Then & Now: What Does it Mean to be Beautiful?

Posted on by

Chicana Feminists were continually confronted by the fact that they did not fit Euro-centric beauty standards. This phenomenon was not exclusive to only Chicanas; it was something felt and recognized by several minority women. The editors of Heresies, Third World Women: the politics of being other, discuss in detail the sentiments of the label other. This label created an inferiority complex among these minority women. Katherine Hall’s drawing “The Alien,” published in this 1979 Heresies issue, along with Inés Hernández’s “To Other Women Who Were Ugly Once,” published in Infinite Divisions in 1993,  illustrate the dialogue of minority beauty standards.

Hernández starts off the poem in a humorous tone: “Do you remember how we used to panic.” The poet wants the reader to understand the absurdity of these inferior feelings. These Chicanas recognized that the models on these fashion magazines were inauthentic; they hide the women from their true “ser”/self. Why must Chicanas try to conform to these beauty standards that hide the authentic person behind the make-up? Hernández states, “Que mataonda,” what a drag to need to constantly fit into a model that is not yourself. The poet claims “resistance to this type of existence.” This is not a way to live. The ending of the poem calls for the embrace of the “natural luz,” the natural appearance, as opposed to the artificial one presented in magazines. .There is an acceptance of one’s appearance despite its contrast to mainstream ideals; this is commonly expressed as “Brown is Beautiful” and is not exclusive to Chicanas. As one can see, while the drawing represents the sentiments of inferiority common to minority women, once it is viewed alongside Hernández’s poem, one begins to sense the development of Chicana confidence.

In the same period as Katherine’s Hall drawing and the release of Infinite Divisions,  Selena Quintanilla-Perez, a Mexican-American singer, rose to stardom. Growing up in Corpus Christi, Texas, Selena became involved in music through the guidance of her father (Corpus). Her first debut was in the early 1980s as a member of  “Selena y Los Dinos” (Corpus). As she garnered fame, Selena became known as the Queen of Tejano Music (Corpus). While her life was tragically cut short at age twenty-three in March of 1995, her influence still lingers. Despite the gap of years from Selena’s rise to fame and my own adolescence, Selena’s story is very personal to me. Representation is essential. Growing up, Selena solidified the message of “Brown is Beautiful” for me. I did not feel the need to struggle to conform to look like the women found on the cover of Cosmo or Vogue magazines. Not only did Selena provide me with the confidence to be proud of how I looked, she also helped bridge the gap between my “American” self and my “Mexican” self–a binary that has been frequently discussed within poetry by early Chicana Feminists. As a child, I tried to assimilate into “American” culture and shed my Mexican heritage. By listening to Selena, I was able to practice my Spanish and reconnect with an identity that I had lost. As Chicanas continue to seek representation in all platforms moving forward, their mere presence in these spaces will inspire young girls like myself to strive for futures that seemed previously unattainable for a Chicana.

Sources:

Hall, Katherine.  The Alien. 1979. Heresies: A Feminist Publication of Art & Politics. Edited by Sue Heinemann, vol. 2, issue 4, Heresies Collective, 1979.

Hernández, Inés. “To Other Women Who Were Ugly Once.” Infinite Divisions: An Anthology of Chicana Literature. Edited by Tey Diana Rebolledo and Eliana S. Rivero, University of ArizonaPress, 1993.

Portillo, Lourdes, et al. Corpus. Women Make Movies, 2018.

 

 

 

I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing across Sexualities

Posted on by

Published in 1985, “I am Your Sister” is the third pamphlet included in Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press’s Freedom Organizing Series. The piece is based on a speech Lorde gave at the Women’s Center of Medgar Evers College in New York City. It addresses divisiveness in the feminist movement, specifically in relation to heterosexism and homophobia which Lorde names as “two grave barriers to organizing among Black women” (3).

From the very beginning, Lorde speaks of a need to redefine the framework through which we examine and determine identity. She illustrates a need “to deal constructively with the genuine differences between us and to recognize that unity does not require that we be identical to one another” (3). Lorde clarifies that effective feminism will not be built around ignoring intricate intersections of identity but rather around embracing and wrestling with them. She exemplifies this approach in the context of her own lived experience, writing, “When I say I am a Black feminist; I mean I recognize that my power as well as my primary oppressions come as a result of my Blackness as well as my womanness, and therefore my struggles on both of these fronts are inseparable” (4). This definitive statement is a near direct precursor to the notion of “intersectionality,” which Kimberly Crenshaw coined four years after “I am Your Sister” in a 1989 article called, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Anti-discrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.”

The message Lorde desires to convey in “I am Your Sister” is apparent:  “We cannot afford to waste each other’s energies in our common battles” (7). She asks her audience, “How do we organize around our differences, neither denying them nor blowing them up out of proportion?” (7) and upholds that the solution is ultimately “an effort of will” (7). Lorde concludes the piece with characteristic eloquence and clarity, writing in reference to stereotypes about lesbians,

Those stereotypes are yours to solve, not mine, and they are a terrible and wasteful barrier to working together.  I am not your enemy. We do not have to become each other’s unique experiences and insights in order to share what we have learned through our particular battles for survival as Black women……I do not want to be tolerated, nor misnamed. I want to be recognized. I am a Black Lesbian, and I am your sister. (8)

The use of “and” and the italicization of the “am” here are crucial. These linguistic choices clarify what Lorde believes to be inherent to identity on the level of form: that it is both aspects that are inalienable, and their existence is active and undeniable.

Source: Lorde, Audre. I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing across Sexualities. 1st ed., Kitchen Table, Women of Color Press, 1985.

Need: A Chorale for Black Woman Voices

Posted on by

Audre Lorde’s Need: A Chorale for Black Woman Voices was “first written in 1979 after 12 Black women were killed in the Boston area within four months” (3). Published in 1990 by Kitchen Table, Women of Color Press as part of their Freedom Organizing Series, Need was intended for “particular use in classes, small community meetings, families, churches, and discussion groups, to open a dialogue between and among Black women and Black men on the subject of violence against women within our communities” (3). The text is written to be read aloud, with four distinct listed narrators: a woman named “Pat”, her son, “Bobbie,” “Poet,” and “All.”

In the preface to the piece, Lorde states, “I wrote this poem in 1979 as an organizing tool, as a jump-off point for other pieces on the theme, and for discussion among and between Black women and men” (4). She then further develops her motive for authoring Need, repeating the line “I wrote it for…” and listing several women who have been violently murdered. Eventually, she broadens out these acknowledgments, writing, “I wrote it for every Black woman who has ever bled at the hands of a brother” and later, “I wrote it for my son, and my daughter” (4).

Lorde’s use of layering, developing repetition here, along with her continual reference to those reading as “my sisters” and “my brothers” (4), offers insight into her views on identity. These linguistic choices exemplify a tenant that appears over and over again in Lorde’s work: we must revel in the singularity of our own experience and simultaneously openly claim the identities that define it socially.

Source: Lorde, Audre. Need: A Chorale for Black Woman Voices. First ed., Kitchen Table, Women of Color Press, 1990.