amazons, playboy notebooks, and gender in colombia

colombia is home to some of the fiercest girls i have ever met.  even my girls in uganda--former child soldiers with the world's most vicious rebels--were not so strong and feisty and violent as these girls.  kids in general fight a lot at my school, so i guess it's logical that this would apply to both girls and boys.  i think it's an interesting commentary on their social circumstances, that despite their culture's more "traditional" view of women's roles, the girls fight just as hard as the boys.  because to survive growing up in a bogotá slum, you have to be tough, regardless. 

a few days ago, i saw a girl getting told off by the principal for not wearing her uniform--or rather, for wearing a non-regulation sports jacket over her jumper instead of the approved uniform sweater.  she did not seem especially moved by the principal's lecture on taking pride in her school and conforming to the mandates of authority figures.  she was a small skinny thing, 13 perhaps, with carelessly mussed, shortish black hair and a rather cocky expression on her face.  i noticed that her left eye was ringed with purple bruises.  the principal did too, and stopped short in his lecture to ask "what happened to your eye?"  my first thought was domestic violence--a tricky issue to deal with for teachers in general, but especially in colombia.  but that wasn't it.  "oh that.  a mugger tried to rob me, but don't worry--i fought him off,""  she said casually.

on another occasion, one of my fifth-graders--a sweet, clever girl who's always jumping out of her chair to answer questions--came up to me after class to ask me a question about our last test.  i noticed that, on top of her prim little school-uniform jumper, she was wearing a set of brass knuckles on a chain 'round her neck.  i'm not sure if they were actually functional or more for show, but either way i was a bit shaken.

i spend a lot of time in the principal's office.  he's my host dad, so i'm often in there asking questions, trying to get copies made, or asking for a ride home so i don't have to pay for the bus.  a few weeks ago, i was in there when a girl-gang was getting in trouble for beating people up.  the girl-gangs here, i'm told, give the administration quite as much trouble as the boys.  it appeared to be some kind of revenge issue or turf war.  and these were no cat-fights--more like battles to the death between angry lionesses.

FARC soldier

the ringleader, a short, rather burly girl with impeccable makeup and perfectly arranged hair, stood with her arms crossed, hip cocked under her pleated skirt, scowling.  it seemed so incongruous: these girls were about 16, standing there with those neat little uniforms making them look at once both innocent and mature.  in the US you might expect fighting from some little girls--tomboys-- but that they'd grow out of such "masculine" behavior by the time they hit puberty.  but not here.  it's odd because in many other ways gender roles here are strictly defined: women are essentially barred from a lot of 'manly' jobs--and jobs that might place them in the dangerously powerful position of provider in the family.

in fact, in stark contrast to uganda and many other developing countries, school dropout rates for girls are not really a big issue here.  this is because there are so few economic opportunities for girls and women anyway that their families figure that, unless they get pregnant, they might as well just stay in school.  a sort of backhanded benefit to being a girl in colombia.  even for women who do find jobs outside the home, motherhood is seen as their primary objective.  and in relationships, men are expected to be the assertive ones--it's even taboo for a girl to ask a guy out.  [these are, of course, generalizations, but it's consistent with what i've observed and what i was taught in my cultural training].  but then you have things like girl-gangs and female FARC.  i guess it just goes to show that in certain political and economic circumstances, culture adapts.  you do what you gotta do to survive, and learn to live as you were brought up.  culture is not without contradictions.

colombians are technically "amizonians."  i was curious as to what the linguistic connection was between my neighbors and the fabled female fighters of greek mythology.  so i did a little investigating.  legend has it that, sometime in the 1500s a spanish explorer was mucking around the amazon river when he and the rest of his band were attacked by a fierce band of indigenous women-warriors.  "they are skilled with their bows and arrows and each does as much fighting as ten indian men," wrote one of his companions.  he was so impressed with their fighting prowess that he came back to spain and told stories about them, and they eventually decided to rename the river after these female fighters who reminded him so of the warrior-queens of old.  there is some debate as to whether this story is actually true, but i believe it is, and that the blood of these ancient warrioresses runs in the veins of my fierce little fourth graders today.

of course i'm not saying i'm happy with this phenomenon.  violence is wrong regardless of whether you're a boy or girl, and heaven knows it makes my job a lot harder having twice as many fights to break up.  i spend a significant portion of the class every day working with the kids on nonviolence.  but i do think it's an interesting phenomenon.  in a way, i'm glad the girls are standing up for themselves--i just wish they would do it in a more peaceful fashion.   i wonder if this has implications for domestic violence issues in their communities--my girls don't take shit from anyone, and i highly doubt they would in the future from a boyfriend or husband.  if they get hit, they sure as hell will hit back.  on the other hand, maybe the reason they are so quick to fight back is that they've grown up with domestic violence.

i'm very protective of my little girls.  they're like my hundred little daughters, and i get fussed whenever i think something is poisoning their innocent little minds.  it's probably just the myth of childhood innocence, but still...  because of this, i am very displeased with the notebooks the boys bring to school.  it is quite commonplace here for little boys to have notebooks with cover photos so shocking they would make the cover of playboy look tame.  it's ridiculous, and entirely inappropriate for a school setting.  these boys are eight years old.  eight.  i'll come round checking on a grammar assignment or something "how's it going?  nice job, natalia.  and sebastian, what'd you get for number... oh my goodness.  that girl on your notebook is wearing nothing but a belt.  and wow, juan diego over here's got a topless girl wearing a thong and stilettos..." 

ok, i couldn't find an especially scandalous
one when i looked at the store today, but
if i find a better example i'll post it

my girls, especially the 5th graders, are at that awkward, vulnerable age just between little girls and teenagers.  some look like they're 6 and some like they're 16, and there are feet of difference in their height.  i remember what it was like to be that age; they're very impressionable.  so this is exactly the worst time for them to be constantly inundated with these impossibly airbrushed oversexualized images of femininity.  the whole point of these girls being in school is to show them that they have value and potential and opportunity beyond the traditional female role of providing sex and reproduction.  but this idea kind of gets shot to hell by these stupid notebooks.  what sort of message does it send to the girls?: " it doesn't matter if you know your logarithms or can explain cellular respiration or ace your english test.  your male peers' ideal of femininity is still this vacant, curvy, half-naked pinup girl."  and they're reminded of this every single time the class opens their notebooks. 

i am also not pleased that a sex shop opened up a block from my school.  it's painted bright pink with a garish neon sign, and the stuff they put in the front window makes even me a little uncomfortable, and i'm a brown student!  society (colombian and american) oversexes little girls enough, they don't need to be bombarded with stripper outfits and rubber genitalia every day when they walk home from school.

there are a number of other lingerie shops, almost as scandalous, near the school.  most shops in this part of the city are the front rooms of people's houses.  one day i saw a pair of girls from my school, maybe 7 and 10, walking into one after school--they obviously lived above the shop.  they wore their matching school uniforms--plaid jumpers, white stockings and mary janes-- and were clutching notebooks. "how was school, girls?" asked their mother from behind the counter.  "fine mommy," they said.  "all right, now go do your homework," she said, and the girls went into the back storeroom, passing dominatrix outfits, barely-there nurse costumes, pink handcuffs, and... disturbingly... "sexy schoolgirl" costumes.

for a society that's almost 100% catholic, colombians sure aren't very conservative or discreet about sex.  in fact, bogotá seems to embody the stereotype of the repressed catholic school girl who is actually crazy promiscuous.  there are sex shops all over the city, and the transmilenio (bogotá's version of the metro) passes straight through the red light district.  on my way to a meeting, or to get some school supplies from the north, i'll look out the window and see curvy topless women standing under streetlights on the main road, girls in skimpy lingerie advertising themselves in the doorways of brothels.  

"i worry about my girls.  especially the pretty ones," said a friend of mine who teaches a similar age group in the costal town of cartagena. "what are they going to use their english for?  i mean, they can't all become waitresses," he added darkly.  sex tourism is a huge issue along the coast, especially in the caribbean cities of barranquilla and cartagena.  at airports in colombia, there are signs similar to this one (which is from mexico, i think), basically saying "welcome to colombia!  please don't rape our children!"

i saw this quote from an american schoolteacher--a schoolteacher--on the issue: "On this trip, I've had sex with a 14 year-old girl in Mexico and a 15 year-old in Colombia.  I'm helping them financially.  If they don't have sex with me, they may not have enough food.  If someone has a problem with me doing this, let UNICEF feed them."  i want to punch him in the face.  and then go start some women's job-training initiatives in touristy areas of colombia.

"Don't mistreat children--they are our future" a public
awareness campaign by the FARC rebels
to promote children's rights.

luckily for my sanity, sex toursim isn't a huge issue here in bogotá, primarily because tourism itself is not that big here as it's dangerous.  prostitution is still an issue though, and statistically speaking, some of my girls probably will become prostitutes.  a friend of a friend who works for the police here was talking about a raid they'd done recently on a brothel* near the city center.  they found 8 and 10-year old girls "working" there who'd been sold by their parents.  but i don't know how i could deal with the knowledge that potentially a significant portion of what i was doing here in colombia was training girls to become more lucrative prostitutes for foreign tourists.  that's one of the reasons i requested not to be placed on the coast: because of how inherently problematic a tourist-based economy--sexual or otherwise--is.


**this is kinda going off on a tangent here, but nicholas kristof happened to write an op-ed today, called raiding a brothel in india.   i usually love nick kristof, and this is a nice little anecdote, but it doesn't really scratch the surface of the issue, or of really effective ways of dealing with it.  for the for a more in-depth look, check out the documentary holly about sex trafficking in cambodia, or for the more hollywood-inclined, trade about international sex trafficking into to the U.S.**

the world's most hilariously inaccurate representation of bogotá

from "mr. and mrs. smith" (1:50-6:00)

there are so many problems with this scene. flying in on a military helicopter to an itty-bitty jungle village? (yes, the other 8 million residents and 600 square miles are just hiding under the trees) what's with all the tropicalness?  and prancing about in that little white sundress? she'd last about 5 minutes before she caught her death of cold and got drenched in rain 'til her dress was transparent. bogotá is always freezing, dark, and drowning in downpours.  but the biggest problem with the scene is the stuff exploding right and left, the constant machine gun fire, the absolute chaos.  yeah, bogotá was pretty dangerous then, and still is--but not like mogadishu during black hawk down or anything.  crikey.  honestly, though, i love this clip.  i think it's absolutely hilarious how clueless people can be about colombia sometimes.  and developing and war-affected countries in general, for that matter.