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For 6 years, I played volleyball in fully female leagues. I have always felt a sense of security and comfortability with my teams. Sandra Cisneros in her writing, "Guadalupe the Sex Goddess (1996) describes womanhood as mysterious. To me it was celebrating with my girls and pushing ourselves to be the best we could be. Cisneros states she often felt, "...like the creative/destructive goddess Coatlicue, especially the days [she is] writing, capable of fabricating pretty tales with pretty words, as well as doing demolition work with a volley of palabrotas if [she] want[s] to" (177). I, too, feel destructive when I play and I dive for the ball, covering myself in bruises for a winning point. Yet, the next day I can wear a dress with those same bruises showing, but feeling beautiful and feminine in my skin.

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Every game I have ever played I have always worn mascara and eyeliner, even if I end up sweating it off later. In society, the fact that I wear makeup would be seen as me trying to fit the beauty standards even when performing a sweaty physical activity. However, as Judith Ortiz Cofer in her writing, "The Story of My Body (1993), states, "My skin color, my size, and my appearance were variables - things that were judged...My studies, later in my writing, the respect of people who saw me as an individual person they cared about, these were the criteria for my sense of self-worth... "(154). Even if I wore makeup to a game, I was not there to look pretty. My makeup was a variable, but my skills were the true focal point. I was there to show off my abilities as a volleyball player, not my ability to do makeup.

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After only playing in female leagues, one of my first experiences in a coed league was negative. I felt the oppression from being a girl who plays sports. The female sex in society can be seen as incapable of performing arduous tasks and one of those tasks is sports. Men's sports are viewed as professional and women's sports are viewed as amateur. The time I felt oppressed, I played in the same team with a man who would not allow me to pass the ball, would not pass it to me, or would hover over me. He was about 6 inches taller than me and I felt as though he was constantly trying to remind me he was stronger than me by trying to prove his masculinity and perform better than me which can be translated into playing better than a girl. Being a girl camouflages the medals I have gained in the last 6 years and to him, I had no capabilities of being skilled because I am a girl. Judith Lorber explains in, "Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender", that, "In one African society, men were supposed to eat with their 'whole mouth, whole heartedly, and not, like women, just with the lips, that is halfheartedly, with reservation and restraint" (57). Gender norms state women are meant to be soft and weak. The man who oppressed me for being a girl had this perception of women. To him, I most likely am too weak to be skilled at volleyball and assumed his skills were better than mine. He may have expected me to play "halfheartedly" when in reality, I have wholeheartedly played volleyball for 6 years, while he was not as experienced. If he had been more skilled than me that would have been perfectly fine, but that would have been due to experience not sex.

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After the negative situation that happened in the coed league, all I wanted was to become better at volleyball. I felt the need to prove myself to the male sex and prove that the female sex can be just as skilled. However, I quickly learned that I did not owe anyone anything. The only thing I owed myself was an apology for allowing a person to look down on me knowing my own skills and experience. I quickly grasped back my womanhood, and loved myself for being a skilled volleyball player. Like a girl, I continued to play volleyball. Being a girl to me means expressing my chosen gender and my femininity. I will play like a girl because I am a girl. I will not play like a man because I do not identify as a man. So, playing like a girl means being true to myself and my strengths.

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After realizing who I am, I stood true to myself and continued to play because that is what I love to do. I found a team who did not believe in societal gender norms and did not believe women were incapable of being skilled at sports. Never did I feel I had to prove myself skilled to my team. Never did I feel disappointment from my teammates if I ever committed a mistake. My womanhood intertwined with my teamwork and worked as one to feel proud of one another and our capabilities as human.