The Latina Marilyn Monroe
The Latina Marilyn Monroe
What Chi Chi Rodriguez taught me about about beauty
This is the last day of Latine Heritage Month. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to watch as many Latine-forward movies as possible. While I do not rest much of my hope for liberation on the representation of marginalized communities on screen, I do fully understand and respect the power that thoughtful depictions have for audiences. Sometimes, the stories we see on screens make us feel less alone. They help us imagine what our lives could be like. And in the best-case scenarios, they help us learn something new about ourselves and how we move through the world.
This week, I’m sharing the featured essay from my latest zine, Agony Hour No.3, The Latina Marilyn Monroe. It’s about Chi Chi Rodriguez from the movie To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar. I hope you like it, and if so, I hope you will consider purchasing a digital or print copy of the zine, available here. In addition to the essay, there are photos (of me shot by my colleague and muse, Sofi Chavez), an interview with poet Yesika Salgado, and a collection of Latine nail artists to know and follow.
Sending y’all lots of love. More soon! ooxxooXoXXx
Every year at St. Alphonsus, the local Catholic school I attended from grades K-8, there was a talent show. Every year, I entered and lost.
In second grade, my first year in the show, I sang “Miracles Happen” from The Princess Diaries, soundtrack. In fourth grade, when I wanted to do something more edgy, I sang “These Boots Are Made For Walking” by Nancy Sinatra. In eighth grade, when I accepted that my solo career was never going to be successful, I decided to join the majority of our 33-person class to form one big group. We did a dance piece set to three minutes of “Rockin’ Robin” by Bobby Day, followed by three minutes of Michael Jackson’s “P.Y.T.,” and for our grand finale, we sang the full-length of “We are the World 25 for Haiti”.1
Year after year, I took the talent show seriously, committing to hours of practice in my living room and hoping that my school community would recognize me for the star I knew myself to be. And every year, I would get a third place or honorable mention ribbon and descend from the stage, passing the same sympathetic faces of parents who would tell me, “You were my favorite” or “I loved your song,” as I walked past on my way to my own mom and sisters who were waiting to give me a much-needed hug. I was a diva in defeat, incapable of carrying disappointment gracefully.
In fifth grade, the year I really wanted to win, I sang “Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend” in the style of Marilyn Monroe. What I remember most about that Talent Show season was how excited I was to play Marilyn. In my head, I wasn’t singing the same song or trying to be inspired by her performance. I wanted to embody Marilyn. I trained my voice to emulate her breathy falsetto, a real challenge given my naturally low and brassy tone. I worked on pouting my lips and softening my eyes. And I tried desperately to make my plump ten-year-old body glide through space in the same light and sensuous way hers did. The latter was the most difficult for me to achieve the desired effect.
I figured I could make up for what I lacked physically through the other tools of performance. I had dug out my mom’s pink foam hair rollers and looked through her costume jewelry, pulling out the earrings and necklaces I thought were the most glamorous. The missing piece was the dress. My sisters tried offering me dresses they had worn to school dances or formal family events, but nothing was right. Frustrated, I lamented to my family that the success of my performance relied on the dress. I needed the right dress to do well, to become Marilyn, and to convince everyone that I could be her.
Begrudgingly, the night before the show, my mom picked me up after work and took me to Ross: Dress for Less. Unimpressed by everything I saw on the rack, I was convinced it was the end of the world. My mom, unwilling to let this unnecessary trip be in vain, forced me to try on a handful of dresses, telling me that I either pick one of them or accept that I was going to have to figure out what to wear out of what we had at home. I ended up with a black floor-length spaghetti strap dress with a slit. It had a daisy pattern drawn on it with something like glitter glue which, to me, made it seem too girlish and certainly wouldn’t help transform my immature body. It wasn’t what I envisioned, but it was the best I, and the Ross, and my mom could do.
The next morning, I eagerly pulled the rollers out of my hair and wandered between my mom's and sisters’ rooms, pestering them to do parts of my makeup while they were trying to get themselves ready. Once I finally put on the dress with the curated accouterments—a black feather boa and drippy rhinestone earrings—I studied myself in the mirror and was pleased.
Even better than pleased, I felt beautiful. A buzzing sensation sprouted in my stomach that sent electric pulses throughout my body. The costume, the makeup, and the hours of practice had all been building toward this moment of pure confidence. I floated through the rest of the day, holding on to a feeling I knew was precious and fleeting.
***
I have been preoccupied with beauty - what it means, what it feels like, and how to achieve it - for most, if not all, of my life. As a kid, I was always looking at my mother's jewelry and shoe collection, daydreaming about having things like that of my own and drooling over whatever outfits my sisters would put together, wishing my style was more like theirs. But as I got older, what was initially an exercise in vanity became a careful study: What does beauty do for those who have it? Why are some kinds of beauty more valuable than others? How do we use beauty as a metric for other virtues?
Of course, it didn’t take long for me to understand that beauty interacts with race, gender, class, and region, and just as quickly, I learned where I came at odds with normative beauty standards. Like a lot of girls, I took those differences as markers of deficiency. Except my problem wasn’t what I lacked, but rather that I was too much. My body was too big, my voice too loud, my style too outlandish, my opinions too eagerly shared. To be beautiful in the way that I wanted to be - in the way that I thought I should be - I would have to work at making myself smaller in every sense.
Growing up, the models of Latina femininity in popular culture leaned heavily into stereotypes of hypersexuality and tacky sensibilities. Or, on the opposite side of the spectrum, plain and homely women whose outward appearance reflected that they were selfless hard workers who only aimed to please. Beauty was always part of the subtext of these characters, teaching me that if I was desirable enough, then I could marry rich (or at least be a well-taken-care-of mistress) or, if not, then I could just commit to capitalism and eventually realize the American Dream. The latter, of course, would mean I was beautiful on the inside, where, supposedly, it really counts. But on both ends of this racialized VirginXWhore binary, there was still something wrong.
The fiery sexual dynamo – who I saw most commonly depicted on screen by Salma Hyek, Eva Mendez, Eva Longoria, and Roselyn Sánchez – while desirable, was treacherous. Her sexuality was always a threat to some other (usually white) woman’s marriage, family, or livelihood, implying to me that she has not worked and, thus, has not earned what luxuries she has or enjoys. So, while she might be beautiful on the outside, that beauty was invalidated by her being manipulative, lazy, and untrustworthy.
By contrast, the maid or low-wage workers – played mostly by Lupe Ontiveros and America Ferrera2 – seemingly dedicate their lives to work in the hopes of making ends meet or living comfortably working-class. These women are usually not pretty enough to coast on their looks, and so they work and work and work and work, making them admirable, yes, but not beautiful. Having gone too far in the opposite direction of their spitfire counterpart, these figures are so closely linked to labor that it is difficult to imagine them as ladies who are beautiful and beguiling enough to receive the level of care and service they provide others.
A uniting factor between these two figures is a kind of aesthetic and affective excess that marks these women as Latina and, therefore, outside the norm of respectable femininity. They are always reaching, striving, and working to be something they’re not, and their appearance not only reflects that effort but also underscores how unattainable these goals are to begin with. The spitfire is always feigning elegance with her overdone makeup and excessively tight and flashy clothes. The desexualized worker is always too out of touch or too poor to have clothes that are fashionable, so she always looks outdated and out of place.
The singular outlier to this binary I came across as a youth was Chi Chi Rodriguez (played by John Leguizamo) from the movie To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. The movie follows three drag queens, Vida Boheme (Patrick Swayze), Noxeema Jackson (Wesley Snipes), and the aforementioned Chi Chi Rodriguez, who embark on a road trip from New York City to Los Angeles for the Drag Queen of America Contest. In the middle of their trip, their car breaks down, and they are forced to spend some quality time in a small, dust-bowl-era-lookin’ town until the local mechanic can get the car fixed. Although the townspeople and the Queens have trepidations about each other, they eventually bond and help each other grow. It’s a movie about friendship, celebrating differences, and coming together. It takes on themes of gender performance, sexuality, and gender-based violence. It’s a flawed queer story, and its happy ending increasingly feels like a far cry from an authentic rendering of American life and politics, especially in regard to Drag performances and Trans rights.
But I’ve always come back to To Wong Foo because of the way Chi Chi takes up the tropes of the sexual dynamo and the humble hard worker and reconfigures them to make something undeniably beautiful. Specifically, the way Chi Chi responds to being excluded, negotiates sexuality, and strives to be exceptional allowed me to see how beauty and Latinidad rub up against each other, shaping how Latinas access belonging in a broader social context. Chi Chi bucked the MariaXPuta dichotomy. She refuses to deny her sexuality or self-worth and taught me that I could feel beautiful by embracing the excess that marked me as other.
From the beginning of the movie, Chi Chi is depicted as an outsider. In the opening sequence of the film, we watch both Swayze and Snipes in their respective homes, transforming into the queens that the audience will come to know them as. Through a series of shots of the actors rolling up stockings, fastening corsets, and patting their faces with cosmetics, the film invites us to luxuriate in the opulence, craft, and divinity of hyper-femininity. In the shots when their final looks are revealed, we see both queens admiring themselves in the mirror, dancing with their reflections and lovingly caressing their bodies. While the celebration they offer themselves is in part because of their ability to achieve such virtuosity, it also feels like they are honoring their own arrival. Who they are seeing in the mirror is the highest and truest version of themselves, ultimately adding to the beauty and power of their appearance.
Chi Chi’s intro is not as glamorous. When we meet her, she’s walking down a dark and dank street in Spanish Harlem. A group of men are sitting on a stoop, drinking out of paper bags, leering at her as she passes. She’s wearing a bright lime green halter dress with hot pink trim, bright red lips, and black eyeliner cutting across green eyeshadow. She walks with her head low, carrying a mannequin head form in her hands with a long curly-haired wig on it. She and the mannequin share the same crestfallen expression. Chi Chi is not as well put together or as stylish as the other Queens, and the film does not frame her as worthy of the same adoration. Instead, it feels as though we are encouraged to pity her because she isn’t as pretty. And if I’m being honest, I’ve always interpreted her intro as suggesting she isn’t as pretty – at least, in part – because she’s Latina.
When we get to see Vida and Noxeema’s final looks, their clothing and styling gestures to distinct racialized aesthetics. Vida looks like a WASPy 50’s socialite, and Noxy, a funky disco queen. Both of these are figures of ideal white and Black femininities with their own cultural currency and power. But Chi Chi doesn’t have that. Her gaudy style feels untethered to a distinct fashion moment or aesthetic beyond “cheap and gaudy,” and so it just comes across as different, alien,3 or, more succinctly, Latin.
I recognized Chi Chi’s style as similar to that of the women I grew up around and sought to emulate. At eleven, the age I was when I first watched this movie, I would have reached for the same brightly colored dress and attempted to do my makeup in the same way. Seeing the style that I was drawn to on Chi Chi and understanding that she was somehow less than the other queens made me feel embarrassed by my own tastes and question if I was being looked at in the same condescendingly sympathetic way we were encouraged to look at Chi Chi.
Chi Chi’s failure to perform beauty correctly is confirmed moments later when she loses the drag contest all three queens are participating in. When Vida and Noxeema spot her crying in the hallway on their way to celebrate their joint victory, Vida shrieks, “Look at that little Latin boy in drag!” When asked why she’s crying, Chi Chi whimpers, “Cause the two of you are so pretty,” through a forced, trying-to-be-polite smile. It’s a compliment (kind of) but also a sad admission that she might not be as pretty as them, which is really to say, not as worthy or valuable. Notably, Vida and Noxy do not return the compliment, even just as a courtesy to comfort her. As they talk in the hallway, they continue to address and describe Chi Chi as a “little Latin boy in drag,” foregrounding her ethnicity and cheekily denying her the honorific title of “Drag Queen.”
Later, when the trio are driving to Los Angeles,4 Chi Chi asks how they will get across the country without a map. “Instincts, my dear,” Vida states matter of factly. Noxeema adds, “And exquisite wit,” before saying, “Darling, if you’re going to become a drag queen, you’re going to have to learn these things.” Without the distraction of a recent loss, Chi Chi clocks that they don’t think she’s a queen. Her eyebrows furl but then soften, and she declares in a sensual and self-pleased tone of voice, “What do you mean “if”? I am a drag queen.” But Noxy and Vida are quick to correct her, “When a gay man has too much fashion sense for one gender, he is a drag queen,” Noxy reminds her, “And when a tired little Latin boy puts on a dress, he is simply but a boy in a dress.” “I’m just a boy in a dress?” Chi Chi asks, giving Vida and Noxy a chance to correct themselves. “Oh, absolutely,” Vida responds bluntly. And so it’s spelled out very clearly that Chi Chi doesn’t have the fashion sense to be a queen.
That Latinas and their fashion occludes them from beauty and, by extension, belonging is an enduring trope of the Latina figure in the US imaginary. The best example of this is America Ferrera’s character Betty Suarez in the sitcom Ugly Betty (2006-2010), wherein an unfashionable girl works at the most prestigious fashion magazine. Similarly to Chi Chi, Betty’s ethnicity is woven into the criticisms of her style, and in both cases, their style is singled out as the reason they are ugly and don’t belong. Like most Latinas with similarly flashy, loud, and imaginative style, Betty and Chi Chi are viewed as backward women whose inability to belong in their present contexts often makes their futures difficult to imagine. In other words, if they can’t meet present beauty standards, they won’t meet the standards of a more progressive and advanced future. Their beauty, captured through their clothing, is literally tied to a sense of security and longevity. But arguably, such is the case for all women and feminine people.
Beauty is tied to social value and is often leveraged as currency to secure other needs. Historically, women have been encouraged to invest in their appearances to be considered desirable enough to men, who will then commit to financially providing for them in exchange for access to their beauty—or bodies rather—and the domestic work women are typically tasked with. Beauty is part of the exchange of marriage. And so, it can feel like you need to be beautiful in order to to feel worthy of safety and love.
Chi Chi seems keenly aware of this economy. Throughout the film, we watch Chi Chi flirt and pursue men, often wielding her sexuality as leverage to get something she needs. In one scene, when the girls are looking for a place to stay after a long stretch of driving she decides to hop out of the car and approach the budget motel Vida and Noxy are afraid to enter.5 When she walks into the lobby, she immediately finds the manager and explains that she and her friends are looking for “a little sanctuary.” She makes direct eye contact with him and tucks her chin down, forcing her eyes to look up at him, and her mouth, coated with a shiny bright red gloss, coils over every vowel, making it look like she’s kissing the air. The manager smiles brightly back at her, welcomes the trio (to their surprise), and offers them wine and cheese in the lady's parlor. “I love to be wined and dined, papi,” she tells him, making him lose focus and stumble over his words.
In this interaction, and others similar to it throughout the film, we see Chi Chi tap into the heightened sexuality of the “Latina Spitfire” stereotype. Her clothing, consistently tight and tiny, readily displays her legs, her navel, her cleavage, and her back. She sways when she walks, making small, little hypnotic circles with her waist. Her raunchy flirting underscores the spectacle of her body. And for extra effect, she throws in a word or phrase in Spanish, making her seem all the more exotic and alluring. It’s a strategy I know well and one I rarely ever feel confident enough to utilize. It’s important to note, however, that Chi Chi isn’t necessarily trying to be beautiful but, more precisely, trying to be sexy.
Being beautiful is, in a way, passive. What/who gets called beautiful, especially when thinking about it from a U.S. perspective, is more about a natural essence or innate quality. Sexiness, however, is cultivated, practiced, and strengthened by experience. Being sexy can play upon natural gifts like the body (or a Spanish accent), but it generally requires more effort. One needs to be aware of oneself as a sexual being and an object of desire to embody and use sensuality. This awareness of sexuality is often what gets wielded against women of color as a sign of their impurity and deviancy. But this assumed hyper-sexuality also makes them especially desirable as the targets of racist erotic fantasies and fetishes. Chi Chi knows this and plays upon the fantasies and misconceptions of others to get what she needs and wants. By doing so, she demonstrates a kind of sexual agency that, to a certain extent, affords her a level of independence.
But I think what has always been striking to me about Chi Chi is how she willingly works and makes visible her racialized excess. She takes herself seriously as a woman who deserves adornment, worship, and the occasional material good even as she is ridiculed for the effortful ways she seeks those things out. Her commitment to this work, to me, has always reflected how deeply she believes she’s worthy of more.
This conviction is best displayed when their car stalls after taking much-needed break at a rest stop. Vida tries to start the car multiple times to no avail, and all three queens are frustrated and bickering with each other. Chi Chi, annoyed and hoping to vindicate herself after being insulted, decides she’s going to try and get them a ride by hitchhiking. “How are you going to hitchhike if there are no cars, stupid?,” Noxeema snaps at her. Chi Chi begins to saunter away with that familiar flirty smile on her face and sneers back at the car, “Well, you don’t know me very well, do you, Creepela? I’m the Latina Marilyn Monroe. I got more legs than a bucket of chicken.” Unsurprisingly, she secures them a ride by feigning to pull up her thigh-high stocking, which catches the attention of a lone truck driver.
It’s not a coincidence that Chi Chi refers to herself specifically as the “Latina Marilyn Monroe.” Monroe is the pinnacle of American sexuality and femininity, specifically because she was able to occupy the innocence of white purity while still being in a voluptuous body and exuding an air of sensuality. She was also among the first, and certainly the most successful, female artists to capitalize on the desirability of femininity and build a career from it. She cultivated and nurtured a persona as a woman of unparalleled beauty, sexuality, and talent. I read Chi Chi's proclamation of herself as the Latina Marilyn Monroe as a signal of her deep belief that she, too, is exceptional.
***
Here is a story I rarely ever share.
When I was little, I was a regular participant in the Talent Show at my school. Every year, I entered and lost. But to be honest, that was okay because as much as I wanted to be, I knew I wasn’t really a singer. What I didn’t realize when I embodied Marilyn wasn’t that I was embodying her sensuality, but the performance of it. Like Marilyn, I was an actor.
In the theater, where everything is intentionally exaggerated, heightened, and overperformed, I thrived. Being as loud, expressive, and earnest as I am made me a better performer. My willingness to work allowed me to harness my craft and refine the way I approached storytelling. By thirteen, I was convinced that if I kept putting in the effort, I would become an actor on Broadway.
When I got accepted to Barnard College, a liberal arts, historically women’s college in New York City, it felt like the universe was finally giving me the reward I had been working toward. I had plans to still pursue theater as I explored other topics that fed my new interests in feminism and human rights. But I was most eager to learn the ropes of the theater scene, make friends at open calls, and begin the long trek toward stardom. It was the place where a younger me hoped and prayed I’d land.
In order to enroll in the acting classes at Barnard, you first had to audition. During the first week of classes, I made my way to a small black box theater on campus and put my name on a list. I took a seat at the back and watched as others took the stage to give their monologues. I remember looking around the room and, for the first time, feeling like I didn’t belong in the space that I had come to think of as home. Around me, I could hear girls whisper about their time spent at fancy-sounding camps, training at respected schools and centers, and on professional sets and productions. Even though their credentials were intimidating, I was, to a certain extent, prepared to feel like I was behind my new peers because of the limited resources I grew up with.
But what I wasn’t prepared for was how the overwhelming whiteness of this group of girls would trigger a completely different set of insecurities. They were beautiful in the ways I had always yearned to be. They were thin, with sweet melodic voices and stylish clothes, and spoke with the elegance of women well beyond their years. And it looked like this all came naturally to them. I couldn’t help but begin to compare myself to them, whittling myself down to nothing in the process. Overwhelmed by what I thought was an insurmountable list of deficiencies, I got up and left before they called my name, never giving myself the chance to try. I haven’t performed since.
***
In recent years, as I’ve revisited To Wong Foo, I appreciate more and more how Chi Chi revels in her style, her raunch, and her commitment to reaching for something greater. I see in her my own efforts to try to adapt to the standards set before me. A similar deep yearning to be acknowledged and accepted by those we admire. And a shared sense of urgency to realize the potential that is pounding inside of us. And increasingly, naming herself the Latina Marilyn Monroe feels like an explicit call to action and affirmation.
The truth is, a Latina can’t be Marilyn Monroe. The two are at odds, even as they traffic in the same modes of femininity, sexuality, and desire. I can try to mimic my white counterparts, but the bounce in my walk, an extra accessory, or a revealing neckline will always give me away as something other. Latinidad is the modifier of a white ideal, completely changing what originally was. The Latina Marilyn Monroe is someone new unto herself.
She is someone who tries and takes pride in her work. She is someone who decorates herself with loving abandon. She believes fervently that she is exceptional, giving her license to pursue all that her heart desires. She’s free in ways I want to be. In ways, I am hoping I will be again. She’s beautiful. Not in the way that others say she should be, but in the ways only she could be.
I owe the people of Haiti a very big apology for this! Also, true to form, we did not win. I think a group of seventh graders who had rehearsed for more than a week won. Anyway we were so upset that I think we booed the judges and later our teacher had to give us a talk about not being sore losers.
I’m thinking primarily of her characters in Real Women Have Curves, Ugly Betty, and Superstore, although I would argue her role in Barbie fits in this mold as well albeit more subtly.
We watch Noxy and Vida get ready in their respective homes, but we actually don’t know what/where/ or if there is a home for Chi Chi. In her essay “The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans'' Claire Jean Kim argues that Asian racial identity is triangulated between whiteness and Blackness because Asians are mythologized to be wealthier (making them closer to whiteness) but always thought of us as forever immigrants and thus not American (creating different stakes of belonging than Black folks). I think a different, but similar thing can be said of both Black and non-Black Latines. We are not thought of as model minorities usually, but our connections to countries outside of the U.S., plus phenotypic and language differences also keeps us in a similar “forever immigrant” position. That Chi Chi doesn’t have a home *that we know of* feels like another way we’re being told she doesn’t belong as a Latina/“forever immigrant” or outsider.
After encountering her in the hallway, Vida and Noxy decide to take Chi Chi under their wing and help her become a “full fledged Drag Queen.”
To be fair, they’re afraid they won’t be allowed to stay because they are drag queens and gay men and also two of them aren’t white. All are pretty reasonable fears and concerns!