My mom's Puerto Rican. That's why I'm so lively and colorful. Latinas in pop culture are often
stereotyped as curvaceous, passionate, loud, tempestuous, super-catholic, really good cooks
and wild in the bedroom. Think Eva Longoria on Desperate Housewives, Sofia Vegara on Modern
Family, and Naya Rivera on Glee. Or in other words just think spicy.
And what's so wrong with using one convenient adjective to describe a massive group of women?
Afterall Sofia Vergara is hilarious when she makes those Modern Family jokes where she
mispronounces her words--'You try speaking in another language! Everybody out of my house!'--and
I love spicy food. I mean I have like 5 hotsauces in my fridge. That also isn't a lie. But what
these fiery, hot and spicy stereotypes are really doing is marginalizing Latinas into
objects for consumption with hot-tempered brains not to be taken seriously and hyper-sexualized
bodies that are anyone's buffet. And just imagine how that must feel. Are you legitimately
upset about something? Did you just voice a valid opinion? Does someone find you attractive?
Oh you're so spicy. So how did this spicy Latina stereotype happen? How did we manage
to collapse women hailing from 21 different countries and heritages and cultures and even
skin tones from the tip top of Mexico all the way down to the bottom of Chile and across
the Caribbean down to one puny pepper? No offense jalapeno. Ingredient number one: Old
school racism. 'Not every Hispanic person wants the same thing. Oh sure they do, they
all want to come to America.' Let's hop back to the mid-nineteenth century which was a
pretty terrible no good time for Latinos in the US. Due to things like the Mexican-American
War, the California Gold Rush and the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo which fostered anit-Mexican
sentiment and outright racism. Between 1848 and 1928 there were 547 documented Mexican
lynchings in the American Southwest. On July 5th, 1851, Juana Louisa became the first and
only woman ever lynched in California after she stabbed to death a white man who along
with a group of men broke into her home and attempted to rape her. Although married and
fending off a group assault since she was Mexican the press deemed her promiscuous and
not worthy of saving. We see evidence of this racism in early Hollywood films that portrayed
Latinos as lazy, dim-witted or dangerous greasers and Latinas as little more than morally bankrupt
tempestuous seductresses like Dolores Del Rio and Lupe Velez who was described by an
old school tabloid as quote, 'Just a wild Mexican kitten.' The Mexican government became
so fed-up with these derogatory portrayals that it issued an embargo on offensive Hollywood
films in 1922. Spicy ingredient number two: Cartoonization. Or trade that pepper for a
banana. In the 1930s this spicy stereotype got a colorful makeover courtesy of the US
government. Inspired by FDR's Good Neighbor Policy, tropicalism portrayed Latinos as festive,
exotic and diplomatically harmless, embodied by the wildly popular performer Carmen Miranda
whose native Brazilians resented her characturing for American audiences. The lady in the tutti
fruiti hat as Miranda became known perfected the Mexican spitfire trope which blended dashes
of sexuality and comedy with the requisite spice and broken American English. 'Take a
chili pepper, then a little spice. Throw a little salt in. That's nice.' This tropicalism
treatment also outfitted these always brunette Latina characters with signature red lips,
bold jewelry and curve-hugging clothes that emphasized their breasts and hips. Ring, ring,
hello, sound familiar? Spicy stereotype ingredient number three: Marginalization. Or if the stock
character ain't broke, don't fix it. Fast forward to 2010 to 2013 and 9.1% of Latinas
on television were portraying the sexy spitfire. 'I knew it!' On the big screen an analysis
of the 100 top-grossing films from 2007 to 2013 found that Latinas were the likeliest
group of women to be shown partially or fully naked. But during this time one Latina stock
character on television actually outpaced the sexy spitfire and that is the sassy maid,
with Latinas playing 69% of them. And that kind of persistent type-casting which feeds
into this spicy stereotype--'Will you guys stop doing that?'--is part of what led Gina
Rodriguez to turn down an offered role on Devious Maids before she became Jane the Virgin.
Speaking about that potentially risky decision the now Emmy winning Rodriguez whose parents
are Puerto Rican perfectly summed up why this kind of stereotype busting is so important
not just on television and in movies but in the real world. 'I wanted it to be a story
that was going to liberate young girls and say, "Wow there we are too, and we're the
doctors, and we're the teachers, and we're the writers and we're the lawyers, and I can
do that too."' And what do those professions have in common? No spice needed because Latinas
aren't peppers, they're people.