Ch. 4: So machisimo walks into a bar…

And he begins by staring. I ignore him for awhile, despite the fact my elbow is grazing his arm. I continue debating my friend about whether the bartender was playing “Gangnam Style” because he knew I was Korean.

Then the man speaks. Not to me but to my male colleague. I blink as I suddenly go from being an object of unwanted attention to invisible as he reaches across me to address my friend.

“Can I buy her a beer?”

While familiar with the pick-up line, “Can I buy you a beer?”, the modified version takes me aback. I’ve never had anyone ask someone else if he can feed me.

I recall how, this time last year, I was managing a board meeting between the U.S. government and a S&P 500 company in downtown D.C, with the White House looming in the background. I wonder if he’d believe me if I told him.

My friend tries to explain in Spanish that I am allergic to beer. They go back and forth for awhile, with the man impressively ignoring my attempts to tell him he can ask me if I’d like a beer.

He manages to avoid all eye contact with me, and goes on to talk about me with my friend. How I had pretty hair. But my eyes were small so perhaps I had trouble seeing? And how, since I was “china”, I probably couldn’t understand this conversation.

A few minutes later, a beer appears at the table. He finally turns to look at my dumbfounded face and gestures taking a sip of the beer.

“I’m literally allergic,” I say in Spanish.

He pinches his fingers to indicate that I sip just a little, as if he was trying to feed a 5-year-old. Then he waves his hands over his shoulders. He is asking me to flip my hair.

I put my hair up.

As we stand up to leave, the man gives my bewildered friend a high five. I’d gone back to being invisible. I left the bar both sobered and intrigued. While I had expected to be mistreated, it was my first time experiencing a complete lack of treatment for being a woman.

The “macho” in machisimo

“Machismo” is a well-known Latin American buzzword. For the sake of storytelling here, I’ll define it simply as unequal treatment of women, frequently driven by objectification of women. Its manifestations range from egregious — rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, gender-based harassment — to relatively harmless — catcalls, up-and-down stares, comments on outward appearance.

The first time a man hissed at me here, I thought he was chasing away a cat. But I was the cat. And he was literally catcalling, which struck me as both equal part offensive and kind-of-hilarious. There was another time I was walking with a Colombian dude I’d just met, who was getting one too many high fives. When I paused to listen, I realized the passing men were saying, “Bien hecho”. Or “Well done.” You know, like a steak.

In part due to the word “macho”, we are quick to attribute machismo to male actors: it’s men who perpetuate machisimo. They’ve dragged it into the 21st century. The problem comes from men, and therefore amongst the men the solution must also take place. Via punishment, accountability, awareness, etc.

However, based on what I’ve seen, the situation appears a bit more complicated.

Fun fact: Colombia holds more beauty contests than basically any other country — about 3,800 beauty contests every year. It also ranks 5th worldwide in its number of cosmetic surgeries. During Miss Colombia pageant week, the local newspaper dolloped out detailed commentary about each contestant that read to me more like a blog post rather than a municipal publication: “Strengths: pleasant face, tall height. Weakness: lacks warmth when she talks, does not smile enough.”

This national idolization of beauty then trickles down to daily idealization. I didn’t know I could be underdressed in a supermarket, until I — in my stringy mop of hair and pajama bottoms — was surrounded by women dressed to kill as they picked their onions for the week. At my school, we’ve cancelled classes to have beauty contests. The contests were around legitimate themes (e.g. biodiversity in Colombia) but they still make me scratch my head and wonder if there aren’t other ways to learn the topic .

On Colombia’s Independence day, Cartagena’s students performed dances for the Mayor and the Secretary of Education in the city square. Girls, from 7 to 17-year-old, paraded along in scanty, swimwear-like clothes, gyrating their hips in ways I couldn’t even if I’d tried. Some of the boys’ dance moves literally consisted of standing back with their arms crossed and watching the girls shimmy. When I looked over at the Mayer and the Secretary, I saw their beaming faces.

What burned into my memory was the look on the girls’ faces. There was no question about it. I’d seen the same look on my own face and on many others:

Empowered.

The other side of machisimo

I think machisimo is perpetuated by both sexes.

As I’m dodging the punches that may be thrown at me right now, let me clarify. I’m not saying everyone supports the ideology of machisimo. I’m saying I’ve seen both genders demonstrate behaviors that foster a machisimo culture.

Maybe we can say that the only reason women play a role is because they had been subjected to such an environment for so long. It’s still the men to blame at the end of the day.

But I’m just not interested in playing the blame game. I’d rather talk about what’s going on today, who’s playing what role today, and how they are playing it.

The fact is that today, many of these women like being considered beautiful and attracting attention. They are not all dressing up and looking pretty because of a machismo mandate. For some, this is a personal choice they made, as a way to feel good about themselves. To feel empowered.

Physical beauty — wanting it, striving for it, achieving it — is not wrong. It’s that it gets exhausting and incorrect when my reflection in the mirror determines my self-worth.

Clearly such preoccupation with physical appearance is not unique to Latin America. But what does strike me as different is that beauty appears to be the primary, most mainstream ingredient of self-worth. Diverse examples of empowerment aren’t as accessible here, especially to young women. And when they are apparent, they aren’t celebrated as something to emulate.

I do mean “accessible”. Examples exist. It’s certainly not the case that these women are weaker.

Matriarchs run households. Female candidates vie for and are in political positions. Women start and run businesses. Few months ago, I met a woman who had started a confectionary shop 3 years ago, and now works with all major hotels and airport in the city with 4 full-time employees. It was her way of providing for her daughter, whom she was raising single-handedly. Heck, I see some of the strongest examples of girl power in my classroom: girls will not hesitate to whack a boy upside the head for teasing them one too many times. They fight just as hard and fight right back.

Unfortunately, these are one-off anecdotes that I’ve had to collect through personal encounters. And I was actively looking for them, like someone mining for gold.

It’s clear that I’ve been privileged in my upbringing to have seen enough examples so that, at the very least, I can make a choice about how I’d like to be empowered as a female. Some days, it is through appearance and beauty, and I put a little more effort in how I look. Some days, it is through my integrity and character, and I make tough choices regardless of what people think. Some days it is through my achievements and goals, and I give 110% to continuously create new ones. What I want for these young women is not necessarily that they become radical feminists, but that they have the information to make that same choice.

I’m not ignoring men’s role in machisimo. Obviously mistreatment from men is a critical issue and factor. I’m merely highlighting an overlooked area where difference can also be made. Eliminating machisimo behaviors from all males is a tall order — an order that should be carried out but an ambitious one nevertheless. So can we also work on that quiet moment when a girl is looking into a mirror and deciding whether she is happy with herself? Can we figure out creative, grassroots ways to just inundate this girl with truths that are just as beautiful as her reflection in the mirror?

Sometimes I fear we do ourselves harm by calling machisimo “machismo”, rather than using synonymous words like “sexism”. Rather than seeing it as a serious issue that too occurs in our backyard, we isolate the matter to a geographical location, label it a foreign issue, and sometimes even make jokes as a way to cope. The word primes us to see it as a hopeless problem for which the only solution is by correcting the men. It acts as an unnecessary barrier to us seeing the problem for what it really is, or being creative about solving it. About this infamous Latin American elephant in the room, we’ve gotten accustomed to saying, “Oh, yes, there is an elephant in the room, but please don’t let it bother you.”

I wish more often we’d ask the quite logical question: “What the heck is an elephant doing in a room?”