Because I Was a Girl

by Melissa de la Cruz

  During college, my mentor (a woman) and American Indian Student Association advisor was the first person to urge me to go to law school so I could give back to my own community. At the time, however, I had no interest in American Indian law. In fact, I never even had the desire to take an American Indian Studies course, though my university offered a minor in the field. I’m not entirely sure why I had no interest. I set aside her suggestion.

  But time moves fast in college, and graduation came quickly—I graduated having no clue what I wanted to do. I found a few retail positions to support myself, but then I discovered a nonprofit drug- and alcohol-treatment center that was run primarily by Natives. As someone who has had friends and family members lose the battle to drug and alcohol addiction on my own reservation, I decided to contact the nonprofit about available positions.

  I somehow got a job as an outreach coordinator. I finally had a job that I enjoyed and that I was naturally good at, working with other Natives; my personal experience helped. I excelled in my position and was often asked to take on additional duties because my supervisor knew I could handle a larger workload, including the most difficult tasks: homeless outreach, weekly presentations to recently paroled individuals and inmates at the county jail, and training new intake coordinators. I never said no to any task. But after two years, I eventually realized that no matter how many additional responsibilities I took on, the promises of raises and promotions were empty. This was particularly frustrating because I witnessed a number of male coworkers get promotions, along with constant praise, even though, IMHO, they did not do their jobs well. On top of that, management often viewed suggestions and new ideas from the women on staff as personal attacks. Like most women, I have been treated differently in various situations because of my gender. But this was the first time my gender was a hindrance to my professional success. And the fact that I experienced it while working with my community, the Native community, was disappointing because Native women often hold our community together.

  Still, working at the nonprofit helped me see my purpose in life: to give back to my own community, to make it better, stronger. Realizing that I would likely never see a promotion at the nonprofit, I contemplated my next move. Another mentor (also a woman) helped me see that I could give so much back through the law, echoing my college advisor. And I wanted to be in a position of power, in a place where no one could overlook me ever again because of my gender. So, three years after graduating from college, I took the LSAT. Unfortunately, my brother passed away weeks before the exam and I didn’t score as high as I knew I could. I took the exam once more, refusing to give up or settle for a low score. The thing about loss is that sometimes you can find inner strength from it. Paired with the resentment born from the experiences I had at the nonprofit treatment center, I had the strength I needed to persevere. Needless to say, I did well on the exam and decided to attend Lewis & Clark Law School because of its prestigious Indian law program.

  * * *

  THIS WAS THE FIRST TIME MY GENDER WAS A HINDRANCE TO MY PROFESSIONAL SUCCESS. AND THE FACT THAT I EXPERIENCED IT WHILE WORKING WITH MY COMMUNITY, THE NATIVE COMMUNITY, WAS DISAPPOINTING BECAUSE NATIVE WOMEN OFTEN HOLD OUR COMMUNITY TOGETHER.

  I'VE LEARNED TO CHANNEL THOSE STRUGGLES INTO POWER.

  * * *

  Being an (almost) attorney, I can say without doubt that working women face many struggles daily. In my budding law career, my struggles might not be as blatant as the ones I faced while working at the nonprofit, but they exist nonetheless: Worrying about whether you’re smiling too much, if your voice is too high, or whether the neckline of your blouse is too low. But I’ve learned to channel those struggles into power.

  I graduated from law school in May 2016 and am working at an amazing Indian law firm in the Bay Area as a law fellow. I am fortunate to be working in the same field that brought me to law school.

  My next hurdle is the California Bar exam. It’s knocked me down a couple of times, but I am persistent and will not give up until I’ve conquered that beast. I went to law school to give back to my community, and I will overcome this one last obstacle in order to give back as much as I can. I’m honored to serve my community and grateful that I can use my education to help others. And although there are times when being a girl creates certain obstacles for us, it also creates opportunities to better ourselves and surpass the arbitrary limits we’ve set.

  TELEVISION WRITER, NOVELIST, AND CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST

  Photo credit: Irene Zion

  LENORE ZION

  The school psychologist sat quietly across from me, the cow’s eyeball on the desk between us. It wasn’t the first time I had been sent to her office. There was the time when I had caused my teacher a significant amount of discomfort by describing in vivid detail my future death, which I had predicted would result from a particularly bloody and horrific act of aggression. The time before that, I had enthusiastically led a group of my classmates in a game I’d invented wherein we were all imaginary chain saw–wielding maniacs hell-bent on carving one another into pieces. When I brought the cow’s eyeball into school, my teacher didn’t even ask where I’d gotten it before she sent me to the psychologist. Had she asked, I probably would have denied the truth: that I’d stolen it from a classroom in the local community college, the halls of which I was roaming because my parents had enrolled me in a Saturday morning art class in the same facility. After all, I was no idiot; stealing was a punishable offense.

  It was sitting on a shelf in a science lab. A jar of murky preservative liquid with this odd fleshy beige thing floating inside. At the time, I didn’t know it was an eyeball—there was nothing about its appearance that I could immediately identify as eyeball-esque. But I knew it was a biological something-or-other, clearly a piece of something once alive. There were about twenty, twenty-five of them, all lined up in a row. I was only seven, but I knew I could get away with taking one. Honestly, I didn’t feel a moment of guilt—I just swiped one of the jars, stuffed it into my backpack, and that was that.

  When my father picked me up at the end of my art class, I pulled the jar out.

  “What is this?” I asked him.

  My dad took a look.

  “That’s an eyeball,” he said.

  My father just so happened to be a retinal surgeon. If he knew anything, he knew eyeballs.

  “From a person?” I asked, a sense of morbid excitement swelling.

  “Sweetheart, no. Look how big it is. You think that would fit in your eye socket?” he said.

  I laughed.

  “Maybe a cow, or a sheep,” he said. “There aren’t many sheep in town, so probably a cow.”

  “Still pretty cool,” I said.

  “It’s very cool,” he said. “Where did you get it?”

  “They gave it to me,” I lied.

  My father didn’t seem to think anything about that was suspicious. “We can dissect it later if you want,” he offered.

  I was so proud of my cow’s eyeball in a jar. I was very excited to dissect it with my father, but I wanted to show it off a bit before I took it apart. This was a real treasure; my dad thought it was cool, I thought it was cool, my mother and my sister and my brothers thought it was cool. Not for one second did I consider that my teacher wouldn’t respond similarly when I shoved the jar in front of her face, liquid sloshing all around. Instead, her face contorted into an expression of horror.

  * * *

  WHEN MY FATHER PICKED ME UP AT THE END OF MY ART CLASS, I PULLED THE JAR OUT. "WHAT IS THIS?" I ASKED HIM. MY DAD TOOK A LOOK. "THAT'S AN EYEBALL," HE SAID.

  I BECAME CONVINCED THAT THE AUTHORITY I WAS BUTTING UP AGAINST MUST HAVE GLEANED THAT I'D STOLEN MY TREASURE. THIEVERY WAS MY ONLY CRIME.

  * * *

  “It’s not a human eyeball. It’s just a cow’s eyeball. Or a sheep’s, but probably a cow’s eyeball.”

  She didn’t respond to my explanation. Due to my previous visits to the school psychologist, during which I learned that
little girls who fantasize about death and violence were odd, I assumed my teacher was displeased because she was under the impression that I’d come to be in possession of this eyeball through violent means.

  “No, no,” I assured her. “Someone else gouged it out, not me. Actually, someone cut out a whole bunch of cows’ eyeballs. There’s a whole lot more where this came from.”

  And then I was in the psychologist’s office with my eyeball. After several attempts at explaining my superexciting plans to carve up the eyeball with my father later, I stopped trying. Instead, I sat in defeated silence, waiting for my mother to come pick me up. I was in big trouble; there had to be a reason for that. I became convinced that the authority I was butting up against must have gleaned that I’d stolen my treasure. Thievery was my only crime. When my mother arrived, the psychologist told her that in all her years of practice, she’d never had a student sent to her for terrorizing her teacher with a preserved eyeball. My mother laughed.

  “This is not a joke,” she told my mother, and continued to explain that it was very unusual for seven-year-old girls to be so thoroughly invested in gruesome fantasy.

  “See, now, I wouldn’t call it that,” my mother said.

  “What would you call it?”

  “Biology,” she said.

  And with that, we left. Me and my awesome mom. And my eyeball in a jar, soon to be dissected during a fun and educational afternoon with my awesome dad.

  CHEF AND RESTAURATEUR

  Photo credit: Evan Sung

  KATIE BUTTON

  There have been many moments in my life when I have been faced with a question: Do I take the path that is expected of me? Or do I try to find my own way, following my strengths and passion?

  For years, I did the former. When I was twelve years old, I really wanted to be a cheerleader. Some of my friends were trying out for the basketball cheerleading squad. While I had little interest in basketball, cheerleading sounded like fun and also like the type of activity I was supposed to do.

  I raced home that day to talk it over with my parents. They had the annoying habit of questioning my choices, of trying to make me see all sides of a decision. I was nervous about the conversation because I was so determined to join the cheerleading squad with the other girls, and I didn’t want them to ruin that.

  As we sat down to dinner, I presented my case. Actually, I begged my parents to let me try out. If I didn’t join the cheerleading squad, I told them, I would be excluded from all my friends’ social activities for the rest of my life, and it would be their fault for raising an antisocial outsider as a daughter.

  My folks considered my plight for about thirty seconds. I saw their blank stares turn to pity and then to resolve when they firmly said “no way.” They knew my strengths—and deep down, so did I—and suggested that I would be better suited to hustling on the lacrosse field than attempting to do splits. At first, I felt crushed. But then I thought about it, and as usual, I had to admit that my parents were right. I joined the girls’ lacrosse team and loved it.

  I went on to attend Cornell University to pursue a degree in chemical engineering. I figured, hey, I’m pretty good at math and science, and I hear that engineers get jobs when they graduate. At the time, I thought I was leaning on the lessons I had gleaned from my adolescence, namely, to make a choice that suited my individual strengths. As a girl, I had considered cheerleading because I thought that was what girls were meant to do, and it was what my friends were doing. And now, here I was, pursuing an engineering degree, something girls didn’t often do. But I hadn’t thought through my plan. I had no idea what an engineer did for a living and hadn’t even considered if I would enjoy being one.

  As graduation approached, I had no sense of what I wanted to do with the degree. My classes hadn’t inspired me, and my job interviews were going terribly. So I sat down with a professor whom I admired and asked him the big question: “What should I do with my life?” I remember throwing it at him like I was trying to make casual conversation, just a nonchalant chat about the rest of my life. Meanwhile, the backs of my knees were sweating, and I had ripped a piece of my notebook paper into five hundred teeny tiny pieces.

  He gave me a meaningful look and said, “You should go into pharmaceutical sales.”

  My heart sank. An image flashed across my brain of me in a professional yet embarrassingly flirty outfit convincing a group of doctors that my drug brand is better because it only kills people less-than-sometimes whereas the competitors’ brand kills people more-than-sometimes. That was definitely not what I wanted to do, and I had this nagging suspicion that he made the suggestion because I was a woman.

  * * *

  THERE HAVE BEEN MANY MOMENTS IN MY LIFE WHEN I HAVE BEEN FACED WITH A QUESTION: DO I TAKE THE PATH THAT IS EXPECTED OF ME? OR DO I TRY TO FIND MY OWN WAY, FOLLOWING MY STRENGTHS AND PASSION?

  * * *

  I didn’t take his advice, and I was nowhere closer to getting a job. So I did what many people in that position do: I kept studying. It’s the moment in life that I call “When in doubt, get a master’s degree.” I got mine in biomedical engineering. When I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do after that, I applied and was accepted into a PhD program in neuroscience.

  As the start date of the program loomed, I found myself feeling more and more stressed out. I wasn’t taking care of myself; I wasn’t sleeping or eating. I finally decided to take a step back and think about my life.

  Just before this moment, I had taken a monthlong trip to Zambia to build houses for Habitat for Humanity. While I was there, I was surprised to see families and children who were happy despite the fact that they appeared to have little in the way of material possessions. When I looked back on that trip, it dawned on me that I was profoundly unhappy in my career path. Here I was, someone who had been given every opportunity in life and could choose to do whatever she wanted to do but couldn’t seem to find happiness. I realized that if I started that PhD program, I was going to spend seven years (or more!) pursuing something I wasn’t passionate about, followed by a life in a job that I wouldn’t enjoy. I knew I could not fake happy for all my life. So, without knowing what I was going to do, I quit the PhD program two weeks before it was supposed to start.

  For the first time in years, my life had no structure. Even though I hadn’t particularly liked my studies, they had given me a sense of purpose. My parents praised my good grades. It felt good to brag to friends about my accomplishments. It was amazing to say the words “PhD in neuroscience” out loud and just watch the faces light up. But at the end of the day, I felt unfulfilled—I needed to find a path that brought me inner joy, not just gratification from others.

  When I thought about every time I had been happy in life, I realized food was involved. Helping my mother with her catering business when I was growing up, trying out different recipes to keep sane while cramming for exams—those were the happy memories that had stuck with me. I decided to try to find a job in the restaurant industry. I set out, résumé in hand, to the best restaurants in Washington, DC. No one would hire me to cook, but the general manager at one of José Andrés’s restaurants, Café Atlántico/Minibar, offered me a job as a server.

  From my first day, I knew working in restaurants was what I wanted and needed to do for the rest of my life. I loved the energy, speed, pressure, and precision that went into the restaurant business; I only had to figure out how to make my way into the kitchen. Still, it felt as if the moment I made the career change—to go after something I really loved—doors started opening for me. I met Felix Meana, who is now my husband, who supported my career change and helped me meet the right people to make it happen. I moved into the kitchen during an internship at Jean Georges in New York City and then in Los Angeles at the Bazaar by José Andrés. I had the opportunity to work in the kitchen at elBulli, a Michelin three-star restaurant in Spain and the top-ranked restaurant in the world for five years. I took all this experience and moved to Asheville, North Carolina,
to open my own restaurant with my husband and my parents.

  Six years later, at the time of this writing, I am the chef and co-owner of two restaurants in Asheville. I was named one of Food & Wine magazine’s Best New Chefs, I was a finalist for the James Beard Rising Star Chef of the Year, and I have published my first cookbook. Life is rolling right along, and I can’t wait to see where this career takes me.

  When I look back on that moment when I decided to drop out of my PhD program, I think, “Thank goodness I finally figured out what makes me happy and where my strengths lie.” Doing so changed my life forever.

  Bottom line: Do what you love, not what you think is expected of you. Follow your true passion no matter where it leads. It will help you find your strength in life and success, but more important, happiness will follow.

  THE 1990s

  •    WOMEN REACH THE PEAK OF THEIR LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION AT 60 PERCENT.

  •    1992 SEES MORE WOMEN THAN EVER BEFORE ELECTED TO POLITICAL OFFICE FOR A TOTAL OF 47 HOUSE REPRESENTATIVES AND 7 SENATORS.

  •    RIOT GRRRL AND ZINE CULTURE QUICKLY SPREAD AS MUSICAL AND ARTISTIC MOVEMENTS TO END HOMOPHOBIA, RACISM, SEXISM, AND VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS.

  •    IN 1997, SARAH MCLACHLAN CREATES LILITH FAIR, WHICH BECOMES THE TOP GROSSING OF ANY TOURING FESTIVAL THAT YEAR.