As a kid, one of my favorite games to play with my friends was to pretend to be princesses. For most of my friends, it was easy for them to pick a princess that looked like them. They would exclaim, “I’m blonde so I’m Cinderella” or “I have black hair so I’m Snow White.”

When it came to me as to which princess I would be, everyone always said Pocahontas. I would always tell them, “But I’m brunette let me be Belle” but for some reason or other I was always Pocahontas. Now don’t get me wrong, Pocahontas is an amazing princess, but as I grew older I realized that I was only picked to play her because she is one of the few minority princesses.

As a Latina, I have spent a lot of my time growing up watching TV shows and movies and not having characters that vaguely look like me. And when characters did look like me, I was succumbed to being a maid, a sugar baby, or just generally extremely stereotypical. It was like if there wasn’t a trope for a Latina, there wasn’t any point in including her.

Most people when they think of Latin characters they think of Fez from That 70’s Show or Marisa from Maid in Manhattan or some other overly stereotypical example of the Latin experience in the US. Although it has vastly improved over time there are still some clear issues. To this day there is no Disney princess who is Latina let alone a Latin superhero.

You are probably reading this and thinking, “Ok this sucks but does it really matter?” Newsflash: It does. Representation is movies and TV shows are unfortunately many peoples source for information about certain groups of people, so stereotypes projected in these roles are many times believed to be true.

In addition to helping prolong and push stereotypes in society, having no representation causes peoples self-image to worsen because they believe they cannot be anything more than the roles they are presented as. This is true not only for the Latinx community but the majority of minority communities such as the African American community and the LGBTQ+ community.

So please TV and film industries, create a space for writers and creators who want to represent a diverse cast of people whose identity doesn’t always choose their role for them. Let’s create a bigger space for the Get Out, Black Panther, Carol, Selena movie train that is more about representing beautiful people then it is about stereotypes.

Don’t do it just because you want to be PC, but do it because of the little kids who want to be able to watch TV or pick a movie and see someone who looks like them, who they are proud to be. Do it so that no kid has to feel left out when picking which superhero or princess or cast member they are. Do it so that everyone feels like they have someone on the big or small screen that they can look up to.

Do it so that I'm not only seen as the minority. Do it so that I'm not only seen as a stereotypical version of who I really am. Do it because it's right.