Self-Assessment sexual and Relational Health I grew up in a single parent household, which in my case the single parent who raised me was my mother. Growing up with my mother rather than father or both my parent definitely had a great impact on how I personally and psychologically defined myself. My mother taught me “lady like” behaviors from a very young age. I remember my first experience being when I was four years old and I was sitting outside on my step and remember wearing a “girly dress” with flowers and in different shades of pink and purple.
I was sitting outside and my mother joined me and said to me “ that is not how young ladies sit, cross your legs”. I was simply sitting what for me was normal, but now I was introduced to the “proper way” and I was called out for sitting otherwise if I was seen by my mother. I can also recall my mother talking to me about how if a boy was to see me sitting without crossing my legs, he would think I did not know how to be a girl. This worried me all the time and due to that I would always self monitor the way I positioned myself around others or even when I was alone.
As I grew up I understood the reason behind meant more that just acing like a lady, but it was more so that I was cautious with what I was wearing so that I would not embarrass myself or expose my body to others. Learning this was important, but perhaps if my mother would have not focused on the you are not acting like a “proper lady” I would have not always be so scared and cautious on how I positioned myself. Growing up I also learned that girls wore dresses and boys wore jeans and that had a big influence on me while growing up.
I remember one time when I was about seven years old and I wanted to wear jeans to a birthday party to be more comfortable and be able to run around and play with the rest of the kids at the party and my mom said to me “ all the girls are going to wear dresses so you have to wear a dress too because you are a girl right? ” I remembered being so upset with my mother for not letting me dress how I wanted to in order to be comfortable. Learning this made me question many things because when I was other little girls in jeans I did not understand why they could do it and I was not allowed to.
I only understood that wearing dresses made me more a “girl” because that was what my mother taught me and what my family also agreed with. I also learned that I could not wear just any dress, It had to be a certain length and very modest. I was told by my aunt once when I was eleven years old that my dress was to tight and short. My aunt also said that wearing that type of dress was bad because I was sexually exposing myself to other men around me. I was terrified of the ideas that the way I dress would make other people not only myself feel uncomfortable, at least that is what I though at eleven years of age.
As I grew up I learned that the way I dress should only make me feel good about myself and be comfortable because I should not be judged by the way I dress. My culture also had a lot to do with behaviors, actions and decisions I would take. For example, when a young girl turns fifteen she transitioned from being a girl to a woman. This meant I was finally allowed to wear makeup and heels as long as they were not too provocative. This also meant I was able to have a boyfriend.
When I was fifteen I did get to experience having a boyfriend and before I was even allowed to be his girlfriend he had to go to my house and meet my mom and my mother had to also meet his parents. My mom became very strict when I started this relationship, I was not allowed to be alone at my house, if I went out on a date I was to be back to my house before it got dark outside etc. From being in this relationship, I also learned about sex, and marriage. My mother never had the “sex” talk with me before because since I was not in a relationship I was expected to not be sexually active.
The same thing I was experiencing was something I remember learning this semester in the course. I remember discussing that fact that some parent do not have this type of discussion with their children because we either are expected to know what is wrong from write depending on our gender. As a girl I was taught that earning respect was in one way or another linked with the fact if you were sexually active or not. With the “sex” talk my mother also talked to me about marriage and how I had to be married before decided to take part in any sexual activity.
If I was to be sexual active she warned me that God would punish me because one principal of Catholicism was to keep your body sacred until marriage. She would also point out to me other people within my family who were not married but live with their significant other that this was something that was accepted by the family. From this I learned that my mother valued marriage and that if I ever got to the point where I wanted something serious and I was not married my family would not support me.
All of these experiences that I went though growing up with my mother and family taught me were not all bad or good because these were value and morals they grew up with. As I aged and grew older I adopted some of these behaviors as well as rejected some. Some behaviors I adopted were behaviors like wearing certain clothing in order look or act more like a girl. I did this especially because I joined many pageant and fashion shows growing up. I noticed that adopting this behaviors closed the opportunities for me to find more talents I had within me.
I can say that I let go of this adaptive behavior when I transitioned into high school. I became more educated about gender roles and self identification. I leaned that what you do, wear, or say did not identify if you were a male or female. I was always labeled the “girly girl” because I was always dressed up and had my hair done. I became to get more involved in sports and joined the basketball team but this did not change my identification of being a female. The fact that I wore basketball short or a jersey did not change the person I was in a dress or skirt.
I gravitated away form that idea of letting your clothes define who you wore and wore what I wanted to and felt comfortable in. I also believe that media definitely had an influence on how one should view females and males. This was another idea we explored in class in a class presentation and in one of the ted talks. I learned from a presentation that the way a product was represented effected the way this product would sell. An example of this was the sport illustrative magazine, it sold because of the attractive and sexy lady in the front page.
This discussion reminded me of a childhood experience that had to also due with the influence of media and decision taking. I always watched Spanish shows with my mom when I was a younger girl. I remember this one soap opera that I watched with my mom called “ La Fella Mas Bella”. It was about this one girl who could never get a job because she was ugly and all the pretty girls with “perfect” bodies got the jobs as soon as they applied. When she finally did get a job in a office she did not get treated the same ways as the pretty girls did. I felt so bad and remember hinking and discussing with my mom about how horrible she must have felt and how that could have affected her social and emotional functioning.
My mom told me that she had a similar experience where she was not treated equally at one of her jobs for being an older women. My mother told me that the younger ladies got the easy and favorable task compared to the older more experienced women in the company. Growing up and working at different places I notice that media has definitely influenced some people on their decisions on who to hire and who should get treated differently.
I worked at this cellphone location where I was hired with no experience, no resume, no application process based on my looks and presentation. The owner of this location was always watching an listening to business tips. I remember hearing someone say “I love coming to this place because they always have beautiful women! ” I then started to think that they did only hire “pretty girls” and someone said that having pretty women rather that men at the location benefit the business.
I thought to myself how that was unfair to the males who wanted to work at this cellular location. Media does a great job in portraying how successful you are in selling a product if a beautiful women advertises it. I can say that one great experience that positively influenced who I am today was a gender women studies course I took. This class taught me that it was okay to have different values and morals outside of what is considered to be “the norm. ” Growing up I remember only wanting to accept and follow what my family supported because family is so important to me.
On the other hand I also learned that I had to also incorporate things that made me happy and value my lifestyle. If my family loved me as much as I loved them they would also always be there for me and they did and that was just a fear I had to overcome. I can also say that being raised by a single mother taught me to be independent and work for my own things. Even though I was an only child for ten years of my childhood I never expected to be spoiled but rather to work and earned my stuff.
Now at the age of twenty one I can say that I am the independent women I am because of my experiences with my mother and seeing how she worked hard to raise me and provided for herself and I will be forever grateful for that life lesson. I know that I am still learning and know that I have an ongoing self-awareness as I grow older because as humans we experience many changes in our lives. Taking this human sexuality course taught me so much about myself and about others as well. I became aware of many issues that people or myself are still experiencing in their sexuality explorations.
This course also helped me become very comfortable about myself and my sexuality by experiencing and learning about new and healthy ways to cope with my sexuality. One thing that was really eye opening to me was a class documentary we view on prostitution. I guess it had to do with the way I was raised and how I was taught to view prostitutes. I always thought that prostitutes always choose to be who they were because that was the lifestyle they wanted to live by and that is not the case.
I leaned that external factors had an influence on their decisions like social, economical family status or even the fact that a family member and a stranger had trafficked them into the prostitution business. I am now more open and less judgmental on the ways I see anyone because we never know what a person went through to get them to take the decisions they took. Another thing that I became more open about was on online dating and this thanks to the research my group and I had to present on. I became aware of the idea of online dating and the persuasions to take if this was something I was interested in partaking in.
In addition I really loved taking part of the few moment in where we would all take a second to connect to all of our body parts. It reminded me to always practice being intact with my whole body and this is important for me because I taught me to be more in control and conscious of my body. This also reminded me to always remember that our physiological, emotional and biological state of being are always important to take care of and pay attention to. I loved learning about myself and how to incorporate healthy choices in my sexuality.