Marilla Li / Project Intern & Blogger

Marilla Li spent her childhood in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she tagged along with her OB/GYN mother to various hospitals. There, she was introduced to a life among nurses, residents, and patients. Marilla eventually realized that life and the body are very present and visible realities whose representation needs to be considered carefully.

Not one to keep quiet about her personal issues, Marilla came to terms with a long-standing eating disorder by making a film about it. The film, “Asian American Beauty: A Discourse on Body Image”, won an audience award at the Asian American International Film Festival in 2007. She took this as a definite sign to pursue documentary and public health, and is working toward those goals now, even if it means destroying a few relatives’ vision of having another doctor in the family.

Marilla has worked in various women’s clinics, is trained as a peer health educator, and has talked about sex and sexuality more times than she can count. Thanks to four years at a women’s college, she’s learned that it’s okay to toss around words like “sex”, “diversity”, and “feminism” on a daily basis. She is currently pursuing her Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology at Barnard College, and is completing her thesis on the way that different women in the United States think about and are influenced by the Pill.