There’s something about telenovelas that I can’t get enough of. The overused trope of the wealthy lead who falls in love with their humble and poor housekeeper. The love triangles. The exaggerated reactions. The unnecessary close-ups and even the clichéd dialogue. It’s all enough to make me cringe, yet I keep coming back for more.
As a young Mexican-American girl, my time spent in front of the television ranged from watching Miley Cyrus in Hannah Montana to watching Danna Paola in Amy, La Nina de la Mochilla Azul (Amy, the Girl with the Blue Backpack). Thus, I spent the majority of my childhood conflicted between choosing to be a superstar or choosing to be an adventurer whose best friend was a mermaid. Although none of these dreams came to be true, they were a big part of my coming-of-age experience. My mother watching Rubi as she cooked dinner or as my sister watched Cómplices Al Rescate (Accomplices to the Rescue) in the afternoon is deeply engraved in my memory, and even today, we still find ourselves sitting together to enjoy the latest telenovela.
There’s no denying they’re overly dramatic and cheesy, but you wouldn’t understand why you still find yourself so engrossed in each episode until you actually watch one. Despite creating such one dimensional and stereotypical characters, you find yourself wanting to know what happens to them in the next episode.
And that is the beauty of telenovelas.
Yet, sometimes, even in the most beautiful things, there is an ugliness that exists underneath. Across many industries, there has permeated a singular beauty standard. Sadly, in telenovelas, this means that the majority of their casts represent a small minority of the Latino population simply because their looks are more appealing than my brown skin and brown eyes.
I didn’t notice this until I grew up and began to pay attention. The actors I was seeing on screen did not reflect the Hispanic community that I grew up in. They didn’t look like my mom or my sister, nor my brother or father. They were tall and thin, light-skinned, with colored or light eyes, and many times with blond hair. Now there isn’t anything wrong with having any of these characteristics, but as I pay closer attention to these shows, it seems that those with these characteristics are the only ones being represented and furthermore, treated with much more respect than those who don’t have them.
Now I don’t want to say that I have never seen anyone who looks like me in these telenovelas, because I have. But there’s a tendency for them to be playing the role of the “help,” low-income characters, or simply funny sidekicks with little to no character development. Very rarely will I see them leading a show with a strong character arc. As someone who has grown up rarely seeing themselves on the American screen, I would have at least hoped that I could be seen and represented in the telenovelas that I love so much, but this simply isn’t the case.
Telenovelas feed into the dangerous idea that anyone who doesn’t fit the classic European look, which is highly praised and glamorized all throughout the world, is not beautiful. As a young girl, many of my insecurities were connected to what I was seeing on screen. I am not tall or thin, my skin isn’t light, my eyes are a deep shade of brown, and my hair is as dark as it can get. Though these are normal characteristics that many of us can relate to, it has been hard to be comfortable in my own skin when all I saw was a whole industry writing people who looked like me to be secondary characters. Additionally, Afro-Latina and Indigenous women are even less represented in telenovelas. Our culture tends to ignore and pretend that they don’t exist but the truth is, they do. They are just as important as the women we are seeing on the screen and deserve to be represented, and given important roles in these shows.
The role of the successful and rich person played by someone who is light-skinned enforces the idea that those who have more European qualities are above those who don’t. They push a false narrative that often deems Black and brown Latinos as poor and unsuccessful, and requires the lighter-skinned Latinos to the rescue. We often see this in American television and films, which include a “white savior” to help people of color because they are unable to do so themselves.
As much as we love to watch telenovelas to get our daily dose of drama, it’s time that we start holding them accountable for what they promote. We can’t continue to have shows that promote colorism and lack representation of anyone other than light-skinned Latinos. We need to start teaching younger generations that there isn’t only one color, one look, or one person that is more beautiful than everyone else. We can’t allow ourselves to continue supporting shows that adhere to toxic beauty standards and colorism, no matter how much they make us laugh or how entertaining they are. What we watch on television should represent what our communities look like.
