In the chapter “Becoming Selena, Becoming Latina,” Paredez notes that “for young Latinas routinely subjected to sexual policing, “being a sexuality” is a bold assertion of ownership over one’s body” (141). I would say this is true for many American women, of all ethnic backgrounds. Right now presidential candidates are running campaigns that focus on the control of women’s bodies, particularly the control of their reproductive organs. The attempts deployed by government, media, and other discourse communities to control and cash in on Selena’s death are amazingly similar to the campaigns against abortion, against open access to women’s health care, against insurance coverage of birth control, and against comprehensive sex education. These discourses are all about power and control. They appear to clash, but ultimately, comfortably co-exist with the equally strong hypersexualization of women, especially of girls and teens that pervades American culture and We can see this in Howard Stern’s xenophobic and sexualized response to Selena’s death as well as in the Texas State senator’s address on the dedication of “Selena’s Day.”
The Senate Resolution No. 619, which ostensibly was to “honor the life, career and personal convictions of this self-made international star and acknowledge the impact that this young Tehana has had across the world,” (Introduction 16) ends up warning young Latina women against ‘wild behavior.’ The resolution extolls Selena’s assumed virtues, virtues that her deceased body and silenced voice will now allow to be tacked onto her image: “Whereas, With strong family support, Selena was able to stay away from the downfalls of the night life that plague many and achieved wholesome, unprecedented fame; and . . . Whereas, This enterprising young Tejana worked diligently over the years” (Introduction 16). These positive descriptions are ultimately about control, controlling the bodies and behaviors of Latinas, and controlling how Latinas/os view their future possibilities.
This resolution promotes the American fallacy of the “self-made man.” In other words, do not expect help and support from anyone but your family; and, if you do not have that, do not look to your government for anything: not a safe environment to grow up in, not adequate health care, and definitely not adequate education. And young Tejana women in particular must have “strong family support” in order to make correct life choices (paternalistic). Another way to keep any minority group in place, and this includes all women, is to repeatedly say that any achievements are the first of their kind, obscuring past positive gains in order to keep those gains in check and stunt their growth and expansion. Selena’s accomplishments were unique, but she is not the first person of Latino heritage, or even the first Latina woman, to find success in the entertainment industry. She is unique in her expression of identity as Tejana and in how positively people reacted to her, but her story of humble beginnings and the “triumph” of her will to succeed is not as “unprecendented” or as impossible for others as the resolution implies.
I am not arguing that Latinas are not recipients of the male gaze, the legal gaze, the parental gaze, the religious gaze, and the media gaze in ways particular to being Latina. Yet, I feel this discussion must be linked to the larger (meaning more all encompassing of women) effort to control the bodies, lives, mobility, and agencies of all women in the United States. As I was reading these chapters, I felt like I was seeing the tentacles of control, distraction, manipulation, and other forces . . . growing across the pages. They burst forth in their full contradictory glory now: the attempts to keep women and girl childlike and asexual while profiting from the deployment of their sexualized, often racialized bodies for capitalistic gain. We are afraid that Latinas will have too many babies, so let us do whatever we can to take away all access to proper women’s health care, including birth control and abortion, and cut all programs that will take care of them when they do have babies. Indicating over and over again that all women, and Latinas in particular ways, are a group to be controlled and parented, and in the end, not American at all. It is in the Texas senate resolution: pulling Selena in, and yet still putting her outside of the realm of being “American,” discussing how she avoided the wild “night life” in order to show how a good American girl behaves -- eggh, it folds over itself again and again to overdetermination.
My other thoughts were of Marilyn Monroe, women’s Halloween costumes and claiming a sexual identity, and how to relate this article to Lacan and the article about battered women. There are so many wonderful topics to chose from in these articles.
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