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>> 1 1 Introduction Studying the “Other” Girls I walked eighteen-year-old Alicia to the reception area of the Chi-Town Health Teen Center after we wrapped up our first interview. I had met the high school senior two weeks earlier when she came in for an appointment to obtain birth control pills. We chatted about our weekend plans as we made our way toward the door, the previously busy waiting room, with its colorful flyers and posters, now empty. One hot-pink flyer shouted, “Come join our teen group!” Another bright-green flyer simply read, “Please ask for your brown bag at the front counter” (each bag contained twelve condoms). A large poster featuring a smiling brown-skinned Latino baby asked, “Have you immunized your child?” In less than thirty minutes, the center would close for the day; the rusted steel folding gate on the outside entrance was already extended at four in the afternoon. Alicia paused in front of the door to cautiously pull back the curtains on the windows of the double doors. Nervously surveying the street, she explained that she did not want to be “busted” by her parents or other relatives as she left the center. She had told her parents that she was going to attend a yearbook club meeting after school 2 > 3 like I didn’t know what she was talking about.” Relieved that her mother had not discovered her birth control pills or condoms hidden between some books, Alicia told me, “She probably would’ve sent me to Mexico or something crazy like that if she found them!” In the wake of that confrontation, Alicia opted to use the Depo-Provera shot after researching birth control methods with her friends. This was the “class project on health” they were doing the day I saw them together in the Hogar del Pueblo computer lab. Picking at a loose thread on the wrist of her worn sweater, Alicia confided, “To tell you the truth, I really don’t want to be using the shot ’cause some of the stuff I read about it freaks me out. . . . But at least my mom can’t find out. Like with the pills, there’s always a chance. And I keep my condoms in my school locker now, she can’t be all up in my business there.” She continued, “I know that people think that girls my age shouldn’t be bothering with sex right now because of this or that.” Pausing, she then insisted, “But that’s like saying that we have no sexual feelings, which ain’t true! I thought a lot about it [sex] before doing anything and made sure I knew how to take care myself. No one made me do anything.” Alicia’s experiences in making choices about and gaining access to safe-sex resources highlight just some of the challenges Latina girls face in their efforts to practice safe sex.1 The Latina girls I came to know, like Alicia, told me about their efforts to sexually “take care” of themselves or “handle” their business and the challenges they encounter in doing so, exhibiting behaviors and perspectives that do not quite fit into the prevailing idea that the sexuality of young women, particularly that of girls of color, is a social problem. Many may resist picturing what this entails for a teenage girl, especially for a young woman of color, because of the firmly held expectation and belief that they should abstain from sexual activities until marriage or at least until they are more mature and responsible. Others may acknowledge that young women are sexual beings and assert that if they are going to engage in sexual activities, they should practice safe sex, but without any real consideration of exactly what this demands of girls.2 For instance, the simple act of opening the door to a health center requires girls to negotiate their own understanding of their sexuality , as well as to reckon with what others expect of them or think of their sexuality. The conversations and exchanges I had with Latina girls and some of their mothers during two years of fieldwork for this book reveal that there is an untold story about Latina youth and sexuality, one that goes beyond their pregnancy, birth, and STD rates. This book evolved out of my experiences working with pregnant and parenting teenage girls at a Chicago-area teen health center from the midto late 1990s. This was my first job...

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