“Eres Mujersita”
The weight of gender in Mexican culture
I hate the word mujersita or little woman. Not only does the word refer to females as small and inferior but it is a constant reminder that women/females/ femininity has to be practiced in a certain way in order for females to be of value to their families and to the men in their lives. The word starts to become an assigned identity that is hard to escape, to change, to avoid. One simply becomes a “mujersita” in the eyes of others regardless of what we see, feel, or think. This identity then needs to be carried through in order to gratify our mothers, our fathers, those before us and after us.
The meaning of sex and gender in Mexican culture is learned and internalized through everyday life and is practiced by the family for the individual even before birth. The families practice gender during baby showers, sex/gender reveal parties, and birthday parties. Of course children learn these practices and adopt them. Within Mexican culture females are inclined to learn and practice tasks that are not asked from the males and vise versa. At a point in a female’s life, very often when a female turns 15 or begins her menstruation she is celebrated for becoming a mujersita. She is introduced into society as a “new woman.” The gender is re-represented in a different way. This celebration “affects the girls own self-perception, and enables certain forms of social control over the female body.” We are told that all “women” come to reach this fixed identity, a common identity, and if we fail to practice that identity in the way that is expected we are not a buena mujer (a good woman).
But what exactly does being a mujersita entail? Being more involved in house duties, practicing femininity, bringing honor and maintaining respectability for her family, keeping her sexuality from the opposite sex, and maintaining sexual purity.
In his work “Docile Bodies,” Michael Foucault analyses subjectivity, power, and discipline and while Foucault fails to recognize the significance of gender and gender issues, I can interpret his arguments about discipline though my own personal experience and feelings about my body and my identity. My body became a target of disciplinary power. Growing up my body became “docile”. My body was disciplined to behave like a “woman.” I was constantly told to eat like a girl, to sit like a girl, to behave like a girl, to learn to do everything mom did because one day I too would do the same. My femininity became the discipline that created not only my identity but my body as well. The message I received when I became a mujersita in the eyes of those around me about who I was supposed to be was making me understand and believe that I was nothing else but that identity. I began to get comfortable with the idea that because I was being disciplined to fit that identity, society would expect the same therefore I had to. This understanding of ones self sometimes seems almost impossible break out of even when acknowledged.
I am a woman. I define femininity. Femininity does not define me.
