An Inconvenient Mexican - For Some, I’m Not Hispanic Enough

“Growing up in Mexico City, I thought my family and friends were kind of an oddity because we didn’t look like the Scandinavian types dominating the airwaves and the outdoor advertisements. Happy blond, blue-eyed people were everywhere pitching sodas, insurance, airlines and cars. At night the 9 o’clock telenovela invariably brought us a story about a good, virginal maid who was also very light skinned and for some reason ended up in the arms of the rich home-owner (who by the way always sported a compound name such as Alberto Manuel or Roberto Alejandro). People in the ads did not look like the people we saw in our everyday lives simply because, as my creative director friend later explained to me, the point was to send a message that was “aspirational”; that is, to have people aspire to be more stylish, more wealthy, more … blond?

That was then — and there. But now after nine years in the U.S., exposed to Hispanic-targeted media and so-called “Hispanic-specific advertising,” I feel like an oddity again, because I don’t seem to fit the “type” of Hispanic people the media insists on portraying, and researchers insist on “researching.” “

Stumble it! | |