My Social Location

The world is a big place. There are billions of people alive currently, and several other billions that have lived and died throughout the hundreds of thousands of years we have existed. In the vastness of time, and when facing such gargantuan numbers, it really makes one single individual seem lost or small. I find comfort, however, in knowing that we all share a common thing: we all have a story. Each and every one of us has people, events, and instances that have helped shape who we are and how we affect others. If we remember that we have such experiences as a similarity, it helps to connect us by breaking down cultural and language barriers. We have experienced joy, pain, sorrow, and when we see the face of another human being experiencing the same, we empathize or sympathize with their emotions because we too have felt something similar throughout our journey. I am taking this time to reflect on my own personal story, and how it has helped shape me to become the woman I am today. 

 I grew up in a relatively sheltered and safe part of the country with a lower crime level than the national average. Despite my environment in America, I come from a poor and dangerous part of the world: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I recognize the life and safety I take for granted here due to my exposure to daily life in Brazil. My family in Rio is split into two distinct classes: poverty and affluence, there is no middle ground. My maternal grandparents lived in the same two-bedroom house that my great-grandmother lived in. They shared that house with three of my cousins, who all share the second bedroom. In their small property, my Aunt built a brick shack where she lives with her son. According to Google, a shack is “a roughly built hut or cabin.” I call it a shack not derogatorily, but because that’s precisely what it is. There’s a bed on one side where she sleeps, a couch across from it where my cousin sleeps, and an open bathroom on the other end. Open meaning there’s no door, not the open concept we’re more familiar with here. They primarily spend the day at my grandma’s house since she has a kitchen and a more comfortable living area, despite it being a tight squeeze with so many people. Whenever I go visit, which I try to do every year, my cousins love playing with my iPhone, iPad, laptop, or any other tech gadget I bring down because such devices are completely out of their reality. I am careful to not be seen with these devices outside of my grandma’s house because I would certainly get mugged. One year, we gave older generation iPods to my cousins and they were all mugged within a week of having them. Despite the poverty, and the danger, it is one of my favorite places to be. My family is always happy. They are always together, helping each other out with chores or errands, and are grateful and appreciative that they have a comfortable and safe home to live in. They do not own a lot of material things, and they eat rice and beans almost every day because it is cheaper to buy and leaves everyone full for longer, but they are so much richer in family life, gratitude, empathy, and kindness than most people I know. My family values social interaction and bonding much more than material things. While they do enjoy the gadgets I bring, they wouldn’t trade their lives there in order to have them. 

I am then contrasted with the other end of the spectrum when I go visit my mom’s childhood best friend, who I consider an aunt and family just as much as any blood relative. She lives in a multi-million-dollar beachfront apartment in one of the trendiest places in Rio. She owns three different cars, a bulletproof Porsche, a bulletproof Mercedes, as well as her daily driver Honda, which is an upper-middle-class car in Rio. Though I enjoy visiting her because I love her, and because of the amenities and lavishes I get to indulge in when I am at her apartment, she never has any family time. Her sons also live in beachfront apartments that she bought for them in a surrounding area, and the rest of her family lives out of state. 

To better understand my journey, I asked my mom some questions about hers. I had always heard from her that when we first moved to the United States, we were very poor. So, I asked her how poor were we during our first years in this country? I was curious about this because the memories I have of my early childhood were not of being poor or living in poverty. Of course, as a child, I didn’t have any idea what that really looked like. Reflecting on it, however, I understand what hardship, struggle, and poverty may look like a lot more. Because of this, I can recognize that in my own childhood now. While my classmates had plenty of different clothes for the week, I did not. I was often teased for wearing the same clothes two days in a row. Those same, two-days-in-a-row clothes were mostly all hand-me-downs, that my mom received from the houses she cleaned. When we did go shopping, we would visit the Salvation Army. Despite my memories answering my own question, I wanted to hear my mom’s response. Instead of answering it directly and just stating how much they made in their first years here, my mom answered by telling me the story of how the first mattress she and my father slept on, they found in a dumpster outside of the Salvation Army we shopped at. As I said, I figured we were poor, but I had no idea my parents did that. It’s almost unbelievable to me that my mom could do that. Today, she is a single mom who bought an expensive, top-of-the-line, NASA foamed out Tempur-Pedic mattress for herself. Though my mom is a Latina immigrant, she has carried us from the poor working class to an upper middle class as a single mom in Fairfield County, Connecticut. Watching my mom be able to achieve all that she has today, in this country, makes me believe that truly anything is possible through hard work, dedication, and perseverance. Sometimes this feeling escapes me, and I let the few problems I may face bring me down and I become pessimistic, or I try to persevere through my tribulations but fear failing. My mom sacrificed so much to get me to where I am today and if I fail, I believe she would feel like she has failed. However, when I really stop to think about her story, which intertwines with my own, I get the fuel and energy I need to keep my head up. When I told her how much she inspires me and teaches me to grow, she chuckled as she responded by saying “We’re Brazilian Juli, it’s in our blood to work hard through adversity.” I see her life and I realize how true it is for her. I hear the stories recounting the hardships her friends who emigrated to this country face as well. It makes me wonder, why is it that more people do not associate those qualities of perseverance and hard work with Brazilians instead of the traditional responses I am met with? 

I am Latina. But because I do not fit the expected mold of how Latina’s look like, or are portrayed in the media, most people don’t believe me when I tell them where I come from. Often asking me to speak in Portuguese to prove it. Of course, once they do realize that I am Brazilian, most of the men say, “oh Brazilian? That’s hot!” and suddenly appear to be more interested in me. It’s almost as if when I say that, they suddenly think I’m more appealing or attractive than before. This is because I’m often met with the stigma that Brazilian women are all exotic, have big butts, and are very promiscuous. 

Picture this: you meet someone and exchange pleasantries and conversation for a few minutes. The conversation steers into talking about yourself and you tell them you are Brazilian. Their response, straight-faced, is that they would like to see what a Brazilian Wax really looks like. This unfortunately happens all too often. When I respond in a dismissive or aggressive tone, the person is confused and refers to how they believe we are all naked during the Carnaval festival, or how we have ‘teeny bikini’s’ so it should not be such a big deal. Ian Haney Lopez states that “human interaction rather than natural differentiation must be seen as the source and continued basis for racial categorization”. I wish more people knew this and believed it. I am the same person I was prior to anybody learning about me being Brazilian, but men often act as if I changed and am a completely different person once they do learn. Why were they not making any assumptions about my butt or personality prior? Why do they automatically assume that I Brazilian Wax? Furthermore, why do they think it’s okay to openly ask and talk about such a private issue when they were not doing that before and probably wouldn’t have gone there without that knowledge? These crude responses are one of the reasons I refrain from speaking so openly about my Latina background to people I meet in bars or parties early on. Still, I am proud to be Brazilian, to speak a different language, and to identify with the Latin community in this country. My personal experience has been with hardworking, determined individuals instead of the promiscuous party animals many people seem to believe we are.

Due to my parent’s heavy work schedule, I have been staying home alone after school since I was six years old. While other kids would play outside, I was not allowed to because no one was home to watch me or take care of me if I got hurt. I also am an only child, which meant I spent a lot of my time watching movies, or, relying on my imagination and playing by myself. Though I always wanted an older sibling, I am glad to be an only child. Because of it, I learned to be more independent, able to rely on myself and be comfortable with being alone more so than most of my friends. Today, a lot of my friends complain about living alone or being away from their families, while I am accustomed to it. 

At the age of 10, my dad moved back to Brazil. And so, my only biological family member here in the United States was my mom. I was fortunate enough to become a part of a different, chosen family here, however. I met Chantelle in the fifth grade and though at first, she did not like me, we soon became the best of friends. After a while, I started to go home with her after school every day and my mom would pick me up after work, which was after the traditional American dinner time. That is how I lived part of my middle school years: going home with Chantelle and Cheyenne, her younger sister, and getting taken care of by her mother and father until my mom would pick me up and care for me. Her mom would often sign parent forms that my own did not understand, I would get introduced to their other family members as the adopted daughter, and by high school, we referred to each other as sisters. If anybody questioned the authenticity of our familial bond, we simply told them that I was adopted. Our sisterly title is not just a substitute for really great friends. The love we have for each other as family exists. Her sister is also my sister, I call her parents mom and dad as she does my mom, her aunts and uncles also refer to me as their niece, we are together for every holiday and traditional Italian family Sunday dinners. All the expected family activities we have shared together for the past twenty years and continue to do so. While I was always reminded of how important family is when I visited my own in Brazil, I always left with a sense of sadness for not having that here in America. My chosen family has filled that sadness with inclusion, acceptance, and the strong family bonds that follow. 

One of the things I struggle with a lot is femininity and being feminine. I learned that being feminine is not something that is innate but instead is learned through time. Your genetics can help play a role in that as well. My mom is a 5’7, 100 pounds woman. My aunt is very similar, except she is around 115 pounds. Her only daughter is 5’6, probably 120 pounds with long, slender arms and legs. All the women in my family follow the same stature by nature. None of them go to the gym or diet to maintain their physique. They also are all very concerned with maintaining their weekly manicures and pedicures, as well as their bi-weekly deep condition and blow-out hair sessions. Most men fall in love with the women in my family. Most of my guy friends do too. It used to be upsetting to my mother that her only daughter is a 5’8, heavier built woman who prefers wearing men’s clothes (since they fit better), does not enjoy getting her nails done, and absolutely despises sitting in a hair salon for hours. My father spent more time with me than my mother before they got divorced. He would play soccer with me, or I would sit with him while he worked on his car or motorcycle. When we would visit his friends, who all had sons, I played with the boys. Until I hit puberty, I was their daughter, and obviously a little girl, but I would run around shirtless and in shorts like the boys did. I had shorter hair than the girls because I did not want to be bothered with it while I ran and got sweaty, and while girls enjoyed the swings at the playground during recess, I was trying to dig for worms. I was a certified tomboy through and through. 

There’s a theory that girls who identify as tomboys are aligning themselves with a romanticized history of masculine identification before they encounter more restricting femininity. I agree with that viewpoint to an extent. It could be because I was a child, or maybe the tomboy aspect of my childhood played a role in it, but I was so carefree and remember always having a lot of fun. When my dad moved back to Brazil, it took a heavy toll on me emotionally since I thought he and I were so close, but it also took a toll on me because I now was more reliant on my mother and doing activities with her. Her favorite activities included shopping, manicure/pedicure sessions, dress-up dinner nights, and many other things I was not accustomed to. She constantly reprimanded me for having dirt in my nails, having grass stains on my clothes, and she taught me how to suck in my stomach and be mindful that people can always be watching and evaluating me. That was my introduction to the feminine world, and as the theory states, I thought it to be very restrictive. Today, I try to balance out my less-than-feminine tendencies by pairing my overall men’s wardrobe with makeup and by styling my hair. I have learned that I do not need to be an exemplary model of femininity in order to feel feminine and that I do not need to fit into any particular mold of what being feminine traditionally looks like. My realization of this has also helped change my mom’s perception as well. Though she is still aware that others can be constantly judging her looks, she’s learned that if she’s happy with herself that’s all that matters. My mom tells me consistently how proud she is of me but, this is one instance, out of many, where I am proud of her. 

My personal story is a single linear line that I continue to fill every day. A quick glimpse into this journey today would define me as a master’s graduate, living with my husband, my mom, and my dog, trying to determine what success looks like to me and trying to achieve it. But I carry with me all the experiences and people that have helped shape who I am. I am a product of these events in my life, and I continue to be shaped by things I experience every day. I have grown through my struggles, as well as my mother’s, I have developed through the acceptance of others. I am proud to be who I am, regardless of how the media portrays young Latinas, regardless of how feminine I’m supposed to be, regardless of the constant evaluations and judgments from society. I only look forward to whatever else life teaches me about who I am, and how much more similar and connected I am to those around me.