Ever since I was very young, I have been taking in messages from media and members of society that Latina women were sexy, spicy, curvy, freaky, slutty, and the list goes on. The main idea I got was that our bodies established our value; we were no more than a sex symbol for male consumption. I believed that Latina women were dirty. I truly believed that we were inherently sluts, so I began to resent my culture and feel ashamed. Older men have sexually harassed me since I was 10; my body was seen as a sexual object while I was still a child and this added to my internalized racism. Media portrays us as some exotic commodity. A great example of this is with celebrities like Sofia Vergara, who was displayed on a pedestal during the 2014 Emmy awards like a trophy. Esther J. Cepeda, writing for NBC Latino discusses the hyper-sexualization of Latinas using Sofia Vergara as an example as well, saying that “Her appearance on the cover of
Esquire magazine’s April issue in frilly lingerie, with the word “SEX” superimposed on her midsection, pretty much encapsulated the damage she adds to an overly sexualized pop-culture image of Latinos in general, and Hispanic women in particular.”The unfortunate part is that she, like many other Latinas, feed into this image because the message we internalize is that our value is based on how sexually appealing we are. Many women are fighting hard to eradicate these stereotypes and voicing their experiences with it on many online platforms like The Feminist Wire. Shantyana C. Lledin discusses her distaste saying, “When people tell me I must be a ‘spitfire’ or a ‘freaky girl' in bed because I am Hispanic, I am not at all flattered." They’re working on stereotypes created long ago to subordinate women of color and cast them as the inferior ‘other.’” It is awful to realize that some of the initial assumptions people make about us because of our race are about our sexual behavior. More often than I can count, I’ve been viewed as a sexual object first, and as a person second. To add to our problems with these prejudices, people like to use the stereotype of promiscuity to blame Latinas for the high rate of teen pregnancy in the community. In reality, the demographics at the Advocates for Youth website states that white and Latina female youth both have the same percentage of sexual intercourse. The reason for high pregnancies is due to poverty, lack of access to adequate education, and lack of access to health insurance, confirmed by surveys done by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. What I want to see are people re-thinking how they view Latinas, questioning these stereotypes, and realizing that we are a community of intelligent, hard-working women, with a lot more to offer than just our bodies. Many of us enjoy sex just as much as any other man or woman, but that is not what defines us as people.
