Hollywood Latina Women Analysis

Imagine a distant post-apocalyptic future in which a group of researchers discovers a stack of DVDs of 20th and 21st century Hollywood movies of Asian American actresses. After watching those movies, what might the researchers conclude about the characteristics of Asian American women in the movies? Certainly, they will view Asian American women as sexual and erotic objects of the society that white men can score with ease. Why do I assume they will think that way? The answer is a simple, yet controversial one: mostly, the media, as the history proves, portrays Asian American women either as erotic sex slaves of white men or as insidious personalities who lure their prey into a trap with their sex appeal. If we look into the history,

“Yes, I'm blonde. When I started as an actor, because of the accent and my body and my personality, it was not what the stereotype of the Latina woman in Hollywood is, so they didn't know where to put me. The blond hair wasn't matching. The moment I put my hair dark, it was better for my work” (Vergara). The media tends to portray stereotypes of many different people without warnings. So, when people watch TV or listen to the radio all they get are the generalizations of these different people. One group that has been highly stereotyped and somewhat portrayed in the media are Hispanic women. How the media portrays Hispanic women is based on both gender and racial stereotypes (Correa, 2010). This portrayal of Hispanic women impacts people in many ways. Sofia Vergara’s quote that was stated above is an example of the impact these stereotypes caused; it was hard for Sofia Vergara to get a job because she didn’t look like the stereotypical Hispanic woman and the media continues to portray Hispanic women as such. One of the largest influences on the roles Hispanic women are expected to play is the media’s portrayal of them. The media portrays Hispanic women by generalizations of how they look, how they act, and how they identify their values.

In the film industry, we see all different types of films and movies, but there’s always guidelines on what needs to be followed by stereotypes that have been built by society. In the film “The Bronze Screen” it gives us a better understanding on how the system is set up for film making but especially for Latinos in the film industry, Latinos are seen as a minority group who don’t have a lot of changes on making into the big screen, the film explains how Latinos are put in movies to fill the stereotypes that have been made by society but to be specific by the white people.

Television quickly supports racial stereotypes which massively strengthens audiences existing viewpoints of individual races. Asians, African Americans and Latino Americans are usually described on television in standard ways. Latin Americans have been the recipient of decisions in popular shows using the following famous stereotypes. For example, Latino-Americans are oversexed, maids, violent, and law-breaking criminals. Sofia Verga plays as the main character in Modern Family as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett. She is a Columbian, and she states it at least once per show and has very particular "Columbian behavior." In a show called Devious Maids, all of the Latino American women on there are maids and sneaky and sleeping with their bosses or other taken men to make it, it overly sexualizes the Latino women as a culture.

“The Myth of the Latin Women” was writing by Judith Ortiz Cofer, a women born in Puerto Rico. Ortiz is a person who seems really Passionate about this specific subject. “The Myth of the Latin Women” points out the many stereotypes Latin women go through in their day to day lives. The things that upsets Ortiz is that there are so many people who are not a Latin background that don’t realize the importance of this issue. The main purpose of “The Myth of the Latin Women” is to get people to understand that their words will hurt someone and Ortiz convey this throughout the essay with the use of logos, ethos and pathos.

“Mixed cultural signals have perpetuated certain stereotypes…”(Page 372, paragraph 2, line 1). The Myth of the Latian Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria, by Judith Ortiz Cofer is about how Judith Ortiz Cofer was discriminated because she is a Latina Woman. She describes about several people treating her differently than others, through song, through looks, and through sexual thoughts and actions towards her. Even after all the discriminating actions persisted upon her, she still pursues on to help others learn that Latinas are not always like the movies say they are or should be like. Judith Ortiz Cofer does this by writing poetry and novels. “My personal goal in my public life is try to replace the old pervasive stereotypes and myths about

The stereotype on Latinos el Bandido is based not only on ethnic but also behavioral, where they are deemed violent and antisocial, different nationality, as in not belonging to the North America and psychological where they are associated with alcoholic, prostitution and being unstable. With this stereotype, Hollywood is seen as a perfect example of the filmmaking and professionalism, in a way this demeans the Latinos effort in the film.

In those early portrayals, the "privileged non-Latina woman" was often "lured into the sensual exoticism of a caddish Latino philanderer," Baugh continues (259). More recently, the author suggests, filmmakers have attempted to present Latino identities as less stereotypical characters. There are characters that would not likely be revered by the greater Latino community in the United States, but nonetheless Baugh believes

According to the media’s portrayal of Latin women, there are two ways Latin women act. The first way is passive, pure, and dependent on men; the second way is wild,

The Latina women, even throughout the era resistance cinema, have not been able to make much progress in overcoming the degrading stereotypes that Hollywood has created for them. Despite the many advances that minorities have made in the cinema in recent years, Latina actresses still take on the roles of the "dark skinned lady" and other such stereotypes with strong sexual connotations. It is often debatable whether or not the role of the Latina has undergone dramatic changes since the days of Dolores Del Rio and Carmen Miranda dancing with the fruit baskets on top of their heads. However, in recent years there has been an emphasis by various Latinas in the film industry to combat such stereotypical roles and redefine themselves

The relationship between the gender roles reflected in telenovelas and the the role of women in Latin American countries is a matter of parallelism. This is because as Judith Butler, the author of the book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, emphasized that it is “impossible to separate out ‘gender’ from the political and cultural intersections in which it is invariably produced and maintained”. Gender is undeniably socially constructed, and is a product of the values deemed important by that society being constantly reenacted and reinforced. In that sense, telenovelas are also another medium through which beliefs in gender can be relayed to the audience, forming what is called the “imaginable domain of gender” as they either perpetuate or go against ideal hegemony (Beard 2003).

In the essay The Myth of the Latin Women, Judith Ortiz Coffer, an educated women and from Latin descent, elicits imagery of stereotyping in Hollywood movies and contrasts stereotypes to real life through diction in order to get society to feel guilty for assuming how they act, and ultimately changings society's views on Latina women. First, Coffer portrays imagery of Latina women in Hollywood movies in order to get society to feel embarrassed for judging Latina women so quickly. Take, for example, how Coffer stating "The big and little screens have presented us with the picture of the funny Hispanic maid, mispronouncing words and cooking up a spicy storm in a shiny California kitchen. " This would cause society to realize the effects of stereotyping

The Challenges of Being a Biracial Woman in Hollywood Photo Credit: Glamour Amidst the negative articles swarming around Meghan Markle, a personal essay she wrote in 2015 for Darling magazine resurfaced. The article’s title is It’s All Enough. Markle wrote about her struggles as an actress and how she drove up to auditions in an old beat-up car. She talks about her challenges as an actress who is just trying to make her own way in an industry that judges you on everything.

Women of Latin American culture have incessantly ensued the potent gender roles that have become a social construction of their society over innumerable decades. The profound author of Insurgent Mexico, John Reed, imparts his experiences with the revolutionary leaders of the Mexican Revolution, like Pancho Villa, and was able to witness their culture and more specifically the roles these Mexican women were forced to render by their chauvinistic counterparts. This period of revolution, started to grant women new mantles usually reserved only for men, like participating in fighting for the success of the revolution; any preeminent changes would soon approach, but in the meantime Mexican society run by men enjoyed the regulated traditional

Movies have depicted Hispanics as humorous buffoons, lazy peasants, and vicious bandits. The Hollywood motion pictures seem to ignore the positive impact of Hispanics to the American culture and life. The directors cast Mexicans for the roles of vile screen villains who rob, murder, cheat, gamble, among other vices. The films also show Hispanic women as temptresses or senioritas, which translates into dependent, unintelligent, feeble, and passive individuals.