Mercurial

Latina women are different, in many ways more that can be described. One of those is their body and the attitude they have about it. According to the Philadelphia Daily News Regina Medina, Latina teens are developing a healthy attitude about their curvy bodies and more accepting of their shapes. However, let's go over the article really carefully.

• Latino populations are at a risk of obesity and diabetes, not because they eat a rich-carb diet, but because they suffer a major dislocation in exercise and eating habits, using what is available and seems known, but in fact introducing into their diet things as extremely refined foods, high fructose corn syrup and industrial amounts of sugar. At the same time, the extreme demands on their time, coupled with a city plan based on the automobile, leads to more sedentary life.


• Latinas are traditionally wide in the hips, not because of any perceived difference in class or income. The Spanish, African and Indian populations that make up the Latino culture were all accepting of the female role in society, all of them giving the woman a preponderant role and allowing her to command, in many occasions, much more power than that allowed to men. In many of the indigenous societies of the Americas, lineage is decided by the mother, and property belongs on the woman's side. Similarly, Spain has a rich cultural history of women exercising their sexuality and being proud of it (Remember, if you care, La Celestina, written in 1507 by Fernando de Rojas, and which deals with the successful efforts of two lovers to have sex despite the chaperonage of Melibea's mother).
  Point is, Latino women are and were conscious of their femineity, and thus the natural curves of a women were considered beautiful and desirable.


• The Latino diet is infinitely much more complex than just beans, rice, corn and plantains. The Latino countries, all of them, are among the most biodiverse in planet, allowing for a bewildering array of vegetables and fruits, and highly diverse culinary traditions. The problem stems from the transculturation and transposition of those traditions to the USA environment, which deprives them of the richness and homogenizes everything under one or two main themes. Thus constricted, a healthy diet disappears and obesity and diabetes appear as threats, specially because, as a group, Latinos have less access to Medical care than the average estadounidense.

Oh, Latinas bodies are gorgeous, and their curves beautiful on their own right, and developed by historical reasons. Stop assigning wealth and/or diet reasons to that, which are just recent developments. As I explained above, there are historical reasons to the presence of these lovely, proud, wide-hipped women.
via Juan Tornoe