Las Krudas: The Fat Woman

We have been exploring the ideal beauty, the different norms for a woman to follow, the suppressions of real identification, and how all that affects those who might not “meet” those expectations. In this week’s material we are presented with Las Krudas, an all-women Cuban trio, that through hip-hop, they “address the cracks of a socialist national identity constructed in homogenizing terms” (Rivera-Velazquez pg. 100.) Basically, they try to break the norms of the idealized way of living one’s life, especially women’s way of living their lives.

Las Krudas have a variety of songs and lyrics that talk about things that are often marginalized because those things do not match the ideal norm. for example, they celebrate “fat women.” In the song “La Gorda” the (Fat Woman), they praise their heavy bodies, and how happy they are being that way. In the song she talks about how there is this

Cruz-Janzen in which we got to see how not being light/white skin colored created different conflicts and discrimination even within families. She also talks about the issue of employment that Latinegras suffered specifically because of their looks. She says, “Most dark-skinned persons work in menial low-paying jobs; positions that require a “good appearance” or contact with the public… tend to be closed to them. Lighter-skinned Latinegras have better opportunities” (Cruz-Janzen pg. 290) We can see why is important to use hip hop as a form of discursive interventions of this unfair treatment towards Latinegros. In the reading of Celiany Rivera-Velazquez, she adds that Sujatha Fernandez states “in a period of increasing racial tensions and racial inequalities, rap music has taken on a politically assertive stance as the voice of black Cuban youth (pg. 98). We can see how this art form can definitely produce and spread counter-hegemonic notions of beauty within a public sphere who is trap in the erroneous ideas of beauty and