Quinceañeras and the Culture of Excess

I came across an interesting article last week on The Nation's website, called "Latina America Lavishly Comes of Age." It examines the increasingly commercialized Latina coming-of-age ceremony, using the intolerable MTV show "My Super Sweet 16" and Julia Alvarez's new book Once Upon a Quinceañera as points of reference. Although lavish quinceañeras could be seen as part of the Latino affect of "excess" that we talk about in class, I would argue that the exact same type of outlandish commercialism takes place at the Sweet 16 parties and bat mitzvahs of non-Latina girls. Strangely enough, out of the three, I have only attended a quinceañera, of one of the three daughters (how lucky - he has to pay for three lavish celebrations) of my father's Costa Rican best friend. I'm not sure how much they paid for the party, but I'm sure those several hundred (thousand?) dollars could be of much more use to the daughter now - she is currently a 20-year-old single mother, and had to drop out of college to take care of her infant.

Che Guevara as Fashion Statement

The New York Times had an interesting article this week about how Che Guevara's daughter feels about her father's image appearing as a fashion statement. Everyone has seen the ubiquitous image on many a hipster's T-shirt, but many people who wear them don't really know what they're endorsing. (I personally love VintageCotton's sarcastic version of it.) Last year, I had a Spanish teacher from Cuba who wore a hat adorned with a picture of Che's face with an X over it. When someone asked him about it, he explained that Che actually killed a lot of Cubans, and shouldn't be revered as a hero. I wonder how many of these hipsters would be willing to wear a shirt with Fidel Castro's face on it?

Latina Baby Boom

Has anyone else noticed that several U.S. Latina superstars are pregnant? Salma just gave birth to baby Valentina, Christina's belly is growing (despite still not confirming her pregnancy) and now J-Lo is knocked up with twins. I'm expecting Penelope to announce the news any day now!

Salma Hayek's Plastic Surgery

I recently found out that Salma Hayek, the quintessential Latina beauty, has been helped along with a bit of plastic surgery. Not very surprising in Hollywood, but many people often consider her to be the ultimate "curvy Latin woman," and it's interesting that she felt it necessary to resort to surgery (breast implants and a nose job, to be exact) to live up to that standard. Apparently many other women from her patria of Mexico feel the same way, as it is apparently No. 2 after the U.S. in terms of plastic surgery procedures. Kudos to Jennifer Lopez, another Ur-Latina, for not succumbing to Hollywood pressure to enlarge her smallish chest to balance out her famous posterior.