I was at an academic conference last week/weekend, so this post is an academic talk I gave at a conference last year. Lighter fare next week! XO
Chingonas: How Chicanas are Bound Through Beauty and Justice
*content warning for sexual assault*
In a section of his book-length essay, The Labyrinth of Solitude, Mexican writer and philosopher Octavio Paz describes the men of Mexico as “sons of La Malinche.” La Malinche, also known as Doña Marina or Malintzin de Tenepal, was a Nahua woman who became a concubine and translator for Hernan Cortez and is credited as being the mother of Mestizaje. As part of his interrogation of the Mexican man’s condition, Paz lingers on the idea that he and his peers are “Hijos de la chingada.” “Who is the Chingada?” Paz asks before explaining, “The Chingada is the mother who has suffered - metaphorically or actually- the corrosive and defaming action implicit in the verb that gives her her name… the verb denotes violence, an emergence from oneself to penetrate another by force” (21). Paz elaborates on this definition, detailing how the chingada is the passive female subject who is deceived, used, and broken by the more cunning, powerful, and macho chingon. In his essay, Paz mobilizes familiar tropes of patriarchy and misogyny - the virgin whore dichotomy, the idea that women are passive sexual subjects, that they cannot be trusted - ultimately arguing that as sons of sexual and cultural violation, he and other Mexican men are orphaned. They do not want to be the sons of the colonizer nor of the Indigenous woman who opened herself up to violation, so they are alone in this world, burdened by being nothing and belonging nowhere. Of course, it's not surprising that Paz is not even the slightest bit concerned with women and what it might mean for them to be viewed solely as chingadas. He does not consider the emotional, social, or material impacts this perception of women produces. He does not acknowledge how his essay affirms male superiority and even justifies violence against women as the only option men have to work through their feelings. Paz is incapable, or at best, unwilling, to conceive of women as ever being anything other than chingadas.
However, around 2015, well after the publication of Paz’s essay, I noticed that many of my friends and Latina influencers, blogs, and brands on social media had started to call themselves Chingonas. Counter to meek and passive chingadas, Chingonas are powerful, active agents whose feminist politics and ethnic pride are rendered not through violence like her male counterpart but instead through what scholar and community arts educator Jillian Hernandez calls aesthetics of excess. In my time today, I’d like to examine Chingona style and place it in a wider genealogy of deviant Mexican-American women who have mobilized aesthetics of excess as an agitated response to race, gender, and class marginalization. Specifically, I show how the style and attitudes of present-day Chingonas are linked to those of Pachucas and Cholas, similarly deviant and alluring figures that illustrate a longer history of using style and bodily adornment as part of a practice of refusal. I argue that the proliferation of self-identified “Chingonas'' who borrow aesthetic markers from previous generations of deviant women seek not only to stylistically bind themselves to this history but also to signal that they are taking up the same fights against oppression and working toward liberation.
I start this style and political genealogy with the Pachuca figure who emerged on the eastside of Los Angeles in the 1940s. La Pachuca was primarily identified through her dress - the Zoot Suit. First popularized by Black youth, the zoot suit consisted of fitted button-down shirts or sweaters, long fingertip coats, and knee-length skirts. Some women wore the men’s version of the suit, which swapped the skirt for billowing pants that taper at the leg. Accessories could include a chain necklace or pocket watch chain and wide-brim hats. To complete the look, women typically styled their hair in large bouffant beehives and wore dark eyeliner and bright red lipsticks. Pachuca style and the women who embraced it were generally derided as too sexual and too masculine. This style of clothing went against the norms of respectable femininity by drawing attention to the curves of women's bodies, which was taken to suggest sexual deviancy. Women who wore the pant version of the suit were seen as especially dangerous in their disregard for gender codes and presumed participation in drinking, sex, and fighting. In other words, these women were feared because they looked like men and acted like them, too. Like a lot of youth of color in urban areas, Pachucos and Pachucas were often seen as criminals and delinquents. In the case of the Pachuca, her crime was not only failing to perform respectable femininity but being unpatriotic and unproductive as well.
At the time when the Pachuca figure emerged, the national agenda prioritized the war effort, including cultivating a nationalist image built around civic responsibility and patriotism. In her book From Coveralls to Zoot Suits, historian Elizabeth Escobedo notes that “in general, Mexican families welcomed women’s participation in wartime activities as proof of the Mexican population’s loyalty and commitment to the United States.” While at work, though, Chicanas were exposed to women of other races and were able to learn about their lifestyles and values, expanding their social world and presenting new possibilities for how they might want to live. In addition, earning relatively good wages gave Mexican women the means to participate in formal and social economies and specifically gain access to entertainment and leisure. Given the rations on fabric at the time, the cost of clothing, especially more opulent pieces like the zoot suit required, escalated, making the zoot suit a luxury item. To people outside of the youth culture developing around the zoot suit, this style of dress came across as wasteful and as a disrespectful flaunting of wealth at a time when money should have been going to the war effort. But this perception doesn’t take into account that young Pachucas and Pachucos would have worked long hours (often in factories producing the tools and machinery used in the war) in order to be able to afford the suit and even just one night of fun. In The Woman in the Zoot Suit, Catherine Ramírez writes that “for many young women and men who came of age in the early 1940s, the Zoot suit and its accessories were signs of affluence. The booming wartime economy allowed a generation that had been forced to wear ‘welfare clothes’ during the Great Depression to take pleasure in appearance and to ‘put its opulence in evidence’” (Ramírez 59). Pachucas were known to revel in the pleasures of getting dressed up and hanging out on street corners with friends or going downtown to dance halls and movie theaters. But within these new social contexts, these women were exposed to new levels of scrutiny that fixated on their racialized otherness. As I said earlier, the national rhetoric at the time emphasized productivity and the sacrifice of luxury goods. As racialized others, who were expected to contribute through both labor and the social performance of nationalism, the Pachuca’s indulgence in finer clothing and leisure activities were read as active signs of defiance. However, I read Pachucas' claiming of public space, particularly in zoot suit dress, as a powerfully subversive act that troubles race, class, and gender hierarchies. By making themselves extremely visible through their clothing and personal style, Pachucas demonstrated not only their ability to afford a life of idleness but also their right to a lifestyle oriented around leisure and pleasure. Thus, the suit for women became a symbol of social mobility, personal pride, and women’s right to pleasure on their terms.
Next in this genealogy is the Chola. The Chola as a figure has generally existed in the US Southwest since the 60s, although her image and persona were not solidified in the culture until the 80s and 90s. Chola style remains popular today, and its aesthetic has not shifted much. Similar to Pachucas, Cholas also wear their hair teased in high bouffant shapes, sometimes tying it in a bandana just slightly above the brow. Chola clothing often includes “oversized T-shirts, large, pleated khaki pants or Dickies, Pendleton plaid wool jackets, and severe dark makeup” (Mendoza-Denton 47). Similar to the zoot suit, the clothing that makes up this style is masculine, placing the women who wear it in closer proximity to working-class men of color. Although contrary to Pachuca style, which underscored economic mobility, Chola style is an aesthetic that is born out of financial need. It is no coincidence that this style makes use of men’s clothing, particularly clothing worn for blue-collar and manual labor jobs, as it was common for women to take their brothers' or fathers' hand-me-downs in order for families to save funds for other necessities. Even if women were able to purchase new clothes, these styles were still preferred as they lasted longer and could save women money needed to buy replacements. But as a result of adopting these masculine styles, these women, exactly like Pachucas, were deemed to be unfeminine and dangerous. However, this aesthetic is not purely masculine.
A key component of Chola style is hyper-feminine make-up that includes brows drawn into high arches, thick winged eyeliner, lip liner and lipstick, and foundations and powders to contour the face. While achieving this look is a multi-step process, it’s a look that relies on being able to use the same product - an eyeliner pencil - in multiple ways. The ability to mobilize the same tool for different purposes again highlights how this aesthetic was born out of financial limitations. But these women refused to let the racist economic structures that put them in this position to keep them from accessing beauty and the pleasure it derives. Unsurprisingly, outsiders don’t see it this way. Cholas have often been criticized for misusing and overapplying beauty products, making them look clownish, angry, or mean. Underpinning these criticisms is a larger racist perception of Mexicans being uneducated and classes. The critique that Chola’s use makeup to make themselves uglier, instead of prettier, re-inscribes their marginal position within social hierarchies and seeks to alienate these women. This criticism also relies on the logic that the point of beauty and using beauty products is to be attractive to someone else, and more specifically to the white male gaze. While women of color have always been excluded from definitions of normative beauty, Cholas have leveraged this marginal position and the beauty aesthetics that are unique to them to establish a kind of code that deters some but calls others closer.
In the article “Muy Macha: Gender and Ideology in Gang-Girl’s Discourse about Makeup,” linguistic anthropologist Norma Mendoza-Denton offers a beautiful analysis of the way Cholas use style, and makeup specifically, to communicate their affiliations with Norteña and Surreña regional identities. By assigning colors and styles to region and experience, like hair dyed red for northern Mexico and dark blue or black for southern Mexico, Cholas are able to convey aspects of their own identities, experiences, and struggles. Therefore, as “both signifier and signified, the cholas bodies are inscribed with the traces of conflict: assimilation, ethnic pride, covert prestige and the pride of survival are all etched on the surface of their skins, rewritten every morning in the mirror with the help of Maybelline, Wet n’ Wild, and Covergirl” (Mendoza-Denton 51). The body of the Chola thus becomes a canvas for culture, heritage, and memory. As women who are, at minimum, marginalized on the basis of their race, gender, and class, they also have to negotiate the historical traumas they have inherited and their own battles with assimilation, poverty, sexual violence, and other social and internal struggles. Thus for Cholas to wear that struggle on their skin is to refuse to allow that struggle to be erased, minimized, or ignored. The toughness of their look is achieved not by the harsh lines of makeup or the masculinity of clothing but rather by their strength, which is expressed through vulnerable and radical action that openly expresses struggle through style.
Having established how the Pachuca has influenced the Chola, we can now turn our attention back to the Chingona as the next figure in this genealogy. As I said earlier, this figure started to appear in the 2010s. As we might remember, this was the time of full faces of makeup that included a multi-step contour, eye look, and lip. Body modifications like lip fillers and BBLs (Brazilian Butt Lifts) - procedures that gave women features that were typically associated with Black women and women of color - were becoming more mainstream. We were beginning to see the shift in the fashion industry as social media influencers and direct-to-consumer brands, along with fast fashion companies, were becoming stronger presences in our approach to buying clothes and styling ourselves. In the background, of course, was the transition from the Obama to Trump administration, the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the #metoo movement. This all contributed to the style and political orientation of the generation of young Latinas coming of age at this moment.
In terms of hair and makeup, the contemporary style modified, although still mirrored, styles that Pachucas and Cholas had been wearing. What was different was that now, society writ large was beginning to understand the level of skill and craft required to achieve this look to perfection. YouTube tutorials where women were trying to draw perfect wings using tape, the corner of a piece of paper, or even stencils paled in comparison to the years of careful study and practice Latinas had been logging with their friends, sisters, and cousins. In terms of fashion, the 2010s saw the establishment of online stores like Hija de tu Madre, Viva La Bonita, and Bella Doña, all of which sold t-shirts, hoodies, and accessories that gestured to Latinx heritage, Spanish words and phrases, and Chola aesthetics. Although generally, fashion styles were trending toward streetwear, these brands positioned their clothing as streetwear that wasn’t about clout but honoring the struggle and history of women who popularized these styles to begin with. Returning to those stores I named earlier, here are some quotes from their websites about their brands: “Hija de tu Madre caters to Latinx who bravely question everything, while reconciling our complicated history, culture, and identity. The brand is an ode to mujeres who are unapologetically Latina.” “Viva la Bonita is a women's lifestyle and apparel brand inspired by the Mujeres who Dream Big.” “Bella Doña is proud to celebrate the spirit of sisterhood. Everything we do is rooted in nostalgia from our childhood: long acrylic nails, big ass gold hoops, and winged eyeliner. We are unapologetic about the things we love and using our voices to express our point of view—no matter what.” As we can see, across these statements is an articulation of this history of social and systemic marginalization that, for Latinas, has coalesced in beauty and style. These brands not only embrace an aesthetic of excess but make it a point to demonstrate how clothing and beauty are as much about politics as they are about pleasure and always have been. You might also notice the emphasis on collective power and memory. If we think back to Paz’s essay that I referenced in my introduction, Paz wrote about how Mexican men were alone, unable to find a place of belonging or acceptance in the world as the result of being, in Paz’s words, “cultural bastards.” But this isn’t the attitude taken up by women. Instead, Chingonas are building a sense of community with each other. They are creating social networks that are built around shared struggles and challenges, but more importantly, a shared vision of liberation. Like their Pachuca and Chola ancestors, today’s Chingonas are using their bodies and aesthetics of excess to make a statement about the way Latinas have been excluded from belonging in the US on the basis of race, gender, and class. But we’ve refused to take this exclusion to mean that we are not worthy of belonging, or pleasure, or feeling beautiful. Instead, we’ve taken this as an opportunity to build new worlds of our own where we are accepted, supported, challenged, and celebrated and given the room to continue to imagine what liberation might look like in the future.
In sum, I hope that this paper has illuminated how Chicanas have and are continuing to use the body and self-styling as a key method of imagining social change and even briefly accessing utopia, if only for as long as we wear our red lipstick and hoop earrings.
Works Cited:
Octavio Paz, Labyrinth of Solitude
Elizabeth Escobedo, From Coveralls to Zoot Suits
Catherine Ramirez, The Woman in the Zoot Suit
Norma Mendoza-Denton, “Muy Macha: Gender and Ideology in Gang-Girl’s Discourse about Makeup
Jillian Hernandez, Aesthetics of Excess