Interview with Nina Zaldivar

I’m excited to share my interview with my cousin, Nina Zaldivar. Nina is a current junior at Francis W. Parker.  

To begin the interview, Nina discussed some of her passions, which includes flying trapeze.

I've been doing flying trapeze ever since my dad drove by the trapeze setup on the lakefront, and he saw it and thought, “wow, that would be pretty cool.” So I've been doing flying trapeze since I was in eighth grade. 

Other than trapeze, Nina also does aerial silks, trampoline, and also figure skating (with me!), which she has been doing since she was seven. 

We continued our conversation by discussing some prominent issues that affect teenage girls. Nina, who is half Argentinian and half Korean, believes that a key issue for herself and other teens is beauty standards. 

Being an Asian-American girl, I feel it sometimes feels hard to straddle American beauty standards and Korean beauty standards. [...] In Korea, [...] all the idols are super pale and wear the whitest foundation [...] while in the U.S., it's super common to tan and be tan. So I think a lot of girls face, and me personally, too, face a ton of societal pressures to fit in and adapt to the surrounding beauty standards. 

Despite struggling with societal pressures, Nina said she found a way to manage them.

So I guess I kind of found a balance in my own life with that. I love using Korean skincare and makeup products, yet I still love to go with the sun a lot. 

I next asked Nina about how her experience at Parker, a predominantly white school, has shaped her perception of her identity as a person of color. While there aren’t many Asian girls in her grade, Nina said she has been able to find community in other ways.

And I do have a lot of friends of color, which is nice, so I think I’ve found kind of a community of other students of color within my grade and in my friend group. [...] I’m head of Multiracial Affinity and I attend both Asian Affinity and OLAS where I’m an OLAS liaison. [...] I guess being surrounded by maybe, white classmates, has made me feel like I'm more whitewashed, but having spaces to connect to other people, other people of color, [...]  helps combat that and make me feel comfortable as a person of color that hasn't been super used to [...]  talking about my identity a lot. In my middle school or maybe lower school years, I honestly didn't put that much thought into it, but in high school, when we had discussions in, maybe, Multiracial Affinity or Asian Affinity, it's helped me find that [...] a lot of other students of color at Parker also struggle with trying to fit in [...] too. 

Nina also described how connecting with teachers has helped her at school.

I also connect my Asian heritage when I talk to other Asian teachers, shout out to Mr. Zhang and Ms. Hoffman. I look up to them greatly. And I love talking about [...] different foods or traditions with them. 

I then asked Nina to share what it meant to “feel Korean” or “feel Argentinian,” a topic that came up for us when we traveled to Korea two years ago. Nina described how for both identities, the idea of feeling both Argentinian and Korean has different components.

Well, for feeling Korean, I think there's a visual component and then the, maybe, cultural component. In terms of the visual component, I mean more of my physical appearance, so maybe if I dye my hair, wear glasses, my friends will tell me that I “look so Korean” or something, [...] or maybe if I do Korean makeup or something, [...] I satisfy the visual checkbox of feeling Korean. I also feel Korean when I participate in, celebrating the Korean holidays, like the Lunar New Year's, and maybe dressing up in traditional Korean hanbok and bowing to my grandparents for money, or eating a bunch of Korean food, that's also, I think, something else that's central to my Korean identity is having comforting Korean food, and honestly, whenever I eat Korean food, I do feel more Korean. So that's part of the cultural aspect. In terms of feeling Argentinian, I think personally, it's been harder for me to connect to my Argentinian side just [...] because my dad's Argentinian and I don't have as [...] close of a connection with his side of the family, whereas I do with my mom and my Korean heritage. [...] I don't really have any Argentinian friends. I mean, I have friends who are Latino and, but I don't really know anyone else from Argentina, so no one has really told me, “oh, you look Argentinian with that hair,” or something.[...] It's more through the food aspect. I also love Argentinian food [...] so, I guess when I eat that food, I do “feel more Argentinian.”

Continuing on the theme of identity, I asked Nina in what ways being an Asian woman has impacted her life.

Well, I think that [...[ having immigrant parents [has] made me more motivated in school, but maybe that's just part of my personality [...]. Being Asian has also shaped the way I present myself I think in school, too. Honestly, I feel like right now in social media [...] it's kind of cool to be Asian. There's a lot of [...] Korean American influencers that maybe I like watching or following, and it's nice to have a different cultural way to differentiate myself [...]. 

I followed up by asking Nina to share any advice to other Asian American girls. Nina believes it’s important to find a passion and continue to pursue that passion .

I would definitely tell them to find some sort of passion they like and tell them that it's okay if it's not [...] what their parents want them to do or the path their parents want them to follow. And honestly that they should partake in activities or study areas of school that they honestly love learning. But I know that is super hard and maybe not realistic for everyone, but maybe they could just [...] find little ways of doing that. 

My final question for Nina was to talk about her goals for the future. Nina shared her skating goals as well as goals for her education. 

Well, one of my goals in terms of skating is to pass my Senior Moves in the Field test which is [last] of the series of [...] eight [...] skating footwork sequences. In college, I think I want to study art history, but I'm not totally sure what I'm going to do after that, because I also like history and math too. But I do know, one of my goals, I think, is to also go to grad school and become an expert in some sort of academic field. I always thought it would be cool to join the circus, but unfortunately I don't know if I’ll have time for that one. That might be a little, I don't know, unrealistic.