Single Hispanic Male Seeks Pocha

1 Sep

I’ve seen it too many times. A guy who likes dating Latinas will meet a girl who has skin the color of cinnamon and big, almond-shaped eyes, with a name like Xochimilco or Lupita, and he’ll be thrilled that he is dating a Latina. And yet. Many Latinas speak weak, virtually non-existent Spanish. They know nothing about their culture, whether it’s the music, the history, the literature, the art, the culture, the customs, the politics. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, I suppose, although I think people should know about their heritage and be proud of it.

But what irks me is that men prefer to date these surface-only Latinas rather than date someone who doesn’t have the name, or the morena, Maria Felix look, but who otherwise feels more Latina through and through than these other girls. Yes, I am not speaking in generalities but rather am speaking about my own experience. I am aware of friends who have set up their male friends who want to meet a single Latina with girls who have dark skin but who don’t speak Spanish. So they look the part, and men who only want someone who fits the bill physically get a “Latina”. Now, no one ever tells me, “Hey, I know a guy who wants to meet a girl who speaks Spanish, has lived in Mexico and knows Mexico and Mexican culture- so I want to introduce you to him”.  I may not meet the superficial criteria that many Latina-philes look for, and sometimes this frustrates me. Then I remind myself that I am really looking for someone who can go beyond the surface to get to know the real me, beyond my white bread name and white skin.

In Defense of Facebook

28 Aug
Community

Community

There is a whole universe of marketers who make their living by selling their wares on Facebook- or finding the best algorithm to sell one’s wares on Facebook. So the livelihoods of many depend on the continuing popularity- nay, supremacy- of the social network. So a few weeks ago when a young 13 year old wrote I I’m 13 and none of my friends are on Facebook, many digital marketing pros sat up and took notice. Has Facebook reached peak profile, and if so, does it even matter?

Some say that even if teenagers are no longer using Facebook because of its popularity with the over 50-set, well, the over 50s have disposable income, so why not embrace the fact that Facebook is now skewing older? While that may be an argument, it’s a weak one, and doesn’t address the fact that without young users, Facebook loses caché…which is what lead to MySpace’s downfall. Remember MySpace?

I think that marketers would be wise to think of more than just Facebook when they think of social media marketing. And yet Facebook remains the 800 pound gorilla in the room. LinkedIn may be for the college-educated pro, Twitter may be for the technorati, but Facebook is still used by pretty much everybody. Ask someone if they’re on LinkedIn, and if they say no, well, no big deal. But have you ever met someone who is not on Facebook? It seems rather odd, like someone admitting to still using a typewriter or rotary phone. The lifeblood of any social network is people; without people you want to connect to, you’re sending your voice out across an empty void. We may be getting post-literate and living in an increasingly image-centric world (I am one of the last holdouts staying away from Instagram and Snapchat, which are purely image-driven), but for the time being, as long as Facebook is where our friends are found (and yes, even our annoying Great-Aunt who loves conspiracy theories), it is where we will spend our time. And it is where marketers should stay, for now at least.

Ode to a Burrito

27 Aug
Taqueria Cancun

Taqueria Cancun

With respect to Robbie Burns.

Fair and full is your tortilla
Great bearer of rice and bean and avocado!
Above them all you take your place,
Taco, torta, tostadita:
Well are you worthy of a grace
As long as my brazo derecho.

Soft pinto, warm rice, crispy onion
Dotted with green hillsides of avocado and bright red tomato
I undress your foil layer by layer
Simple, filling meal.

We are all Miley

26 Aug
Typical School Dance

Typical School Dance

Miley Cyrus’ performance at the VMAs last night is all anyone can talk about today, and everyone seems to have a different angle: Miley as a disappointment to her parents, Miley as troubled child star putting her Disney past behind her, Miley as appropriator of black culture, Miley as trashy stripper. But I propose that the Miley we saw at the VMAs is just what is seen in sweaty high school gymnasiums all across the country. We American girls are all Miley now.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been in high school, and yet I remember the way we would dance closely with the boys. We wouldn’t jam our butts in their crotches like Miley did, but we danced close. Face to face. And this was the mid to late 90’s. Later on, in college, and in my early 20’s when I would go out dancing, we wouldn’t do the Viennese waltz. We would do what you could consider a primitive form of twerking. The world of the strip club and pornography had already entered our dancing styles.

I won’t claim that no one danced this way in the past, but if they did it was not the norm. It was frowned upon. Whereas now, the transgressive is now what’s expected. The bar is raised such that the norm is dancing like Miley, at Homecoming dances, at bars and at nightclubs. So why are we shocked? Miley is just another American girl gone wild.

All Hail Cate Blanchett

25 Aug
Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine

Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine

I saw a 5:00pm showing of Blue Jasmine earlier, and while there are many different approaches to take when looking at the film- Blue Jasmine as San Francisco film (Joe Eskenazi thought it odd that we saw a San Francisco filled with New Yawkers blabbering on about where to get good clams), portrayal of women and their relationship to men, the role of biological vs adopted family in the movie, class and the financial crisis, well, I just want to use this opportunity to praise Cate Blanchett as one of the best actresses working in the movies today. She has range, she has a regal bearing and a timeless beauty. Meryl Streep who?

Take a look at The Aviator, where she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for playing Katherine Hepburn (the Academy loves awarding actors for playing historical figures- see Margaret Thatcher, King George VI, Harvey Milk). She captured the essence of the Hepburn that we remember from the screen- the verve and energy, the vibrant wit- while also capturing the vulnerable side of the woman so deftly in the bathroom scene that I believe won her the Oscar (I also believe actors are awarded the Oscar for nailing one scene and one scene only. For The Aviator, she won for this scene showing Katherine Hepburn’s vulnerability). In Elizabeth, she harnesses her regal quality to portray the virgin queen in all her power and complexity.  She lost the Oscar to Gwyneth Paltrow, which was a damn shame.

Will Cate get the chance to win the Oscar one day? I think so. She is only 44, and has years of good work ahead of her. She may even get the chance with Blue Jasmine, carrying the movie and appearing in nearly every scene. As the wife of a Bernard madoff-type big-scale swindler whose life unravels in the wake of his imprisonment and suicide, Jasmine could be an unsympathetic character in less capable hands. She is a fragile, weak, vain, petty woman, but her humanity shines through, due somewhat to skilled writing and directing from Woody Allen, but mostly because of Cate Blanchett’s acting. Will she win the Best Actress Oscar in February 2014? I hope it’s her time.

Ser Mexicana en México

24 Aug
Paisaje de Morelos, tomado desde el bus

Paisaje de Morelos, tomado desde el bus

Hace casi un mes tuve un viaje laboral a México D.F. Me quedé por muy poco tiempo, pero creo que la brevedad del viaje plasmó de manera mas clara que nunca lo diferente que es ser mexicana en Estados Unidos y mexicana en México. Acá somos una minoría, y en México simplemente somos mexicanos entre los mexicanos.

Claro, no es tan sencillo. Nunca pasaremos desapercibidos en México los Mexican-Americans. Andamos por la calle como gente de Estados Unidos, nos vestimos como gente de Estados Unidos, nuestras expectativas son distintas. Nuestro sistema digestivo seguramente no es de México (por eso evito tristemente los puestos en la calle). Pero en México uno puede hablar el español, pues, a su modo. Órale. Los mexicanos no son un tema que se discute en la prensa angloparlante con el ceño fruncido. Durante este viaje, me pregunté, así se sienten los judíos al irse a Israel? De una minoría a simplemente uno entre todos los demás, como los demás. Mas parecido que distinto.

Como dije, estar ahí solo por unos días hizo que el contraste fuera mas evidente. Al regresar a Estados Unidos, me encontré con mucha gente no hispana en el aeropuerto. Gente que hablaba en voz muy alta. Corpulencia. No es que estos fenómenos no existen en México (seguramente ésta última sí), pero son marcas definitivas de lo estadounidense. Para mi ir a México es, de alguna forma, como ir a casa.

A Haiku for Friday

23 Aug
Red wine

Red wine

Red wine I sip slowly

Sweet, spicy, rich on my lips

Thus I end the week

El (Ciber) Laberinto de la Soledad

22 Aug
Salir del Laberinto, mediante Facebook

Salir del Laberinto, mediante Facebook

Qué diría Octavio Paz de los mexicanos y su relación actual con el internet? Hay estudios oficiales de firmas serias e importantes que confirman esto; por ejemplo, el video abajo que muestra que 30.6 millones mexicanos usan internet. México D.F. es la segunda ciudad de Latinoamérica con mas usuarios que usan Twitter. La mayoría se conecta desde su casa, y en otros estudios que he visto, la gran mayoría lo hace todo a través del celular.

Tengo amigos mexicanos en Facebook, tanto en Estados Unidos como en México, y veo todos los días que su uso de la red social es muy pero muy distinto del mío y de mis amigos de otras culturas. Incluyen todo aspecto de su rutina diaria, sea en fotos, check-ins o nuevas actualizaciones de estado. Actualizar su estado. Cuando veo la frecuencia y entusiasmo con el que mis amigos usan el Facebook, pienso en Octavio Paz y su famoso Laberinto de la Soledad.

Hace años que leo este pronóstico de la condición mexicana, pero la tésis de Paz es que los mexicanos están perdidos dentro de su propia soledad. Si la soledad es una parte imprescindible del ser mexicano, el uso constante de las redes sociales representa un esfuerzo constante de salir de ello. Uno nunca puede hundirse en la soledad cuando uno siempre está conectado.

Video

Uso de Internet en México 2013

22 Aug

Cifras sobre quién se conecta al internet en México- y cómo.

What if Walter White were Black?

21 Aug
Walter White

Walter White

To the horror and astonishment of people I know who have followed the show since it began, I have just now begun to watch Breaking Bad. Everyone says to watch the prior 5 seasons before jumping right in- one friend pleaded, “You wouldn’t start a novel towards the end, would you?”. Well, I figured I have a life to live and didn’t have hours and hours to devote to the series before watching, so I have started. I now think there is some value in beginning a series towards the end. I’m following the show, and enjoying it.

But what I am intrigued by is the thought I keep having, would this show- about a humble man who turns to drug dealing to support his family- be such a success if the protagonist, Walter White, were African-American? I have posed this question in a slightly different form, as in my previous post, Deconstructing Adele. Voices as powerful and moving as Adele’s sing in black churches every Sunday, and yet Adele skyrockets to fame. And in the case of Breaking Bad, we empathize with a man who turns to making and selling drugs to support his family, ruining lives in the process as well as his soul. Would this story have found the audience it did if it were about a black man who had made the same choice? Or would the New Yorker/Slate-reading crowd have turned the other way, loathe to follow the exploits of an African-American druglord?

I’m sure HBO subscribers would point to the critical success of The Wire as a show with complicated African-American protagonists (full disclosure: haven’t seen this one). But whereas The Wire gives us the portrait of what plagues the American inner city- an environment the average HBO subscriber can watch from a safe remove- Breaking Bad shows the story of a meek, suburban, middle-class, white family man driven to incredible lengths to do what every family man claims to do, namely, put his family above all else. There, but for the grace of God, goes I. The horror of Walter White’s transformation is that it shows how easily the average man could become a monster for the sake of his family. Being identifiable as the average American guy is key to this.

And yet I return to my original question- would viewers tune in if Walter White were a chemistry teacher on the South Side of Chicago- or East Los Angeles- instead of Albuquerque, New Mexico? I will leave it up to you, devoted viewer of Breaking Bad, The Wire, or any other show I am missing here in the conversation, to educate this new follower of the show. Is it unusual to be weirded out by the whiteness of a show about a drug kingpin in the American Southwest?

P.S. Reddit seems to get it. Thanks Giancarlo Esposito.

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