Talent More Important than Looks? Not if You're Latina

“Naya Rivera Sizzles On Rolling Stone Flip Cover Featuring The Latin Hot List 2013” blared the headline on the Huffington Post’s "Latino Voices" section, followed by the lead “Naya Rivera is hot - if you had any doubts just check out the latest issue of Rolling Stone.”  Both the Rolling Stone cover story and the HuffPost’s coverage of it seem aimed at celebrating Rivera’s success borne from her singing talents.  Unfortunately, neither accomplishes this and it is bad for Hispanic and Latino women.


For those unfamiliar with her, Rivera is one of the many stars of the Fox network's dramedy/musical “Glee,” which centers on the lives of current and former members of a high school glee club.  Rivera portrays Santana, a former cheerleader, glee club member, mean girl starting her post-high school life in New York City with other former classmates.  Rivera’s success on “Glee” has enabled her to start the musical recording career that Rolling Stone seems to want to discuss.

Yet, the talent most on display that HuffPost celebrates is Rivera’s ability to dress scantily and pose provocatively, noting, “The 26-year-old strikes a seductive pose as the queen of Rolling Stone’s Latin Hot List…”

Image from Rolling Stone
available at
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/naya-rivera-leads-rolling-stones-latin-hot-list-2013-20131106

This is sad state of affairs for Hispanic and Latino female artists, one that does not seemed to have improved much during the past 30 to 40 years.  Linda Ronstadt, for example, famously has complained about her portrayal on the cover of Time magazine in 1977.  Ronstadt was the most famous and the highest paid woman in rock-and-roll during the 1970s, yet the Time cover seemed concerned only with the seductive image Ronstadt could project under the headline “Torchy Rock.”

Time, 28 February 1977
available at
http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19770228,00.html

That the music and magazine industries have done little to in the way of celebrating Hispanic and Latino female artists for their talents instead of their looks is shameful.  That these industry’s business structures compel women to think they need to use their looks to attract attention to their careers is equally so.  It has been over 30 years since Ronstadt's appearance on the cover of time.  Will it take still another 30 years before the conditions change?

The 30-Year-Old Solution

Of all of the suggestions of gun control and school safety to emerge from last month’s tragic shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, none struck me as more ridiculous than the National Rifle Association's (NRA) call for armed guards in all schools in the United States.  This is a terrible idea.  I have written before about the psychological and social tolls increased militarism in schools takes on schoolchildren.  What is more, however, is that the idea of arming more people to curb gun violence was a laughable notion some thirty years ago, too laughable then to be taken seriously now.

Norman Lear, the renowned creative force of some of the most influential situation comedies of the 1970s, recently recalled on The Huffington Post a piece from his show All in the Family.  In this particular bit, the narrow-minded, right-leaning lead character, Archie Bunker (played by the late Carroll O’Connor), provides a counterpoint to a recent editorial broadcast on his local news station in true Archie fashion.  His cures for society’s ill must be seen to be believed, and you can watch the video below.  I am just old enough to remember when this All in the Family episode first aired; recognizing that Archie’s character was a parody, one intended to show the faults and foibles of the very positions he advocates.  And while I appreciate Lear's sharing of this worthwhile bit, his commentary about it misses two key points about today's gun control debates.

First, Lear worked in an era of television when sit-coms could address social issues, especially when Lear was their creative force (see not only All in the Family, for example, but also his Maude, One Day at a Time, and Good Times).  Second, Lear produced such pieces like this during the era of the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Fairness Doctrine, when federal regulations required all broadcasters - the nationals and their local affiliates - to give equal time to two sides of an issue.  Archie’s appearance on his local newscast in this piece is in response to an early editorial of that news station.

Surely, this is a lost element of television’s democratizing power.  Given today’s 24/7 news cycle of too many channels and nothing on, views and opinion become fragmented.  (So much so that some people even feel compelled to start their own blog!)  Nevertheless, we cannot allow that to happen when it comes to something as important as curbing gun violence.  My hope is for a reasoned, rational, and well-informed discussion, which after was what Archie seemed to have been striving for.