The Center for Sexual Health Promotion would like to congratulate Dr. Yael Rosenstock Gonzalez, who successfully defended her dissertation on February 28th, 2025.
Caribbean Hispanas’ Experiences of Memorable Body and Bodily Autonomy Messages
Yael shared about her dissertation work and of how she became interested in and passionate about this area of work:
My dissertation and the larger study from which the data originates, the Body, Belonging, Race, Fetishization, and Sex Experiences of Caribbean Hispanas (BBRFS) project, have been brewing in my heart since I was six years old. While I didn’t know all it would lead to back then, I was already struggling with feeling at home in several of my identities, and finding a sense of belonging, especially within Latinidad. By ten years old, a complicated relationship with sociocultrual norms, bodily agency, and messages about expectations had joined the mix that was further complicated my questions of consent, agency, and liberation in my early teens. Attempting to navigate these topics without sufficient representation and community-directed dialogue impacted my social development and well-being during my adolescence in ways that felt isolating and stigmatizing. However, discussions with peers and social media spaces let me know that I was not alone and that these conversations needed more space – a space that I could co-create through research and community work.
As a research project, BBRFS has two aims: (1) to investigate the socialization around bodies growing up, as well as the fetishization experiences of Cuban, Dominican, and Puerto Rican women/descendants, living in the United States, and the influence of markers of Latinidad, including racial phenotype, body shape, and language on those experiences; and (2) to understand how social models and cultural narratives related to body, feelings of belonging, and fetishization are impacting Cuban, Dominican, and Puerto Rican women/descendants’ narratives about their sexual selves and their sexual experiences. The dissertation came from a few questions from the BBRFS project resulting in data on memorable messages about weight, body shape, colorism, texturism, featurism, body neutrality/positivity, and bodily autonomy. As the project moves forward, I seek to collaborate with community to:
- prepare additional manuscripts from the existing data related to the research aims
- develop curriculum to support my community in improving capacity to negotiate consensual and empowered interactions and to support culturally-rooted disruptions of harmful intergenerational messaging
- secure funding to develop a public-facing virtual museum to house current narratives, host community events, and to expand our research/museum population from Caribbean Hispanas to all diasporic Latines
Yael's Advice to Doctoral Students Completing a Dissertation
1. Play with both/and when it comes to lofty goals. While advisors are correct (and kind) to advise students to set manageable goals for their dissertations, it does not need to be an either/or. Both/and is an option. I knew that I needed all the topics of the BBRFS project to have the full stories I sought for my larger goals. However, my dissertation did not need to cover all those topics nor tell the full story. Out of the 39 main questions and sizeable quantity of prompts/sub questions, only a few were explored between the two dissertation manuscripts. I was able to both heed the valuable advice of my mentors to think smaller for my dissertation and stay true to my overall larger mission for the project.
2. It’s okay to make changes/release expectations. For those of us in qualitative research, the richness of our data can lead us in unexpected directions. While my first manuscript stayed true to my proposal, the topic of my second manuscript changed several times until I realized that a theme from my first manuscript was demanding space to be more thoughtfully explored. I think I would have realized sooner had I released my own expectation that I should remain faithful to existing plans. Don’t be afraid to make changes and release expectations that may be holding you back.
3. Get it done. You can do more later. There was so much more that I wanted to cover and more scholars with whom I wanted to be in conversation. I could have easily spent additional months attempting to do justice to all my enthusiastic notes. Then I remembered, there will be future opportunities. What I had written was enough for now. I did not need to say all that was on my mind. Reminding myself that the five chapters of my dissertation are not the end of this work helped me finish and remain motivated for what’s next.
Where is Yael Now or What Are Her Next Steps?
In addition to plans for the BBRFS project, I am collaborating with other researchers on additional projects related to fetishization, sex education, and identity. Simultaneously, I am developing a curriculum with the working title, Cultivating a Consent Culture as a training program for universities and companies, along with an peer-educator facilitation training for implementing the curriculum, through my company,Kaleidoscope Vibrations, LLC and will continue to offer coaching and consulting services through Sex Positive You.
