myth of Latin women

Summary and Response to “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria” In “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria,” Judith Ortiz Cofer illustrates several hardships she suffered due to the universal, misleading stereotypes propagated by the media. Cofer demonstrates various stereotypes that Latin women are subjected to, such as an experience in which she was regarded as a waitress at a California restaurant, and “the Hispanic woman as the ‘Hot Tamale’ or sexual firebrand” (63).She also states that she was taught to act like a woman when she was a teenager and encouraged to dress maturely, which made her peers laughed at her (64). At the end of the article, Cofer concludes that she hopes to change the old, misleading stereotypes to “a much more interesting set of realities” (67). Having read this article, I recognized that because stereotypes are not always true, people should not believe in stereotypes blindly. Cofer uses various experiences she suffered to prove that the stereotypes are not always true or even do harm to some people. For instance, she states that due to their dress, people often regard the Latin woman as “sexual firebrand” (Cofer 63).In the next paragraph, however, she explains, “As young girls, we were influenced in our decisions about clothes and colors by the women-older sisters and mothers who had grown up on a tropical island where the natural environment was a riot of primary colors, where showing your skin was one way to keep cool as well as to look sexy” (Cofer 63). Instead of simply believe that all the Latin girls are hot because of wearing scarlet clothes, individuals now may understand that it is the culture and custom that influence Latin women’s dressing. Besides dressing, Cofer also portrays a stereotype centered around a high school dance she attended with a boy. The boy kissed her without permission. He even complained with a resentful tone: “I thought you Latin girls were supposed to

Cited: Cofer, Judith Ortiz. “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria.” The River Reader. Ed. Joseph F. Trimmer. United States: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 1993. 60- 9. Print.