Expectations for the young Chicana teenager

“You become a different Sally. You pull your skirt straight, you rub the blue paint off your eyelids. You don’t laugh, Sally … Do you wish your feet would one day keep walking and take you far away from Mango Street, far away and maybe your feet would stop in front of a house, a nice one with flowers and big windows and steps for you to climb up two by two upstairs to where a room is waiting for you. And if you opened the little window latch and gave it a shove, the windows would swing open, all the sky would come in. There’d be no nosy neighbors watching, no motorcycles or cars, no sheets and towels and laundry. Only trees and more trees and plenty of blue sky. And you could laugh Sally. You could go to sleep and wake up and never have to think who likes and doesn’t like you. You could close your eyes and you wouldn’t have to worry what people said because you never belonged here anyway and nobody could make you sad and nobody would think you’re strange because you like to dream and dream” (Cisneros, 83)
I remember reading Sandra Cisneros’ House on Mango Street a few years back, and while I know I really liked the book back then, I realize now that there were many hidden messages in the short stories that compose the book. My favorite one of these short chapters was Sally, from which I pulled out this reading. As a Latina, I think that young teenagers have a lot of expectations from their families. Here it says “you pull your skirt straight, you rub the blue paint off your eyelids” Sally becomes one person while she is at school and a completely different one when she heads back home. Although we may not all have had to rub off make-up or change from one outfit to another, I think the fact that we are two different people while at school and when we go back home is a relatable one for many. For girls, these expectations go much farther, as for Sally, girls cannot wear make-up until they are considered adults. Otherwise they are blamed for calling a guys attention to them and “only easy, loose, women would do such a thing.” I remember being told what a descent young lady should and shouldn’t do throughout my high school years. I am sure that every mother wants to know her daughter holds a good, descent reputation, but I think this is especially important to the traditional Chicana mother.
As a first-generation American, there are certain “unofficial” rules that Chicanas are expected to live by, there are a few that come to mind. For instance, a girl is not allowed to wear make-up, get her nails or eyebrows done, or even date until they are at least 15, and even then they cannot do it without permission. A girl is expected not to have a boyfriend until she has formally introduced him to the family and asks for their permission to date. Otherwise, she is being a rebel and ruining her reputation because people will soon start spreading rumors and talking bad things about her. Traditional Mexican households really value their name and reputation and the last thing they would ever want is for people to be spreading rumors about their daughters because this looks bad on the entire family, especially the mother. In a traditional household, a daughter is supposed to follow her mother’s footsteps and learn all that the typical housewife knows, she should learn how to cook, clean and attend her husband in all he may need; otherwise it is assumed that her mother did not teach her any better. As this excerpt says, you have to consider and think about who will and will not like you, and what people say because that means a lot to the family.
This really ties into the idea of belonging, because while the world around you may be growing and changing every day, the family traditions and values that the traditional Mexican parents were raised with remain the same, and thus, they expect the same that was expected from them. Many times they just do not understand that present day is much different from “back in the day” and that is where this feeling of not belonging surges. I think Sandra Cisneros indirectly tries to inform the reader of that feeling and through this Sally character really expresses the idea that sometimes we all just wish we could keep walking, outside and beyond the world we live in, and many times it will be due to the fact that we feel like we just don’t belong.

Resources:
Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street. New York : Vintage Books, 1991. (pp 82-83)

Barbie: A Toy from my Childhood

Dear Barbie,

What’s behind your plastic smile? You only smile because you were created to but I smile because it is in my nature, it’s a cure for a bad day . . .

You don’t know what a bad day is because you live in Barbie’s dream house.                 Where it’s always sunny no matter what.                                                                                  Where you are shielded from pain and nothing changes.                                                   Where you pretend everything is perfect.                                                                                  Even though the truth is you spend most days alone because Ken is out in a so-called big man’s world doing who knows what.

You want a set of pearls, but I want a set of books. Books that are located inside a               big sparkly building called law school where I can find pearls of wisdom.                       These pearls never lose their sparkle or become dull.                                                                   I don’t want to live in a world where everything sparkles.                                                               I want to live in a world where people smile because they feel so not because they           are forced to. A place where there’s no injustice and no child goes to bed hungry.

Even though I will never look like you, you will never look like me.                                          You will always remain young and beautiful but I will have the privilege to see             children, grandchildren and future generations grow before my eyes while you sit in your plastic box.                                                                                                                                  Society tells me to be like you but I say NO!                                                                                     I have outgrown you. I don’t need you anymore.                                                                              I choose to admire someone real just like me.                                                                                  I choose a real woman, my mother.                                                                                               She has real hips, a real voice and a real heart, which Mattel forgot to give you.                                   It’s not your fault for the way you look,                                                                                            but I’m not ashamed of the way I look either.

I’m brown skinned, you’re light skinned.

I’m me and you’re you.

I’m bold, proud and Latina.

By Beatriz Alfaro

 

Many Chicanas chose art as a vehicle to communicate their experiences and emotions. Also to raise awareness about the issues affecting their community during the Chicana movement. I decided to write an art piece because I was inspired by Mónica Palacios’ monologue “Tomboy” and Sandra Cisneros’ essay called “Barbie-Q.” Palacios’ piece is very bold because it challenges gender norms and heteronormativity. She poses a lot of questions, which can make people uncomfortable but it also gets them thinking. Art that is thought provoking is important because society rarely likes to think about what’s wrong with society.  A lot of people go on with life without really thinking about how others are made to feel because they don’t fit in the way society wants them too. Uniqueness, differences, diversity, etc., is often discouraged by society because it is easier to deal with homogeneity. It sends the wrong message to women and it places on them the burden to conform to what society has created for them. “Tomboy” is also very strong because despite what society has done to her she claims who she is without regrets or apologies. Palacios takes a stand and it motivates other Chicana women to do the same. It creates a space for all women to speak up and also to identify with each other’s experiences.

In Sandra Cisneros’ essay, the speaker displays the effects Barbie has on young girls and the toll it has on their self-esteem. The speaker feels very insecure and flawed compared to Barbie. Thus it greatly impacts girls who are very different from Barbie especially, racially but in her essay she also talks about socio-economic class. Girls feel the pressure to have the same things as their friends because Barbie promotes materialism and fakeness. However in real life that’s difficult to do and if they can’t measure up they feel inferior. Not everyone can afford to own multiple Barbies or even one single doll plus the multiple accessories that come along with her.  The majority of girls worldwide, even those whose parents can’t afford to get them one, have grown up with the idea that they need to be like Barbie to be happy. Although Barbie does not represent who women truly are, the toy continues to be bought by parents and desired by kids.

At the end of the essay similarly like Palacio, Cisneros acknowledges that she is different but she is proud of it. It is seen when she says, “—who’s to know” which shows that it doesn’t matter. By not caring about what others think, she’s affirms that she can be happy with or without it because she’s being herself. Both authors make a critique of society, but at the end they choose to be strong and not weak.

Additional Sources:

Reinterpreting the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Feminist have reinterpreted Our Lady of Guadalupe to better relate to her. Sandra Cisneros describes this reinterpretation in her essay, “Guadalupe the Sex Goddess.” Cisneros speaks from her own experience of her alienation toward her own body. During her early years up until she went to college she was taught that anything having to do with her private body parts were to remain private. She stresses that her religion and culture “helped to create that blur, a vagueness about what went on ‘down there” (Cisneros, 46).  Traditionally Catholicism and the Mexican culture have always pushed women to cover up their bodies. Similarly in a note in “Little Miracles, Kept Promises” from the collection of short stories in Woman Hollering Creek, Cisneros creates Chicana character named Chayito who comes to express her developing relationship with Our Lady of Guadalupe.

First it’s important to know that Our Lady of Guadalupe is the patroness of Mexico and who symbolizes virginity. She appeared to Juan Diego at the hill of Tepeyac and asked him to deliver the message to the bishop that she wanted the construction of a chapel there. She appeared on his cloak as proof of her miracles when he was delivering the message to the bishop for the third time. Our Lady of Guadalupe continues to be a significant force of devotion among women from Mexican descent and other parts of what is known as Latin America. She is traditionally superficially depicted as mild and submissive in relation to her virginity; the embodiment of what a woman should be like. Chicana feminists like Sandra Cisneros have re-imagined Our Lady of Guadalupe to describe their evolving relationship with her.

In “Guadalupe the Sex Goddess,” Cisneros describes her experience of silence and says, “[i]f I was a graduate student, was shy about talking to anyone about my body and sex, imagine how difficult it must be for a young girl in middle school or high school living […] [with] no information other than misinformation from the girlfriends and the boyfriend” (48). This experience is replicated among many other Latinas who grow up in a traditional household and whose bodies are kept in silence. The culture keeps demanding young women to not get pregnant but nobody ever sits down to talk about how to keep from getting pregnant, the only choice young women have is to listen to the misinformation that is out there. Cisneros continues to state, “[t]his is why I was angry, for some nay years every time I saw la Virgen de Guadalupe, my culture’s role model for brown women like me […] [d]id boys have to aspire to be Jesus? I never saw any evidence of it” (Cisneros, 48). She is relating the culture oppression against young women as sexual beings as a result of Our Lady of Guadalupe’s submissiveness.

In “Little Miracles, Kept Promises,” Chayito begins her short story (or note) speaking to Our Lady of Guadalupe as she is pinning the part of her hair she cut off.  She describes the ways in which the patriarchal structure continues to humiliate her for not abiding by the social standards of how a girl is suppose to act. She states, “Virgencita de Guadalupe. For a long time I wouldn’t let you in my house. I couldn’t see you without seeing my ma each time my father came home drunk and yelling, blaming everything that ever went wrong in his life on her” (Cisneros, 127). In her eyes Our Lady of Guadalupe only symbolized a sufferer, someone who would take everything in and not fight back just like her mother took her father’s verbal abuse. Chayito could not stand to see the pain her mother and grandmother underwent as women. She wanted to see Our Lady of Guadalupe “bare-breasted, [with] snakes in [her] hands […] leaping and somersaulting the backs of bulls” (Cisneros, 127). Chayito wanted to see Our Lady of Guadalupe as a woman who had breasts, who felt confident with her body; a woman who could take anything even a bull and who showed no fear. Just like Chayito wanted to see Our Lady of Guadalupe bare-breasted, in “Guadalupe the Sex Goddess,” Cisneros states, “I want to lift her dress as I did my doll’s and look to see if she comes with chones [underwear], and does her panocha [vagina] look like mine, and does she have dark nipples too?” (Cisneros, 51).

Placing both readings side by side, we see that Cisneros used Chayito’s voice to demonstrate her grappling’s of relationship with Our Lady of Guadalupe, especially when she says, “When I look at la Virgen de Guadalupe, she is not the Lupe of my childhood […] She is Guadalupe the sex goddess” (Cisneros, 49). In “little Miracles, Kept Promises” Chayito comes to realize that Our Lady of Guadalupe is “[n]o longer Mary the mild […] That you could have the power to rally a people when a country was born […] made me think maybe there is power in my mother’s patience” (Cisneros, 128). Both demonstrate the relationship to Our Lady of Guadalupe as empowering, one being able to embrace her sexual being and the other the strength that women possess within.

Reinterpreting Our Lady of Guadalupe as Sandra Cisneros has in “Guadalupe the Sex Goddess” has caused controversy especially among people who are religious in the traditional ways. In order for Chicanas to be able to connect with her and see her as an empowering figure they have had to re-imagine her as someone who is just like any ordinary woman. This is specifically important to Chicanas because of the history of colonization and conquest that the indigenous population endured as the Spanish conquerors took over Mexico, central and south America.

Additional Resources: