A girl can never win.
When I was in seventh grade, I was derided for being flat-chested. When I was in college I was derided for having ample junk in the trunk. As a 20-something I was felt self-conscious because I didn’t have thin legs.
It turns out, depending on who you ask, this is all good — or all lacking. It’s confusing: do Latino men want voluptuous or not? Or do they only want voluptuous in certain places? Do they just like to drool over skinny women on TV, but when they get home prefer something more ample? What are the mathematics on being an “adequately-attractive” Latina?
- If you add big breasts, can you subtract the big butt?
- If you have small breasts, are you still attractive if you have a small waist and a big butt?
- What about if you’re really tiny, but you get breast implants? Does that make you attractive enough?
- What about big boobs and pansa?
- If you have big boobs and a big butt, are you just as attractive as a flat-chested, sans pompis gal?
- Is it that simple? Boobs plus butt, minus waist, plus shapely calves?
I don’t know if it’s possible to quantify Latina beauty, I’m not even sure if I want to try, because it doesn’t really seem to matter what you look like when the wahoos on the corner are screaming what they consider to be compliments that you.
So what are we really doing here? Are we trying to quantify beauty or are we just kowtowing to stereotypes from someone else’s cultural norms of beauty? ‘Cause I sure as heck don’t see Barbie when I look around my Latina cohorts (granted, of course, that there are always exceptions).
I think my only option is to just stop trying — and consider the source, of course.
It’s always amusing when a vertically challenged, beer belly-sporting, unkempt fellow decides that he — of all people — shall be the judge of true beauty. Which would seem to underscore the fact that we’re all victims of this unfortunate calculus, big boobs, butts, or none at all.
So I say, forget the calculus — bring on the nachos!
Elsewhere on POCHO, Sara Inés reports she “doesn’t look Mexican.”
Dressmaker’s mannequin image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
