Latin Woman Stereotypes

Navigating Stereotypes and Perception

No one can truly escape from racism; it is everywhere people go. The only thing one can do is how to choose to deal with it. There are a lot of ways to deal with racism. For example, some people choose to ignore the stereotypes that they are being told and there are other people who get triggered off it, and get angry about all these mythical stereotypes. I’ve experienced these different ways to deal with it through my own eyes and through the media. Zora Neale Hurston, Judith Ortiz, and Audre Lorde wrote essays about their experience with racism and how they dealt with it. We are living in a hostile environment and it is very important these ladies show how they deal with it because they will teach others.

“The Myth of a Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria” by Judith Ortiz Cofer is about the stereotypes Americans hold about Latinas. At the end of the essay she meets a guy who is very offensive to her. She explains how the media portrays Latina woman by using the vocabulary “hot tamales”, “sizzling”, and “smoldering”. As a latina woman, I find these stereotypes offensive because tamales are one of our food traditions and to be told that, it is very offensive. It may sound nice, but it actually isn’t and people be surprise how a latina women reacts when she’s being told “hot tamale”. “As young girls, we were influenced in our decisions about clothes and colors by the woman-older sisters and mothers”(106). I could relate to this quote because when I was little, I didn’t get to pick what I wanted to wear. My grandmother also picked out my clothes which were long sleeve turtle necks and saggy pants. I wasn’t comfortable with the clothes I wore, nor did I like the style. I wanted to be just like my other friends, but my grandmother never gave me that option. I believe that Cofer’s essays relates to every Latina woman because it is about culture and we have the same culture. Later on in the essay she talks about how a struggle being a latina really is. Getting a job can be hard because we have all these types of stereotypes like whore, domestic, or criminal. She believed that Latina woman cannot change these stereotypes by the way people look at latinas, but only through time and the way she wanted to change was to try to replace these old stereotypes and myths about latinas with more goodness. When ever Cofer tells a reading, she hopes that her audience doesn't focus on her skin color, just her dreams, fears and her work. Her way of gulfing the bridge between mythical stereotypes is by changing them through time, so that kids now won’t have to worry as much about