A parent’s job is to raise strong individuals, and in my situation, my parents had to make me a strong woman, a true berraca. For my mom, that was wearing dresses but being defiant and not letting men pisotarte (step on you). She firmly believed that every strong woman was well-dressed but needed to be intellectually superior to a man. She saw that a woman should be a weapon—intellectually, not physically. On the other hand, my dad insisted that I train in martial arts and wear makeup. I practiced judo and kung fu for many years. Many of my days consisted of scrambling into the car and wearing a hot pink dress that was very uncomfortable to breathe and move around in with itchy stalkings and Mary Jane shoes so polished I didn’t need a mirror. I would sit in the back seat and start changing, knowing I had only 40 minutes to get my kung fu uniform on, put my hair in a ponytail, and eat whatever snack my mom brought me. Once I got into baggy oversized pants and loose blue shirt, I felt I could breathe freely without the constraints of a dress. Eventually, when I got older, I began competing in the female judo division. However, this category is small or sometimes entirely omitted because of the lack of participants. Seeing this sometimes made me wonder if I was practicing the right sport. My parents’ contrasting views on how to make me a berraca could not have been clearer. So, what does it mean to be a strong woman? Society has many views on answering this question. Some say that to be a strong woman, one must completely embrace one’s femininity. Other sources say a woman must be a go-getter and strive to be better than who they were before. However, the question remains: What type of strong woman do I want to become?

Children’s first encounter with this duality of femininity and masculinity is seen between their parents’ interactions. I remember the first couple of times I started asking why boys and girls are expected to do different things. For example, my mom constantly reminded me to sit with my knees together like she did; however, my dad could sit however he wanted to. Other interactions I remember were when the kitchen knives would go dull, and my mom would always ask my dad to sharpen them. I never understood why she didn’t do it since she was the one who used them most. Maybe it was because my dad felt it was his responsibility as the man in the house to handle the kitchen knives. Or perhaps it was out of fear that my mom could hurt herself. Shirley Feldman, a psychologist and a research scientist at Stanford, speaks of the negative effects of adhering to traditional gender norms. She says that conventional femininity promotes women to have a deep dependency on their husbands as well as an inability to have a cognitive coping strategy. Similarly, traditional masculinity typically portrays men with an inability to express their emotions and a constant need for dominance. This harms women because if the husband does not see the wife as needing a dependency on him, they are angered or disappointed in their wives.1 Even though these tests are done by professionals, I wouldn’t agree with them. My mom is a very traditional feminine woman with certain values; however, she always had this sense of independence and individuality. She would always say, “El me necesita a mi. Yo no lo necesito a él—He needs me. But I don’t need him.” She would say this but needed his help to get the car oil changed; these two views were very contradicting and confusing. Now I see my dad helping my mom as a way he shows appreciation and love towards her, because he knows she is capable of sharpening the kitchen knives but wants to take care of her. I still consider her a strong woman because strong people also need to be able to accept help.

In addition to receiving messages from their parents about what a strong woman should look like, children, specifically little girls, receive input from commercials and television on what is acceptable for them to play with. For example, in the commercial for Easy Bake Ultimate Oven, all the actors are little girls. Why aren’t some of the actors little boys? I do think it is important for little girls to know how to cook, even though it is typically seen as a feminine hobby. However, they should encourage little girls to do more than bake. Because it predisposes them to be in the kitchen, instead, they should make a toy for all children, teaching them how to build a toy oven and how to bake with it.2 My parents, too, fell for the excitement of the new toy and bought it for me. When I got it, I thought it was really cool; I loved the purple, and the excitement of making cute little tarts got to me too. Funny enough, that was the day my deep dislike of cooking grew. The cookies were not very good and they came out looking very different from the commercial. Nonetheless I have great admiration for people who can cook because it is a very difficult skill.

In a commercial for Beyblade Burst we see the opposite. The main actors playing with the Beyblade Burst toys are little boys who are encouraged to construct different types of tops. The commercial focuses on boys being able to engineer and experiment with which is the best design for the top. I find it interesting how they took a top that originally was a gender-neutral toy and made it especially for boys. The Beyblade commercials additionally showed the boys problem-solving and working in a team, which are skills needed in the workplace. Instead, the few girls displayed in the commercial are seen cheering on the boys from a distance. This subconsciously tells girls that they can’t or shouldn’t work in a team, build, and experiment. This directly affects the minds of little girls because they start thinking they can’t be a woman who works with her hands in construction or in a team.3 The University of Kansas published an article that speaks of how gender-specific toys have lasting effects on what children view as gender appropriate. This is explicitly portrayed in the animations that are done in commercials. For example, commercials aimed for boys typically have more sound effects and actions, while for girls there is more fade-in and out transitions as well as narration.4 This psychological trick used in commercials for the most part works, but my friend (Isabella) and I were not the case. Both of us were the only girls allowed to play with the boys because we were so cool to have Beyblades. Even though we typically lost because our tops were not as sophisticated as the boys, that didn’t stop our fun. My favorite part was to see the different colors and the excitement of how fast the tops would spin.

Similar to Beyblades and Easy Bake, Brand Genetics is a marketing agency that focuses on teaching brands how to appeal to different consumers, such as women. Brand Genetics divides femininity into three current branches: hyper femininity, powerful femininity, and perfectionist femininity. Hyperfemininity occurs when a woman focuses on her appearance and has extreme views of traditional femininity. A woman who follows this path typically uses her physique to have a sense of authority. Powerful femininity is when a woman has strength (physically and emotionally), competitiveness, and ambition. This is typically seen in women who participate in sports generally practiced by men. Perfectionist femininity is when women succeed in all aspects of their lives, such as career and domestic life. These women typically have their life together but are under immense pressure. But Brand Genetics believes these three categories will go away and become one known as unconstrained femininity. This represents a sense that women are free to fully embrace traditional femininity as well as pushing gender stereotypes/boundaries.5

In this moment of my life, I fall into the characteristic of powerful femininity because even though I enjoy wearing dresses as the next girl, I do love performing in violent sports. Judo and Kung Fu are my two favorite violent sports because of the reactions I get when I mention I do these sports. I have been practicing Kung Fu for 12 years, and most of that time, I was the only girl in the class. A couple of years later, there were other girls, I would be very excited to go to class; however, I was the only girl for the most significant percentage of my time in Kung Fu. This was very discouraging for me because I wouldn’t have anyone to look up to, and when you look at women in Kung Fu, there are not many. Only three women, including myself, have achieved brown sash in my dojo, which has been open for approximately 25 years. That makes it very difficult for little girls to have someone to look up to. In judo, women are required to be physically and mentally strong. The physical strength required in judo is lifting a person of the same weight or heavier and knowing how to control your body and your opponents to have them in a hold. The mental strength required is that even though you are in immense pain, you need to figure out a way to get out of the situation or to push through the pain. In judo, a survival instinct comes out. It feels more like a fight of who wants to win more. Who is more determined to keep going until they win?

Determination and bravery are also seen in pop music such as “Kings & Queens” by Ava Max where she tries to portray what a strong woman may look like. The lyrics of this song speak of how women leaders (queens) should be the head because there would be more peace and stability. The music continues to explain that strong women do not need saving: “No damsel in distress, don’t need to save me.” 6 This is the lyric that most resonated with me because, by definition, I am a damsel (young unmarried woman) but that doesn’t mean I need someone to fight my battles. This is a key characteristic of women who retain a feminine quality while acting in typically male roles. In the music video, she is also displayed having a corset and heels that are traditionally feminine (which traditionally were a symbol of feminine oppression); however, she is seated on a throne, which shows her having power and equaling the playing field between men (kings) and women (queens). 7 She is showing that they can try to put constraints in her path but she will still be successful.

Even more recently, pop culture released the new movie Barbie. Prior to this, Barbie was often seen as weak or soft. Even when I was growing up, the boys would roll their eyes and laugh at the girls who would play with Barbie. This was probably the reason I chose not to play with Barbie for fear that I would look weak. Yet this view has changed in the past year with the release of the movie. The movie’s prominent message is that girls have the ability to do anything they set their minds to. This includes following traditional femininity as well as doing traditional masculine jobs. However, the movie also bears a hidden message, one revealed by America Ferrera in an interview:

Growing up is about like, leaving behind childish things—particularly for women and not so much, men get to have their men caves and play their video games forever and women it’s like, toys away do the chores. . . . This woman [Gloria] somehow made it to adulthood holding on to like, the value of play and the value of aspiration and imagination. . . . We can be a lot of things at once that we can be joyful and playful and imaginative and childlike and be a grown woman professional taken seriously.8

It had never come to me that a woman can still be childlike with hopes and dreams but still have a very professional career. This, I guess, is what my mom meant with all these years when she said, “El uniforme de una berraca es un vestido.—The uniform of a strong woman is a dress.” She was trying to tell me a strong woman should always be well dressed (like Barbie) because it mentally prepares you to achieve any of your dreams. Like Barbie, we can have fun and express ourselves through clothing yet still have a very prominent position.

Similar to Barbie, I resonate with the song “I Am Woman” by Emmy Meli because it reflects the idea that a strong powerful woman can take any form. That there is no right or wrong way to be a strong woman. For example, the song states, “I am feminine, I am masculine I am anything I want.”9 This reflects the idea of what my parents have had in mind for me. My mom wanted me to be well-presented at all times, and my dad wanted me to be physically strong. It also brings to mind what I want to be, too. I want to be physically and mentally strong as well as independent. I want to be able to be self-reliant and practice the sports I choose without hesitation or judgment from others. I want to be the best in my future career. I want to keep growing and learning. I want to push the boundaries farther of what women are capable of doing. But I also want to be able to sit in a field of flowers. I want to be able to be confident in a pink dress. I want to be classy and elegant. I want to be able to wear a bow and change a tire without getting odd looks. This is the strong woman I want to be with no label.

Bibliography

Notes

1. Douglas K. Snyder, John M. Velasquez, and Betty L. Clark, “Parental Influence on Gender and Marital Role Attitudes: Implications For Intervention,”Journal of Marital and Family Therapy 23, no. 2 (April 1997): 192.

2. Hasbro, “Easy-Bake Ultimate Oven Commercial (2011),” YouTube video, 0.30, 2011.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lreImESlrG0.

3. Hasbro, “Beyblade Burst – ‘Enter Battle Mode’ Official Commercial,” YouTube video, 1.10, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDbeBqYZtUA.

4. Aletha C. Huston, et al. “Children’s Comprehension of Televised Formal Features With Masculine and Feminine Connotations,” Developmental Psychology 20, no. 4 (1984): 708.

5. “How to Appeal to Women : A close look at Powerful Femininity,” Brand Genetics, Tom Ellis, last modified 2024 https://brandgenetics.com/human-thinking/how-to-appeal-to-women-a-closer-look-at-powerful-femininity/.

6.Ava Max, “Kings & Queens,” by Downtown Music Publishing, Reach Music Publishing, Songtrust Ave. Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLc, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music,Inc, 2020, Heaven & Hell Atlantic Records.

7. Ava Max, “Kings & Queens [Official Music Video],” Youtube video, 2.42, March 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH1RNk8954Q.

8. Etalk, “America Ferrera on how #BarbieMovie celebrates women holding onto their childhood,” YouTube video, 0.40, July 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgN58wwTNJw.

9. “Behind the Song Lyrics: ‘I Am Woman’ by Emmy Meli,” by. Kathleen Nolan, American Songwriter the craft of music, 2022, https://americansongwriter.com/behind-the-song-lyrics-i-am-woman-by-emmy-meli/.