A Short Socio-Autobiography

Alejandra Gallegos-Ordaz: A Short Socio-Autobiography I was born May 19, 2000, in Chihuahua, Mexico. My first four years of life were spent there, in a one room house. In the summer of 2004, my mom introduced me to the idea of going to the United States to meet my aunts and cousins. She explained that it was like a whole other world. In my head, I had no idea what Michigan would look like, and I couldn’t comprehend how there were places that looked different than the place I called home. Before I knew it, we boarded a plane and headed to Michigan. When we got here, it was nothing like what I had imagined. I didn’t really know how to feel about it and, for the most part, I didn’t really care because I had cousins I could play with and life

I knew no English at first, but like magic, my small 5 year old brain learned it in a matter of months. Many of the kids I met at school didn’t look like me. At the time that didn’t matter much, but as I grew up it started to become more visible and even an issue. This wasn’t the only issue that I noticed while growing up, many of the events and realities of my childhood have shaped who I am today. If I were to explain my life in terms of figuration, the things I do and the person I am today are influenced by the world around me. A variety of social constructs given to me by society have become sources of struggle. From my socioeconomic class, place of birth, ethnicity, and gender, all of it has added up and equated to

Being a girl means that you’ll (potentially) fall victim to criticism about many aspects of yourself such as the way you dress, act, or even what you like. Society gives women standards that they must follow and live by, anything more or anything less than those standards aren’t acceptable. One of the reasons I didn’t befriend many girls at school is because they were mean to me about the way I would dress, and even some guys like(d) to give their unwanted opinion about my appearance. There is one instance that really damaged my self esteem during my freshman year when my older cousin started to call me out because she didn’t agree with the top that I was wearing that day. The shirt was short and to her, I was disrespecting myself and letting others disrespect me because of the “terrible” things I wore to school. My sense of style was not very conservative, so that made people feel like they could shame me, and sometimes even slutshame me for what I liked wearing. Even to this day, I feel a sense of shame in wearing certain things because of what happened almost 4 years ago. I’ve come to realize that no matter what I, or any other woman, decides to wear, we’re entitled to everyone’s respect. I don’t go around disrespecting people for any reason and neither should they. Women should be allowed to wear what they want without