"I Wish Marilyn Monroe Had Hairy Arms and Legs"

I’ve seen a cow give birth before. In school once, I’ve seen it. I went to high school on a farm, where we raised cows in a barn attached to the right end of the building. We grew corn too, but I don’t remember much of that: the corn never really bothered me, since it didn’t smell like manure first thing in the morning, when the sun had started to warm it up. The birth was a little scary, and the only ones who really wanted to be there were the students studying Veterinary Science, but I had to watch anyway. My school was known for that kind of stuff, and whenever our sports teams played home games, the posters, in big block letters, would showcase that the game was taking place at “The Barn,” a nickname neighboring schools had given us a few years before. Like that was something to be proud of (and a lot of the hillbillies I went to school with often were—proud of that, I mean).

I grew up in a small town in the South of New Hampshire, where farms were as common as the white people who owned them, and the only thing I ever really liked was my best friend and the way the trees looked in the fall. But, soon enough, winter would hit, and it would feel like everything there was white except for me. I had no friends, no teachers, nor any peers of color. Winter was a pretty depressing time for me. But even when the leaves grew back green, and the world’s color returned with spring, everyone else stayed pale. Of course, I was outcasted pretty much all my life because of this.

My parents grew up outside of the States, on the islands of Puerto Rico, where my mom lived, and the Açores, where my father had. I always used to get on them for choosing to raise me here. Even my brothers, who grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts, spent their childhood in a far more cultured neighborhood than the one we moved to after I was born. I remember how I used to always prefer being babysat by my Tio George at his place in the projects instead of staying at home. Even when he would give my brother and I Halls cough drops instead of candy. Almost all of his neighbors were people of color. I couldn’t believe it. No wonder I liked it there so much. But I always feel guilty whenever I start to hate New Hampshire, whenever I start to despise having to live where I am always the odd one out. Because even though it was hard for me most of the time, growing up in the all-white society that I had, I still recognize and am grateful that I was offered many opportunities because of it that other generational immigrants like myself could not afford. I will forever be in debt to my parents for the life that they have gifted me by choosing to do that. Yet, it doesn’t change the fact that I struggled. The things my family and I put up with. It was sort of an exchange, a sacrifice in a way, that we could have such resources if we let those around us put us down. Hurt us in return.

In America, everything is built on the foundation of white supremacy: that white people, historically and to this day, are better than those of color. And this rings true in towns populated by white majorities. Because of course the bigger, whiter crowd is going to feel like the group in control, especially when power comes in numbers (and when history has constantly given them the advantage as well). Racist stereotyping and microaggressions are so much more common for people of color who exist in all-white neighborhoods, such as myself. There is a much larger community of white people to normalize and contribute to it. And for this reason exactly, school sucked. It was the worst. I faced more microaggressions growing up than I think I will ever face in/throughout the rest of my adult life. That feels like such a pathetically unfortunate statistic, but it’s unfortunately the truth. Racist ideology and the microaggressions that come from it are passed through generation after generation of white families in New Hampshire. That’s just the way it is, it’s the way it’s always been. New Hampshire, with a percentage of 91, ranks in the top five states with the highest population of white Americans And the two that rank just above it, with respective percentages of 92 each, are Maine and Vermont, states located directly next to New Hampshire (“Whitest States 2023”). Institutionally, I’ve faced differing forms of oppression all my life. I’ve been a minority since the day I was born, and growing up and attending school where I did only exemplified this further.

When I was younger, I didn’t really think too much about many of the microaggressions and racist stereotypes I put up with. I was in grade school, didn’t know the terms for it, and while I knew I was being bullied because I was different from the rest of the kids around me, I never once thought it was because of their underlying racism. Not until I grew up, that is, and got into politics and some critical thinking, took AP Humanities and AP U.S. Government. Even started to cry and pray to a God that I wasn’t sure was real to let me go back in time and tell the little girl that I once was not to listen to what everyone else had to say.

In elementary school, my mom used to pack me salchichas for lunch, these Spanish, canned sausages, which I still love to this day. But they have a rather pungent smell, and I was constantly teased because of it. In fourth grade, at the lunch table, I suppose the smell was so awful that day, that everyone started waving their hands in front of their noses, making a scene and yelling, “Aliyah brought her smelly hot dogs again!” I was distraught, tried to close the container, but by the time I tried to save myself, the rest of my classmates had already gotten up and left. I ate by myself that day. Later, in seventh grade, I got into an argument over text with a few of my friends. One of them, a blonde, white girl, had called me a “spic,” a racist and ethnic slur used against those of Hispanic or Latin origin. I had never heard that word before that day, and thankfully, never heard it again, but I remember that I had to look up what it meant. That was the first day that Google ever made me cry. That was also the first time that I was ever introduced to the idea that racism could have been following me around that entire time. Seventh grade was a really hard year for me. But due to the historical American foundation surrounding white supremacy and racism, microaggressions and racist stereotyping, especially present within white communities, are issues that not just Latin Americans, but many other people of color still face to this day.

My earliest memory of experiencing such a microaggression was in my second grade class, with one of my favorite teachers Mrs. Stratton, an older white woman. I remember that we had the same birthday, and since I had her for both first and second grade, my class forgot my birthday two years in a row. This particular moment wasn’t on my birthday, fortunately, but was instead towards the beginning of the year. My peers and I were all very close, and with having looped from first to second grade with Mrs. Stratton as our teacher, our class had felt like a family for a really long time. So, when I think back on this moment, I sort of understand where my friend was coming from when she had said this, but I can’t ignore the fact that what she said was an act that had outcasted me inevitably, and as the only student of color in the class, had separated me from the rest. It was unintentional discrimination, as some microaggressions usually are, but it happened nonetheless, and changed the way I viewed things as I continued to grow up alongside my peers.

It was Thursday, which meant it was Reading Day, and so for a half of an hour, we would all sit on the colorful alphabet rug, a little bunch of second graders looking up to Mrs. Stratton’s old, wooden rocking chair, and we would wait to be read to. Everyone would race to grab their seat on their favorite letter, criss-cross-apple-sauce, finally excited to be able to be next to their friends again. I used to always want to sit on the letter “A,” because it was the first letter of my name, and it was red, which was my dad’s favorite color. The classroom’s lighting was bright, yellow, and my hair was straight at the time, way before it had turned into my mom’s Cuban curls in the sixth grade. It’s always been pretty long, though, which means that rug time always turned into a hair salon for my friends and I, as they sat behind me and braided and braided to their heart’s content. To the left of me was a friend that I didn’t talk to too much, and I can’t remember her name now, most likely because I’ve tried to wipe most of this from my memory. She was nice though, I know that, and she was the one braiding my hair that specific day. Behind me was my best friend at the time, Celia, who was Irish, with beautiful ginger hair and pale skin. We’re still close today, as we’ve been living on the same street for over 18 years now. But this story isn’t about her. It’s about the friend whose name I don’t remember, which is probably telling enough, and what we happened to be learning about in class that day.

Mrs. Stratton was reading a book that I assume had sparked one of my peers to ask her a question regarding the difference between white and black people. I think that the book we were reading that day mildly touched on the idea of people of different races, and one of my classmates, having heard of segregation somewhere outside of school, maybe in his own home, took the chance to confront our teacher about it during reading time. Mrs. Stratton took the question in stride, and very gently explained that historically, people without white skin were separated from those with it. My friend/hairstylist then took that as an opportunity to “protect” me, throwing her arms around me in the middle of the rug, and crying out, “So that means Aliyah wouldn’t be here today?!” Everyone in the class turned to look at me, and I blushed, I was shy under the attention, and Mrs. Stratton began to get fidgety. She replied, “Well, yes, I suppose that does mean Aliyah would not be in our class.” I was upset by this, sure, that I would have had to have been separated from my friends if it were another period in time. But I also felt pressured to react underneath everyone else’s stares, and I remember that I said something along the lines of, “It’s okay, because I’m here now,” and my friend nodded on my left shoulder, still hugging me.

But looking back, it wasn’t okay. I wish my friend hadn’t felt the need to say that, to call out her whiteness, her privilege, over my color. I wish that my teacher responded better, that I didn’t have to be a seven-year-old comforting both herself and her friends from the idea of having to be segregated from them. I wish the whole thing went differently than it did, and that I didn’t have to carry that memory with me today. But, as I grew up, I realized that that memory became a political conservation that helped open my eyes to a much bigger picture, a reason behind why that incident even happened in the first place.

There is a large body of forgotten history that is lost to the American education system, regarding black history, of course, but especially regarding the history of Latin Americans, and other racial and ethnic groups, in particular. My friend said what she did was out of concern, and her own curiosity, but both of these things could have easily been avoided had Black history, and other racial history, been taught in American schools much earlier than it currently is. I don’t believe our introduction to Black history should wait until we learn of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and the Underground Railroad in the fifth grade. I believe instead that we should be talking about the Civil Rights Movement, the prospects of slavery and segregation, and introducing white supremacy in this way, at a much younger grade level, where developmental functions are still developing. But what I believe most of all, is that history regarding all races and ethnicities in America, such as those of Latin Americans, need to be included within required American education in general. And maybe then, Mrs. Stratton’s answer would not have been as ignorant and as hesitant as it was.

Black history is lacking in American education, this is true, but history regarding other marginalized communities of color is lacking even more. I did not know what the experience of Latin Americans during Jim Crow was like until researching for this paper. I’ve never been taught it. It’s not a prerequisite, none of my teachers ever knew themselves, and for this, the American education system is mostly to blame.

The history of not only Latin Americans, but Americans of Asian and other descent as well, have been excluded by such a system from all discussions surrounding civil rights. My relatives were not raised in America, so I had no idea what Civil Rights and Jim Crow would have looked like for them, or for anyone else of Hispanic origin, in the States during that time. Hispanic writer Nicholas Dauphine, however, for EducationWeek, fortunately brought me his own perspective on the matter, writing in regards to his own families’ experience that, “In my household, I have heard the stories from older relatives about the treatment of Mexican-Americans in Texas in the 1900s. From what has been relayed to me, it was not much different from how black Americans were treated in Mississippi. Through my parents, I have heard of schools for Mexican children, separate drinking fountains, having to sit in the ‘black’ balconies at movies, and not being able to go to restaurants and other establishments that were designated as ‘whites only.’” (Dauphine). Of this, I knew nothing. It was just assumed that other Latin Americans, such as myself, with skin too tan to pass as white, would be segregated with black Americans if forced to do so. And I think that Mrs. Stratton answered how she did through this assumption as well. Because she never seemed to have learned the history of Latin American conditions during this time period either.

Dauphine goes on to inquire about where the discussions of certain court cases surrounding Latin American civil rights history are in American schooling, and why exactly we never seem to be taught any of it. Where the conversation regarding the 1946 Mendez, et al. v. Westminster School District of Orange County case is, which, “challenged the racial segregation that was occurring in Orange County, Calif., schools against Mexicans and Mexican-Americans” (Dauphine). Or where the 1954 Hernandez v. Texas case is, which “established that the protection granted by the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was not only for white and black Americans, but that all racial groups required equal protection” (Dauphine). This case in particular had “questioned the use of Jim Crow laws against other classes of Americans, and determined that Americans of Hispanic, Asian, Middle Eastern, Inuit, Native American, and other nonwhite or black descent should also be treated equally” (Dauphine). If the history of civil rights runs through so many marginalized groups in America, then why are only black and white Americans the ones being talked about and taught? Why does the American education system act if other groups, such as Latin Americans, don’t exist? Why couldn’t my second grade teacher tell me, with full certainty, if I would have been segregated from my white classmates? Why did she have to answer this question at all, instead of teaching us during class time like it would have been much more appropriate to? Why was a microaggression against my race, and my ethnicity, used as a learning curb for my classmates to gawk at?

In her introduction to Cold War and Civil Rights, Mary Dudziak talks about how this connects to previous civil rights and marginalized activists in regards to how the lack of education in America surrounding other racial histories outside of the white and black perspective came to be. Dudziak writes that, “The full story of civil rights reform in U.S. history cuts across racial groups. The U.S. policymakers in this study, however, saw American race relations through the lens of a black/white paradigm. To them, race in America was quintessentially about ‘the Negro problem.’ Foreign observers as well remarked that the status of ‘the Negro’ was the paradigm for exploring race in America. Contemporary writers argue that the black/white paradigm renders other racial groups invisible…As a result, this history works within that narrowed conception of American race relations—not because race in America is a black/white issue, but because this study seeks to capture the way race politics were understood at a time when ‘the Negro problem’ was at the center of the discourse on race in America” (Dudziak 14). Because of this “black and white paradigm,” created during political discourse within the early Civil Rights Movement, other racial groups have been rendered “invisible” in American history, especially within the context of American education. Since race politics began when civil rights discourse was so heavily focused on Black power and liberation, all civil rights discourse on racial politics today have thus been discussed from the black and white viewpoint only. This paradigm has then created an entire educational system that has led to a moment in my life where I was outcast due to the color of my skin, where I was segregated behind a fourth wall. But, to this day, I continue to wonder whether, within a society where racial history is taught from the get-go, and with the inclusion of Latin American history as well, the question and scene that outcasted me would have even taken place at all.

I’ve done musical theater for a large portion of my life, and have spent time front and center stage even longer. In the eighth grade, my school was putting on Bye, Bye, Birdie, for our annual musical, and I was auditioning for one of the lead, female roles, Kim MacAfee. Kim was, historically, portrayed as a young, pretty, blond, white teenage girl, who was fan-obsessed with the ‘50s rockstar Conrad Birdie. Birdie himself was set to be drafted in the war, and for his farewell celebration, was to go on the Ed Sullivan Show to kiss his “biggest fan” goodbye (which fortunately for Kim, happened to be her).

Aside from Birdie and Kim, there were two other leads, Albert and Rosie, who were a part of the show. Albert Peterson was a struggling songwriter who just so happened to land a contract with Birdie, while his soon-to-be wife, Rosie Alvarez, who also happened to be his secretary, supported him throughout his career. In the show, Rosie has been historically depicted as an older Latina, and because of this, everyone thought that I would audition for her. And there’s some logic behind that, sure, seeing as we’re both Latina and whatnot. But I didn’t want to be Rosie. I wasn’t like her. I didn’t care to be with Albert, or for the color red (which she was always seen wearing, as any Latina within the media is). And her part was written for an Alto to play, a voice register that I wasn’t fit for. I was a Soprano, like Kim, and enjoyed Kim’s solos much more. I was also boy band crazy, as I’ve been all my life, and could relate to Kim’s character in a way that I couldn’t with Rosie’s. But I was constantly advised against auditioning for the white teenage girl, and instead pressured to audition for the role of the Latina instead, to the point/extent that I panicked and cried to my music teacher about how I didn’t think I was “allowed” to be Kim. I wasn’t white, and I didn’t think I was pretty, with all my braces and acne, that I figured no one wanted a brown girl to stand in her place. My music teacher, Ms. Herron, was appalled, and being as kind as she was, handled the situation beautifully, eventually encouraging me to audition for who I really wanted to. I ended up getting the part, and I was over-the-moon excited to be able to play Kim up on stage. But one rehearsal in particular, a week out from the show, had ended up tearing me down.

The boy set to play my father in the show, Cody, was very sweet, and was a year younger than I was. He was best friends with Matt, who got the part of my co-lead Conrad Birdie, and the three of us, along with Jackie, who captured Rosie’s character much better than I would have, all became very close. But the three of them were white. And I was not. And this wasn’t so apparent to me until that one fateful day. I was waiting behind the velvet red curtain, in the wings, stage left, when Cody came up behind me. It was a dress rehearsal, during tech week, so we were running the entire show and the atmosphere was extremely tense. It was quiet backstage, as it should have been, and very crowded. Jackie was singing her opening number, and my first scene was right after, so I was eager and anxious as I waited to go on, the wooden stage beneath me the only thing keeping me upright. Since we didn’t have an auditorium, our stage was in the gym, similar to how my high school ended up being, too. But in the gym, when the stage was crowded, it got hot. And fast. I had taken off my sweater, and was showing my arms, something I really didn’t like to do, and for the exact reason that Cody had decided to point out to me.

Right before I went on, in the dark and quiet of the left wing, and above the bundle of nerves hidden beneath my skin, Cody had reached out, and pet my arm hair. I’ve always had a lot more body hair than the white girls around me, as it’s natural for Latinas to grow thicker, darker hair anyway. But growing up around so many white girls, who were the obvious beauty standard then, I hated my body hair, and always hid it whenever I could. After petting it, Cody let go, looked me in the eyes, and said, “You know, you should really shave your arm hair before the show. You don’t want to be the only girl on stage with all that hair on you.” I was devastated. I ended up forgetting most of my lines during the scene after, and I cried when I got home that day. I ended up shaving my arm hair for the first time that night too, and afterwards, went to school with scapes up and down them for the rest of the week. But I’ve gotten better at it, been shaving my arm hair ever since, and it’s a part of who I am now, so I’m not sure if I’ll ever stop. But I’m still embarrassed by it, and because of moments like that, I probably always will be. White girls don’t have it, so why do I?

I’m not white, and sometimes, that actually sucks. Because sometimes, for things as silly as this, I really wish I was. Shaving my arms takes about fifteen minutes each, which is half an hour more that I spend in the shower trying to make myself appear more white than I actually am. Because that’s what growing up around white people did to me.

In the same argument that my friend had called me a “spic” in the year before, I was also called a “hairy Indian.” I’m not Indian. But, I guess since women of color are usually seen to have more body hair than white women, it didn’t matter what my race or ethnicity was. I was “hairy,” and I was brown, so “hairy Indian” worked as a name to use against me. But it made me feel ugly. Made me feel dirty. That being hairy is dirty, and that since women of color are presumably all hairy, even though we’re not, that makes us dirty in turn.

This kind of racial stereotyping and microaggression is hurtful in countless ways, but it was something I unfortunately experienced all the same. I wish there was a push for recognition, pride and power of women of color, in connection to how there was for the marginalized Black activists of Black Power Movement during the time of civil rights. I wish that our body hair could be used as a political statement against white supremacy in beauty standards, and the discrimination that we face because of it, like how these Black Power activists had used their own natural hair during the ‘60s and ‘70s movements. How they brought the afro into society and media as a way to demonstrate their African roots and culture in regards to Black Power during that time period, and to “politically and culturally express Black pride and empowerment.” To reject the assimilation of white and Eurocentric beauty standards. To celebrate their color (“Fashion - The Natural Hair Movement in the ‘60s and ‘70s” Black Wall St. Media). If today’s society normalized body hair and threw away the idea that white beauty was true beauty, maybe I could have been my own kind of Robin Gregory, Howard University’s 1966 Homecoming Queen, who lit up her own stage with an afro on her head (Hampton, “Eyes on the Prize” Episode 9: “Power” [22:25-24:43]). I could have played a brown Kim MacAfee, who had hairy arms and braces, and still got the guy.

The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements were two of the largest movements in American history in regards to racial equality, with the Civil Rights Movement morphing into the Black Power Movement as the ‘60s progressed. The Civil Rights Movements held goals concerning equal treatment and protection for black Americans during the time of Jim Crow, where segregation, discrimination and racism were seen all across the country. It was a nationwide movement, in which “its participants used a wide range of means to make their demands felt, including sit-ins, boycotts, protest marches, freedom rides, and lobbying government officials for legislative action.” The struggles they faced were immense, ranging from “bombings and beatings,” to “arrest and assassination.” But the movement itself had brought along a significant amount of change of both legal and cultural means, impacting the future of American society forever. From the desegregation of public schooling with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court cases, to the outlawing of both “discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin…in public accommodations, public education and employment” and “race-based restrictions on voting” due to the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Civil Rights Movement worked to reform American history in a variety of different ways (“The Civil Rights Movement” The Library of Congress).

And following this idea of reconstruction, furthering the equal treatment of Black Americans during the time, the Black Power movement sought goals such as “emphasizing racial pride, economic empowerment, and the creation of (black) political and cultural institutions.” The Black Power Movement used tremendous youth and collegiate culture to “demand for Black history courses, a greater embrace of African culture, and a spread of raw artistic expression displaying the realities of African Americans,” advancing not only the Black Arts Movement, but the Congressional Black Caucus at the time, as well. Additionally, the Black Panther Party was also a major contribution to the Black Power Movement, standing culturally as a political symbol for Black Power with their “fight back” approach towards racial violence and police brutality (“Black Power” National Archives and Records Administration).

Both the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement changed American society as we know it today. Yet, I still imagine ways in which society could continue to be transformed, so that my experiences and memories regarding microaggression, institutional oppression and white supremacy, won’t be the same experiences and memories of another little Latin American girl that comes after me. I imagine a society in which Latin American history, and other racial histories aside from the black and white paradigm, are included in both public and private education. And because of this, in the future, other 7-year-old Hispanic children won’t grow up believing they had no place in American history, and won’t be asked whether they would be segregated alongside black Americans on the alphabet reading rug. I imagine a society where white beauty standards are discarded, and body hair is normalized because of it, so that somewhere down the line, a Puerto Rican girl can play Kim MacAfee in her middle school play with hair not just on her arms, but on her head, legs, hands and face. I imagine a society like this. And I hope that, in the future, much like the marginalized civil rights activists that came before us, we begin to use these societal imaginations as the drive needed to create our own civil rights movements of today. I hope that, in the future, we can later make these same imagined societies come true.

Resources

“Black Power.” National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives and Records Administration, www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/black-power. Accessed 21 Dec. 2023.

Dauphine, Nicholas. “Hispanics Are Forgotten in Civil Rights History (Opinion).” Education Week, 30 Apr. 2021, www.edweek.org/leadership/opinion-hispanics-are-forgotten-in-civil-rights-history/2014/05.

Dudziak, Mary L., and Mary L. Dudziak. “‘Introduction.’” Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy, Princeton University Press, Princeton ; Oxford, 2011, pp. 3–17.

“Fashion - the Natural Hair Movement in the ’60s and ’70s.” Black Wall St Media, 29 Nov. 2023, blackwallst.media/the-natural-hair-afro-movement-in-the-60s-and-70s/.

Hampton, Henry, director. Eyes on the Prize. PBS, 1987.

Robert Lan. "Marilyn Monroe: Her Life and Career in Photos." Deadline, 11 Aug. 2022, 12:32 PM. https://deadline.com/gallery/marilyn-monroe-her-life-and-career-in-photos/.

“The Civil Rights Movement : The Post War United States, 1945-1968 : U.S. History Primary Source Timeline : Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress : Library of Congress.” The Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/post-war-united-states-1945-1968/civil-rights-movement/. Accessed 21 Dec. 2023.

“Whitest States 2023.” Whitest States 2023, worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/whitest-states. Accessed 21 Dec. 2023.