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6th grade Shallyn going shopping with friends

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Fresh out of elementary school is when I started to set out to find my identity. From coming from a family that loved to dress me up and style my hair to have little photoshoots, in middle school I began to stray away from my feminine side and started to experiment in the "tomboy" look. As shown in the picture, the the look of a dress on me was appalling. Not only would I have pressure to follow gender norms from my family, but also my peers. My friends would always ask me "why don't you wear your hair down," and whenever asked this question I would never know how to answer because I did I identify as a female, but it was even more confusing why I didn't like to look like what people believed a girl should look like. Constantly feeling as though I should "stay in my gendered place," is where I began to question my gender identity. But what everyone failed to realize, was the insecurities I was holding in being the one of the few black girls in a school filled with people that were mainly white. Not knowing how to properly style my curly hair, I wore it back so that I wouldn't look disheveled compared to my peers.

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8th grade Shallyn after celebrating promoting from middle school to high school.

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Around this time I started to get more intoned with what I believed to me feminine. I started experimenting with makeup, dresses, and painting my nails. Still, there was dissatisfaction in my look. In Judith Lorber's "Social Construction of Gender," Lorber illustrates how gender as a social institution and how gender can be learned or taught from many outlets such as your family, friends, or the media. By this time, I noticed around me that my friends began to start wearing makeup. Because of this, I started to wear makeup. In these days, it really set the tone to where I would be now. I could have hated the idea of makeup because it didn't fit what I believed a women to be or I could learn to love it and embrace it as being untouched with my femininity.

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Beginning of senior year Shallyn getting comfortable in her own skin

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Almost done with high school, I began to learn how I like to style my hair, how I like to wear my makeup, and what clothes truly fit the way I wanted to be perceived as a woman. I began to surround myself with people that liked my for me. The confidence and glow I developed over the years of high school really made me appreciate all my struggles and accomplishments even more. There is treasure at the end of my rainbow. I learned that I do not have to wear a dress in order to be perceived as a "woman." No matter what I wear or do it only mattered that society does not have to shape me into being its definition of a woman. I can wear what I want and be what I want because gender is fluid.

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Shallyn graduating high school and the beginning of being the definition of a strong black woman.

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The beginning of a beautiful chapter of the book of my life. Despite the people who doubted I would be where I am today, I made it! I learned through my life experience, that I am as strong as any man or woman. I ended high school with a 4.0 gpa, the plan to go to a university, and with my plans for the future to be successful. In Sojourner Truth's essay, "Ain't I a Woman?" she states how she "ploughed, planted, and bear the lash." In this statement she is saying how she has worked just as hard as men and is telling her audience to respect her as if she was a man. I resonate with this statement because all my life people have doubted my intelligence and my drive. I spent endless night studying for my AP classes, being involved in two difficult sports, and stayed involved my being apart of my school's student body. Through all of this, I learn the true meaning of being a strong black woman and I plan to embody it for the rest of my life.

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Before I was born, when my mom found out I was a going to be a baby girl, my family and her friends set out to find me the cutest baby clothes for a girl. From this young age my family and my mom's friends knew they would do everything in their power to see me successful. To start this journey, they supported my mom who is a single mom, and made sure I would be spoiled to hide that I had many factors that would be against me. Poverty and the color of my skin would be things I would have to fight through my life in order to get over this obstacle. In Martin's "The egg and sperm" essay, Martin explained how the egg was seen as "passive" and would not move or journey. With. the support system I had, it was determined that this statement would not be true and that I would do the exact opposite.