Mary was sitting on a bench in Stuyvesant Town and I saw her beautiful blue eyes flash in the sunlight and I stopped to photograph her. "I was Special Ed teacher in Brooklyn at P.S. 10 for more than twenty years. I loved it," explained Mary. One of Mary's daughters is also a teacher and ironically works at the same school in Brooklyn where Mary worked. She is a mother to four children and a grandmother to five children who all live in Peter Cooper Village Stuyvesant Town. " I was raised in Queens but my husband was from Manhattan and we moved into Stuyvesant over forty years ago and just stayed, " she said. While interviewing Mary several people passed and waved to her and I got the sense that Mary has a big community of friends here. One of Mary's daughters is also a teacher and ironically works at the same school in Brooklyn where Mary worked. " I get to see my kids and grandchildren but not as often as I'd like. They are in school and working and busy. But, I get to spend a lot of time with them in the summer at my beach house in Springlake," she said.
Sarah Bender
"Everything I am now is because I am a woman and I want to make life better for other women." explained Sarah Bender. I met Sarah at a return peace corps volunteer event at a bar in the East Village last night. I was in the peace corps 20 years ago and I think there was only one person at the event last night that was older than me. I looked around the tables at all of these young do-gooders and they all looked just like my Peace Corps cohort, except back then the guys had longish hair instead of man buns and piercings weren't quite as common. Sarah served as a volunteer in Jordan and now is working as the assistant director of an LGBT Health Center that is part of the Metropolitan Hospital Center. "I love being a woman. It is always going to be hard as a woman. The expectations are different, but even in Jordan I felt that I got to experience something among the women that the male volunteers would not see. The minute men left a room the demeanor of the women would change instantly and we'd be talking openly and laughing over tea." While in Jordan, Sarah could not let her community know that she was gay. "It was weird, three months before leaving for Peace Corps I was canvassing on the streets of New York City saying 'hey do you have a second for gay rights?' and then I am in Jordan and back in the closet. I understood the policy, it was for my own safety." Homosexuality is decriminalized in Jordan but it is still taboo. "I took Peace Corps seriously. I didn't mind not disclosing that I'm a lesbian. It was a great experience and I met the girl of my dreams. She was in Peace Corps in Jordan too. We are engaged and getting married in September. At first we weren't going to announce it on social media because our friends in Jordan are on facebook too. When we did announce it on facebook we received so many loving and supporting messages from Jordan. It was really nice."
Emily Boggs
"Every woman I know has some creepy or uncomfortable story about a man harassing her. It happens all the time, it's commonplace, almost like it is ok to do that. It's not ok." - Emily Boggs is a student in NYC.
Marvell Robinson
I met Marvell in the L train subway station on First Avenue. She and her two daughters were selling bags of cookies. " We are a start up," she explained. "I started by just packaging other people's products but now we are baking all kinds of things. Natural cookies, from plant-based ingredients." she said. Marvell's daughters are home schooled and after they finish schooling at three, they help her with the business. " My mom wasn't a business minded woman nor did she have any have inspirations of starting her own business, she was more of a home maker just taking care of the family. I want to instill in my young ladies ideas and ideals, I wasn't privileged to have learned from my mom about creativity and innovation or how to make a living by doing the things you enjoy and love." She says that sometimes you learn things too late in life. She wants her girls to be prepared, to learn when they are young. Marvell is glad she is a woman, she says it is special and she likes being feminine. "I don't think that I have to walk or talk or act like a man to succeed, I can be feminine, I can be a woman." What she doesn't like about a being a woman is the way women treat one another. She clarified, "I don't like social media because women use it to criticize and cut down one another. They will look you over head to toe and comment on social media and then won't even say hello when they see you in person."
Xiao Jing Xu
Jing and her husband have owned Crystal Cleaners and Laundromat on East 20th Street for eight years. "Because I am a woman I am very luck to have babies. I have two happy and smart daughters," said Jing. "I think maybe in the work world and at school it may be easier to be a woman, but at home it is harder. We have to take care of the home, the food, the children," she said. For Jing it doesn't matter that she didn't have any sons. "In Chinese culture having boys is more celebrated. I am happy that I have two girls but maybe for my family, they would have been happier if I had a son," she said.
Luisa Orozco
Luisa has been working at Rent The Runway for the past two years and she aspires to do something more intellectual in the fashion industry. "I want to do something where I make a difference in the world. The fashion world is disillusioning - I want to make clothing more meaningful, more intellectual and less about having something." She pointed out that sometimes it sucks to be a woman. "I am into politics. And there are huge inequalities between men and women. Even in fashion - everything costs more for women. It sucks. A lot of things suck about the inequalities between men and women and they go unnoticed or even if they are noticed nobody does anything about them," she said. She is Columbian and though she is an American citizen, when she travels alone to Columbia she has a hard time getting through security without a hassle. "It's like it is looked down upon to be a woman traveling by yourself. I was recently going to Columbia and there were all these other men traveling alone too, but when I put my passport or ID through the scanner I always get an X and have to go through further security scrutiny. I have to wonder if it is because I am a woman, none of those other men traveling alone who are in the same line get an X."
Bamike Ogunrinu
"I like to make women feel beautiful," said Bamike. She has been a make-up artist for three years at Sephora. And she is the first person I have seen who looked great with purple lipstick. When I photograph someone by the second frame, I can if they have been a model - and Bamike had been. "I loved being on the runway, I get such a thrill out of the excitement and the power of being in front of all those people. I was cheerleader all through school. I would perform in stadiums in front of 5,000 people. I miss that." I asked her, like I ask all EVE's, how she felt about being a woman. And she confidently stated, "I wouldn't switch genders for anything. There is power in being a woman that if I were a man I wouldn't feel. We are the stronger gender." Bamike works full time at Sephora and she is studying Biology and she plans to study veterinary science at Cornell University.
Ana Torres
After finishing up a photo shoot in the Bronx River Park I was making my way to the subway when I saw a woman selling water at the intersection. Smart idea. It was hot and humid and I stopped to buy a bottle. And then like always, out came the story and out came my camera.
I had to ask if she was really making any money sitting there in the sweltering heat. Turns out, she can make between $200-600 depending on the day and I guess the temperature. "I only do this in the summer. I'm a teacher during the school year. " (sad side note here: I am fairly certain she is making more money per hour selling water than most teachers earn during the school year.) And being a single mother with four children she needs a summer job.
At 12 Ana was pregnant. Spoiler alert! There is a happy ending.
She needed an escape, her father was an alcoholic and her older brother's beat her and her safety net from the beatings was a boyfriend. His grandmother lived in an apartment downstairs and she spent a lot of time there." When my mother found out I was pregnant, she threatened my life" recalled Ana, "And she refused to let me have an abortion - and I would have." Her daughter is now 21. "I kept going to school even while I was pregnant. There was a daycare at my high school, but after a while I couldn't take it so I quit." Ana got a job at McDonald's and her GED through associates.
This is a list of jobs that she has had; McDonald's, Volunteer office at Jacobe, Patient relations at North Central Hospital, Jeans Plus, Intern at the career services at Monroe College, Hospitality at Monroe College, medical billing at an Optometrist's office. Six years after she had her first child she had another. But as Ana puts it "I pulled through." While working all those jobs and raising two children, Ana got a bachelor's degree in Business. And then, while working as a dialysis technician she completed her Masters in Education. She teaches 2nd grade at ICAR charter school and is a TA for ELA to help mediate reading. "I know," she said, "I beat the statistics."
Victoria Bekerman
"I used to work at a Law firm but I found it boring, so I took courses at FIT and became a jeweler," says Bekerman while standing beside her Grand Central Station pop-up booth. I asked Victoria the same question I ask all of the "Eves" I meet. "How would your life have been different if you weren't a woman?" She admitted that when she was growing up she wanted to be a boy. "They have more opportunities to be successful and that they seem to be more athletic and more focused." And then she explained that as she got older she realized, "Being a woman means that I have more layers. I see things that guys don't see. I can see other sides to a situation." And then she got that far away look in her eyes and said, "The most amazing thing about being a woman is being able to give birth. After my daughter was born I realized that I would much rather be a woman." Then she laughed. "But," she said, "There are no priorities given to pregnant women in the United States. I'm from Argentina and there people will give you priority in line or for a seat. Here in the U.S., not so much."
She makes great jewelry, I bought a friend of mine one of her bracelets and she wears it all the time. VictoriaBekerman.com
Dominga Castro Lucas
When Dominga was 18 she and her boyfriend were both studying to become teachers. Her boyfriend became a teacher while Dominga became pregnant. In the Highlands of Guatemala when a woman becomes pregnant her education is over, if it wasn't over already.
I met Dominga in 1993 she was nearly 20 years old and I was a 25 year old Peace Corps Volunteer. She was vibrant, smart, funny and beautiful. She taught me how to speak a few words in Mam and how to bathe in a Chuj (a sweat lodge used for weekly bathing). I taught her how to make apple pie. I urged her to go back to school, that is wasn't too late. And then two years later, my stint in the Peace Corps was over and we returned to the United States and Dominga was pregnant again.
Then in 1999, I sat in her one room house that had plastic for windows and talked about life while she nursed her third baby. Her husband was drinking and beating her and she needed help. She had never asked me for money before, but that day she asked for $100 so she could buy a propane stove. I thought, "How is a stove going to help?"
In March I returned to Guatemala. Dominga's mother-in-law told us she was at the elementary school. I found her in an office, her office. Dominga was now the Director of the elementary school.
With $100 Dominga bought a stove and cooked faster in the morning and then could heat up the food in the evening. This gave her the time to go to school in the afternoons. When she graduated the government assigned her to a school that took hours to walk to. Her second year she protested. She insisted that a mother of 4 children should be able to teach closer to home. She got a position teaching in the school closest to her home and after 8 years of teaching she became the director of a brand new school even closer to her house.
She said she went back to school because I encouraged her and that kept her going. I asked her, "Why did you listen to me?" She said, "Because you were the only one who believed in me. You were the only one who acknowledged that I could learn more, do more and reach my goals."
Dominga knew what she needed - a propane stove to free her from the long hours of cooking over a wood stove and an open fire. There is of course the saying, "Give a man a fish and he eats for one day. Teach a man to fish and he is set for life." I think there should be a different saying for women. "Listen to a woman and give her what she needs and then stand back and watch it happen."