In September, 2013, we did our first fieldwork. Both women’s groups went to the high school for the Day of the Girl assembly. We had only gotten our social justice groups the day before and our group hadn’t even decided on the topic we were doing. Confused, I was told to go the the lobby. I had just come from science, and I still had my materials from the class. Not knowing what was going on I walked down to the lobby to see both women groups waiting for me. I asked my group mates what they we were doing, and they told me that we were going to the high school to see an assembly. In a group, we all walked over to Elizabeth Irwin high school. When we arrived, we were a tad late so we quickly rushed into the PAC and found spots for ourselves. We soon found out that the assembly hadn’t even started yet and we were just in time. The assembly started with a speaker who talked about what the Day of the Girl is and told us about what they had been doing in class preparing for it. We also watched a clip of Malala Yousafzai, a girl who was shot in the head my the Taliban for standing up for women’s rights to get a proper education. The clip was her speaking at a national conference and it was truly inspiring. She talked of her recovery, her plan to take action, and she thanked everybody for helping her in the journey she is in. After the clip various students from the class got up and presented a story about themselves, and the troubles they faced by being who they are. One girl, I believe her name is Paris, talked about her struggle being a Latina in the modern day world. She spoke of the over sexualized media of women in general, and especially Latina women. She said being a Latina she felt pressure to have big curves, boobs and butt. I had always acknowledge this unrealistic standard of Latina women, but I had never really realized that their unrealistic standard is much different from others, which is being skinny. I feel that I learned a lot from this assembly and I feel like it gave me different perspectives from a teenagers point of view.
