Memes
- Memes (discrete units of knowledge, gossip, jokes and so on) are to culture what genes are to life.
- Just as biological evolution is driven by the survival of the fittest genes in the gene pool, cultural evolution may be driven by the most successful memes. —Richard Dawkins
Unfortunately, most individuals are familiar with what is known as the "spicy Latina" phenomenon, a wide-spread stereotype that all Latinx women have the tension of being intensely sexual, exotically feisty, and in general unpredictable and wild. "The 'spicy Latina' archetype has most commonly manifested itself in pop culture[...] But, lately, with the advent of social media and viralism, there’s a new way the stereotype is being perpetuated, through memes." (Huffington Post article found at the bottom of the page) As the above passage asserts, while the objectification of Latina women as being "spicy" sexpots is no new trend, it has gotten substantially worse with the implementation of modern-day media platforms (in this case memes.) Hidden in the myriad of hashtags that hold the guise of praising and speaking positive of Latina women (i.e. #latinasarebetter) and those that are less superficially complementary (#crazylatinasbelike) are ridden with male-propagated, gross generalizations that all Latinas are domestically proficient, praised for their high-level sexual performance, etc.
The memes found above were picked because they are among the top 5 search results when Latinx is typed into the search bar along with the key word ‘meme’, which ties back to the original purpose of the this project: accurately portraying the way in which real-time media most commonly portrays Latinx individuals and both creates and enforces subjectively imposed sexualized beauty standards and false narratives.
This is a double-pronged issue, insofar as 1. this sort of fetishization diminishes the complexity and more than skin-deep attributes Latina women have to offer as autonomous individuals and 2. absolutely ignore the existence of Afro-Latinas and more dark-skinned Latinas, simply celebrating the "light-skinned, curly-haired, and bright-eyed 'spicy Latina' archetype."
Writer Shantyana C. Ledin, writing for the Feminist Wire, puts it best when proclaiming “When people tell me I must be a ‘spitfire’ or a ‘freaky girl’ in bed because I am Hispanic, I am not at all flattered. They’re working on stereotypes created long ago to subordinate women of color and cast them as the inferior ‘other." This is a prevalent and concerning trend in today's society, and individuals should think carefully before partaking in it.
Original Article: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-meme-fication-of-the-spicy-latina_us_573dfce0e4b0aee7b8e951f0
Definition of Memes: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/meme
