be shaped by a unique machismo system oppressive to women
(“machismo”

is commonly conceptualized as a strong and exaggerated sense
of mascu-
linity specific to Latinos). Loudly popping her gum every so
often as she
thought about my questions, sixteen-year-old Miriam, a self-
described “tom-
boy,” recounted with much annoyance such a lesson provided by
her sev-
enth-grade sex educator: “[She] started talking about Latino
culture and say-
ing that because of machismo, guys were always gonna try to
control us and
tell us how many babies to have, and that they were too macho
to wear con-
doms.” Experiences such as Miriam’s illustrate how the
heterosexual param-
eters of femininity are maintained through gender and
race/ethnic-specific
sex education lessons; such lessons depict young Latinos as
sexually manipu-
lative and ignorant about condom use and also communicate to
young Lati-
nas that their main task as unmarried young women is to
develop the skills
necessary to effectively fulfill their sexual gatekeeper role.
The significance of racialized gender stereotypes of Latinas was
particu-
larly evidenced in the ways in which information about the
Depo-Provera
shot was provided to girls. Some young women related that sex
educators
spent a considerable amount of time emphasizing the shot as an
effective
form of birth control. Their narratives suggest that sex
educators generously

supplied both information and advice about the effectiveness of
this particu-
lar birth control option. Sitting cross-legged on a sofa across
from me, six-
teen-year-old Maritza remembered how a sex educator
introduced “the shot”
to the young women in Maritza’s eighth-grade class:
So this woman [the sex educator] has the nerve to get up there
and say, “I
ain’t gonna spend too much time on condoms ’cause you
probably won’t
use them anyway. Guys usually don’t wanna wear them ’cause
of all the
machismo and stuff. So if you are gonna have sex, and you
really shouldn’t,
then you should wear a condom and at least know about the pill
or shot so
you won’t get pregnant.”
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Similarly, fifteen-year-old Marta, who always seemed to be
taking pictures
of her friends at Hogar del Pueblo and was a cadet in her high
school JROTC
program, told of how the sex educator presented information
about Depo-
Provera to her eighth-grade class: “She [the sex educator] said

something
like, ‘Too many Hispanic girls feel that having a baby is no big
deal, but don’t
believe it . . . the shot is a good way to help you be safe.’ . .
. I felt that she
thought we were all pendejas [idiots or stupid], like the shot
would be easier
for us since all we worried was about getting pregnant.”
The pregnancy prevention lessons that Latina youth encountered
in
their sex education are informed by the heteronormative
designation of
sexual relations and bodies as reproductive. The experiences of
Maritza,
Marta, and many other Latina girls reveal that they are assigned
hetero-
sexuality but that they are seen as failing to conform to
idealized hetero-
normative standards. Their bodies, read through a racial-gender
lens, are
interpreted as excessively reproductive. Historically, there have
been racial-
ized gender stereotypes about the reproductive decision making
of Latinas
in the United States, such as in depictions of them as wanting
large fami-
lies and refusing or unable to use birth control. However,
scholars have
asserted that Latinas’ sexuality and reproduction have recently
received
intense scrutiny entrenched in a larger concern about the
immigrant
“invasion.”15 Anti-immigrant discourses and policies have
fueled public ste-
reotypes about the “hyperfertility” of Latinas, which inform the

develop-
ment of social policies directed at them, particularly at their
bodies.16 For
example, there has been controversy surrounding the 1992 FDA
approval
of the Depo-Provera injection; among the key issues are the
unethical test-
ing of this form of birth control on women of color in
developing coun-
tries and the heavy marketing of this form of birth control to
women of
color in the United States.17 These scholarly insights on
societal perceptions
of and responses to Latinas’ reproduction provide a way to
make sense
of the experiences Latina girls encountered regarding the
presentation of
birth control information in sex education. And, as the girls’
narratives
indicate, they perceived their sex education to be limited; they
attributed
this to racial-gender biases, exemplified by Marta’s statement
that the
Depo-Provera shot was emphasized because the sex educators
assumed
that all Latina girls “worried was about getting pregnant.” The
racialized
heteronormative assumption of Latina bodies as potentially
overreproduc-
tive that girls encountered often constrained their access to
information,
particularly the knowledge sought by young women who in
middle school
were exploring the possibility of identities not defined by
heterosexuality,
as I discuss in the next section.

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>> 65
Learning to Conceal Same-Sex Desire
Young Latinas who identified as lesbian said that, while in
middle school,
they had not yet identified themselves as such but that they had
an aware-
ness of their emerging sexual identity during this time. Several
shared with
me that they had had “crushes” on girls at this age. As
Margarita put it, “I
thought this girl in class was nice, but it was such a crush!”
Recollecting her
attraction to her middle school friend, the high school senior,
whose mother
saw her kissing another young woman, occasionally smiled and
laughed out
loud. Similarly, Imelda reflected, “I knew that I liked girls, but
I don’t think I
saw myself as a lesbian at that point.” This group of girls often
described being
confused during middle school about the feelings they had for
other girls.
These young women indicated that they did not experience
school-based
sex education as a supportive context in which to explore their

feelings and
questions. As eighteen-year-old Cristina explained, “I knew I
didn’t look at
guys the way I looked at girls, but, hell, no, there is no way the
teachers were
gonna wanna hear that!” Cristina, a young Puerto Rican with
short, curly
brown hair imagined out loud how teachers would have
responded had she
dared asked a question about “getting it on with girls.” Shaking
her head at
the possible scenario, she said, “They would’ve been like, ‘You
must be crazy!’
and probably just ignore me or call my mom to tell her I wasn’t
behaving in
school or something.” With the exception of only one young
woman, this
group of girls did not report asking questions during their sex
education les-
sons in middle school.
Seventeen-year-old Linda was the only lesbian-identified girl
who
reported venturing to ask a question, albeit anonymously, while
in middle
school. Taking a moment to pull back her straight black hair
into a pony tail,
she recalled that her eighth-grade teacher instructed the students
to write
down their questions so that she could “pick some” to provide
to the sex edu-
cator the next day. As the teacher reviewed the questions out
loud, she came
upon Linda’s question:
She started yelling, “Who asked this?! Who asked the question

about
books about lesbian teenagers?!” Shit, I did, but I wasn’t gonna
say any-
thing! . . . She got more pissed off and was like, “I don’t know
who did it,
but I hope it wasn’t one of you girls, because you should know
better than
to act so immature.”
The response to Linda’s anonymous question is yet another
example of
how teachers directed gender-specific comments exclusively to
girls about
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acceptable sexual behavior. Such a response is also reflective of
the expecta-
tion that girls will assume “femininized responsibility” for
helping maintain
order within the classroom.18 However, the dismissal of
Linda’s question as
“immature” once again reflects an assumption that all the
students were het-
erosexual and reinforces the message that that anything outside
of hetero-
sexuality is abnormal.
The middle school classroom for this group of girls was

generally not a
site in which they felt safe exploring their sexual identity. Like
Linda, the
other girls stated that they were “not gonna say anything” that
would draw
unwanted attention to their same-sex attractions. To further
ensure this,
they also spoke of making efforts to be recognized as “straight”
by peers and
school authorities. Eighteen-year-old Barbara, whose mother
told family
members that Barbara was too dedicated to her studies to be
interested in
boys, recounted how and why she performed a heterosexual
femininity in
the eighth grade:
There was this guy in our class who everyone thought he was
gay. . . . Any-
way, the guys would always pick on him a lot, calling him
“maricón” [fag].
During a workshop, some of the guys were being smart-asses
and said,
“So, Manolo wants to know about having sex with other guys,
’cause he’s
a fag.” Most of the class laughed and the messed-up thing was
that the sex
educator ended up laughing, too, even though she told them to
be respect-
ful. I didn’t want to be treated that way, so I just acted like I
was just a regu-
lar girl, you know, saying that I thought this boy and this boy
were cute,
even though I had a crush on a girl in my classroom.
Like Barbara, other lesbian-identified girls explained feeling

intense pres-
sure to conform to heterosexuality to avoid mistreatment by
peers, which
they saw as especially being inflicted upon gender-
nonconforming boys.
While a couple of these young women described themselves as
also being
gender nonconforming (i.e., “tomboyish”), they still felt
compelled to express
desire for boys to deflect their peers’ potential suspicion and
thereby avoid
verbal or physical attacks. Barbara’s description of the sex
educator’s laugh-
ter at the comments made about Manolo resonates with other
studies that
have found that teachers, intentionally or inadvertently, support
heteronor-
mativity in both their response and their lack of response to
expressions of
homophobia.19
However, two girls told of instances in which they did attempt
to chal-
lenge the heteronormativity they encountered in their middle
school–based
sex education classes, specifically the virginity pledges
presented to them in
2019 23:07:12 UTC
>> 67

abstinence-only sex education. As part of abstinence-only
programs, young
women and men are often asked to pledge to refrain from
premarital sex,
typically in the form of signed contracts. A friendly olive-
skinned young
Puerto Rican woman, seventeen-year-old Arely related that her
seventh-
grade teacher made her stand outside in the hallway during the
remainder
of a sex education presentation as punishment for “ripping the
virginity
pledge” form that she had been asked to sign by a sex educator.
When I asked
her whether she thought this was fair, she responded, “I didn’t
care. It’s not
like I really wanted to listen to that bullshit about the only right
way to have
sex is when you are married and with a person of the opposite
sex. She [her
teacher] never really asked me why I ripped the form. . . . I
don’t think she
wanted to know, know what I mean?”
The teacher’s reaction to Arely can be interpreted as
indifference to her
students’ thoughts on the subject matter presented to them (i.e.,
as being
focused more on having “docile” bodies in the classroom than
on taking the
time to find out what provoked the behavior ), but it can also be
reflective
of teachers’ lack of training and their discomfort in addressing
the needs of
LBGTQ and gender-nonconforming students, especially within

an absti-
nence-only sex education context.20 Arely’s challenge to
heteronormative
mandates by refusing to sign a virginity pledge may have
briefly created an
opportunity to destabilize heteronormativity, but it was quickly
shut down
by her teacher’s refusal to engage the “teachable moment”
presented by Are-
ly’s contestation. Arely’s interaction with her teacher, along
with the narra-
tives of girls who identified as lesbian, reveal that same-sex
identities, prac-
tices, and desires remained unacknowledged within sex
education, which
reinforced heterosexuality as the norm and assumed that the
only significant
identity for Latina/o students was a racial/ethnic identity
already rooted in
heterosexuality.21
Latina girls’ own understandings of how their identities
mattered for
their access to school-based sex education and for their larger
educational
ambitions, which I turn to in the next section, make evident the
ways in
which they negotiated their development of themselves as
informed sex-
ual subjects in relation to their futures. They expressed a
determination
to secure for themselves successful futures, which, for them,
was a neces-
sary component of their femininity. Their narratives indicate
that they also
sought to claim sexual respectability for themselves through an

emphasis
on their educational plans. The importance that Latina girls
assigned to
their education and futures was shaped by the complex ways in
which their
racial/ethnic, generational, and class identities intersected with
their gender
and sexual identities.
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Risking Educational Failure
The setting sun cast a warm glow in the large second-floor hall
at Hogar
del Pueblo. The hall was usually utilized for the preschool
program and
the weekly high school tutoring program, but on this June
evening it had
been transformed into a ceremony and reception space for the
graduating
seniors of the tutoring program.22 Tucked away on the low
shelves lining
the walls were children’s toys and puzzles, and the only
remaining evidence
of the preschool program was the children’s summer-themed
artwork that
decorated the large windows on the perimeter of most of the
hall. The usual

long folding tables and chairs used for the high school tutoring
program
had been replaced by rows of festively adorned chairs that raced
the small
stage area. Several people were congregated toward the back of
the room
near a buffet table of appetizers and beverages that included
items such
as empanadas, flautas, guacamole and chips, and agua de
horchata (rice
water). Instead of wearing their usual wardrobes of jeans, t-
shirts, sweat-
shirts or the school uniform of polo shirt and khakis, almost all
of the
youth participants of the tutoring program, whether graduates or
not, were
dressed up for the occasion. The pride that the young men and
women took
in their outfits was evident in their smiling compliments to each
other on
their dress shirts, shoes, ties, blouses, and summer dresses. A
few of them
blushed at the flattery but still seemed pleased with it. Many of
the gradu-
ates’ parents and siblings were also in attendance. As we waited
for the cer-
emony to commence, a projector screen displayed a slideshow
of various
activities the youth had participated in over the course of the
year. Many
of the images showed them studying, working on computers, or
discuss-
ing homework with their mentors. Some pictures illustrated
their volunteer
activities and various outings, such as sports games, festivals,
and college

visits. Occasionally, there were outbursts of laughter as the
youth recog-
nized themselves and their friends in pictures that they had not
realized
were being taken at the time.
During the ceremony, graduating students were asked to
approach the
front of stage to be individually acknowledged. I, along with
others who par-
ticipated in the tutoring program as staff, mentors, or students,
was pleas-
antly surprised to see Nancy because she had stopped
participating in the
tutoring program toward the end of her pregnancy. That she was
there with
her family, including her baby boy, indicated that she had
managed to gradu-
ate from high school. Her mother and father, both in tears,
enthusiastically
applauded for their daughter, clearly very proud of her
accomplishment. As
the ceremony came to a close, the director of the organization
reminded all
2019 23:07:12 UTC
>> 69
of the young people to not let anything “stand in the way” of
their education

and told them that, as alumni of the high school tutoring
program, they had
a “responsibility” to continue with their educations.
I decided to head home after assisting with some of the
reception
cleanup. Outside I found seventeen-old Jocelyn and Stephanie,
who were
waiting for Jocelyn’s older brother to arrive and give them a
ride home.
“Next year, it’ll be your turn to graduate,” I told them. “Can
you believe you
only have one more year left of high school?!” They both
nodded, “For real!
It’s gonna go real fast, I bet!” exclaimed Jocelyn. Stephanie
then said, “Did
you all see Nancy’s baby? He’s a lil’ papi-chulo [handsome/cute
young man]!”
“Man, I’m glad that Nancy didn’t drop out of school!” Jocelyn
added. After a
pause, she continued, “She kinda messed up though. She
should’ve waited.”
At that moment her brother arrived, so we were unable to
continue our
conversation.
I walked away from that conversation puzzled by Jocelyn’s
comment that
Nancy should have “waited.” I wondered whether she meant that
she thought
that Nancy should have waited to have a baby, waited to have
sex, or waited
for both? I was trying to make sense of her remark in light of
our first inter-
view, during which the tall young woman said that it “annoyed”
her when

adults told young people to “wait” until marriage to begin
having sex. A few
weeks later, during her second interview, I asked her about it.
Lorena: When you said that Nancy should’ve waited—were you
talking
about her waiting to have sex?
Jocelyn: No, I didn’t mean it like that! I meant like waiting to
have a baby.
I mean, she finished high school and that’s all good, but she
should’ve
waited and finished college so she can get a good job and then
have a
baby.
Like many of the other young Latinas, Jocelyn thought there
was specific
order in which certain milestones should be achieved in the
transition into
womanhood. For instance, Lourdes, a young Mexican with plans
to become
an accountant, told me, “I’m gonna graduate, go to college,
work and enjoy
my social life first. Then maybe marriage. But I’m gonna be
able to take
care of myself and a baby when I have one.” And Annabelle,
who wanted
to be a police officer, had this to say about her future plans: “I
just gotta do
what I gotta do for me now, know what I’m saying? I’m going
to college,
gonna get a job, maybe a car and a house. Then maybe get
married. And
have kids. But I need to have my shit together first, I just want
to make sure

I’m stable.” Every single girl I spoke with mentioned her
intention and her
2019 23:07:12 UTC
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desire to go to college, suggesting that these young women did
not see a high
school diploma as sufficient to guarantee their future
opportunities. Without
prompting, almost all of them formulated in similar order how
they wanted
these milestones to play out in their lives, with education and
career at the
top of the list.23
According to Latina girls, the sequence of these achievements
was impor-
tant for their ability to have better life chances, as Rosalba
expressed to me
when she shared with me her desire to have a “business-type”
career: “I
just want to do things the right way [my emphasis] so that way
it ain’t so
hard in life.” In other words, they expressed a belief that, if
they pursued
these milestones in the order in which they were “supposed” to,
successful
futures would be possible for them. As I became more attentive
to how they

described their aspirations, I came to realize that Latina girls’
perspectives
on their pathways to adulthood reflected their attempt to assert
some con-
trol over their futures and to shed the stigma of being identified
as young
women who were “at risk.” Linda, for example, prefaced her
plans to become
a school counselor with this comment: “Most people look at me
and other
girls like me and probably just think we ain’t shit and ain’t
gonna do noth-
ing with our lives.” Young women constructed their sexual
respectability not
only through that which they would not do or become, as I
discuss in chap-
ter 4, but also through that which they gained, namely their
educational and
career credentials.
The weight that they placed on their need to do well
academically was
significantly informed by their identities as second-generation
Latinas. They
saw their educational aspirations as having implications not
only for them
as individuals but for their families, as well. For instance,
though uncertain
as to the career that she wanted for herself, Margarita insisted
that she had
to graduate from high school and go to college “Because my
parents never
could do that. They got here and just been working hard. I got a
chance to go
to school because of all they’ve been through.” Likewise, Celia
stated that she

wanted to attend college to become a nurse:
Partly ’cause I feel like it would be disrespectful to my mom
not to, ’cause
she’s been bustin’ her ass working at that school cafeteria all
these years.
And then, too, when I went to PR [Puerto Rico], I seen how she
used to
live, and some of my cousins still live, and I think, it would just
be messed
up if I didn’t go to school when I could.
Latina girls thus incorporated their knowledge of their parents’
sacrifices
and their sense of transnational ties into their articulation of the
place of
2019 23:07:12 UTC
>> 71
education in their lives. When they shared with me their
educational aspi-
rations, every single girl I spoke with referenced her parents’
im/migration
experiences, and some, like Celia, also pointed to the living
conditions and
the lack of opportunities for improvement that faced their
relatives in Mex-
ico or Puerto Rico.

The Latina girls I came to know were not immigrants or
migrants them-
selves, but they were daughters of immigrants and/or migrants,
and thus
their parents’ immigration and migration experiences had
significance for
them, too. According to almost all of them, on various
occasions, their par-
ents had shared with them details about the harsh living
conditions that
informed their decision to im/migrate to the United States. In
the case of
many of the Mexican girls, their parents described the
difficulties they had
encountered when they made their way across the U.S./Mexican
border as
undocumented immigrants. It is important to note that, with the
exception
of two girls, these young Mexican and Puerto Rican women
reported that
they could speak and understand Spanish. This bilingual fluency
allowed
them to communicate with their parents and other adult family
members
and also enhanced their ability as second-generation Mexican
and Puerto
Rican girls in the United States to identify with their parents’
homelands.24
Moreover, some girls reported that their families had made trips
to their par-
ents’ hometowns for events such as weddings and quinceañeras
and for the
holidays. Some of them described spending one or more summer
vacations
in Mexico or Puerto Rico visiting relatives without their
parents. These expe-

riences therefore were all important to their development of
transnational
orientations.
Latina girls’ approaches to education reflect their dual frame of
refer-
ence.25 Scholars such as the anthropologist Marcelo Suárez-
Orozco have
found that immigrant students compare their current
circumstances in the
United States to conditions in their country of origin, seeing
their current
situation as improving their life opportunities despite the
various challenges
they encounter in their new context.26 Furthermore, through
interactions
with their parents and also by witnessing their parents’ efforts
in working
at one or more physically demanding jobs, these students often
develop an
awareness of their parents’ sacrifices as they strive to provide
their children
with opportunities. The value that some immigrant students
assign to edu-
cation is shaped by this dual frame of reference, through which
they come
to see educational advancement as a way to meet their
obligation to their
families and to make their parents’ struggles worthwhile. Like
their peers
who are immigrants, the second-generation Mexican and Puerto
Rican girls
I spoke with also assigned importance to their academic success
as a means

2019 23:07:12 UTC
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to build upon their parents’ efforts to improve their family’s
socioeconomic
circumstances.27
But the girls also specifically highlighted their mothers’
experiences and
efforts when speaking about their educational ambitions. Celia
did this when
she asserted that it would be disrespectful to her mother if she
did not go to
college, given her mother’s struggle to provide financially for
her family on a
school cafeteria worker’s wages. Other young women also
expressed a sense
of accountability to their mothers when it came to their
educational pursuits.
For instance, Minerva said that her mother often expressed how
she would
have liked to have a chance to go to school as a young woman,
especially when
she saw Minerva doing her homework. In my interview with
Carmen, Miner-
va’s mother, she revealed a great desire to go on to college.
Because of her
family’s poor economic circumstances in rural Mexico, Carmen
was unable
to attend school beyond the sixth grade. According to Carmen,
her family

could afford to send only her older brother to school; as the
eldest daughter,
she was expected to help out at home with household chores and
to care for
younger siblings. She was nearly in tears when she told me, “I
was so sad about
that, especially when I would see him [her brother] with his
books.” All of the
mothers reported frequently communicating with their daughters
about the
value of education, emphasizing, “que se preparan para una
carrera (that they
should prepare themselves for a profession).” My interviews
with their daugh-
ters confirmed the importance that their mothers assigned to
education.
Like mothers interviewed in other studies on gender and
sexuality social-
ization among poor and working-class Latina and black women,
these
mothers stressed educational success as a way for their
daughters to gain
more independence and avoid economic reliance on men.28
While mothers
attempted to restrict their daughters’ movement outside the
home to sexually
“protect” their daughters, they did describe being flexible about
their atten-
dance at educational activities. One key manner in which many
mothers
promoted the importance of an education was by encouraging
their daugh-
ters to seek additional educational opportunities at community
centers, such
as tutoring or summer enrichment programs. In some cases, the

girls’ par-
ticipation in these types of enrichment activities was met with
opposition
from other family members. For example, some of the mothers
reported
that their daughters’ fathers were worried that the daughters
would not be
properly supervised at these places. And some relatives, such as
grandpar-
ents, aunts, and uncles, criticized the mothers for permitting
their daughters
“demasiado libertad (too much freedom)” outside the home.
Yvette told me
that her mother responded to her aunt’s criticism of the time
Yvette spent at
Hogar del Pueblo: “She told her [Yvette’s aunt] that this was
helping me with
2019 23:07:12 UTC
>> 73
school, so that I wasn’t doing anything bad. I am keeping my
grades up so
that when I go to college, my mom could be like, ‘See, I told
you so.’” A young
Puerto Rican who always seemed to have neatly manicured nails
with inter-
esting designs, such as hearts or imitation jewels, Yvette went
on to detail her
plans to become a teacher. As their narratives indicate, some

Latina girls felt
that their mothers risked having their parenting skills
questioned in allowing
them to participate in educational activities outside of school;
they did not
want to let them down.
However, the girls’ educational aspirations also revealed
another frame of
reference, one grounded in their identities as U.S. Latina youth.
Specifically,
as they talked about their desires and plans for their futures,
they defensively
rejected stereotypes about them. Lisa, for instance, shared with
me that she
was initially wary about the motivations underlying my project.
The young
Mexican with dyed-blonde hair and blue contact lenses raised
this during
our second interview as she was telling me about her goal to
become an ele-
mentary school teacher: “Man, at first, when I saw you around
here, I was
like, ‘Oh oh, she’s probably some kind of reporter or something
and wants to
talk to us about [shifting to an imitation of a TV reporter] why
Latina girls
want to be baby mommas and not finish school.’ I was like, ‘I
ain’t talking
to her!’” After we both laughed at her impersonation of a TV
reporter and
her first impression of me, Lisa told me, “I wanna be a teacher,
like maybe a
sixth-grade teacher. I think that that’s when kids start maybe
feeling like just
confused about a lot of stuff. I wanna be the kind of teacher that

helps them
believe that they can be whatever they want, no matter all the
negative stuff
that people say about them.” I asked Lisa, “Like what kind of
negative stuff?”
She replied, “You know! At least for me, I be getting tired
hearing all the
time that we’re all gangbangers, or going to jail, having babies,
stuff like that.
I’m like, ‘I do good in school,’ and watch, I’m gonna become a
teacher and
show people that we all ain’t like that!” Other girls also
stressed educational
success as a way to counter notions about who they were as
young urban
Latina women, particularly the expectation that they would fail.
In line with
the findings of some studies on the educational perspectives and
outcomes of
students of color, this group of Latina girls did not associate
educational suc-
cess with a desire to “act white.”29 In other words, these young
women did not
interpret academic achievement as assimilation into the
dominant society, or
what the late educational anthropologist John Ogbu called an
“oppositional
stance.”30 Like the second-generation young Caribbean girls
that the sociolo-
gist Nancy Lopez interviewed, these young Latinas’ “race-
gender” experi-
ences and identities shaped their perspective on education as an
important
vehicle for contesting gendered-racial stereotypes about
them.31

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