“Mira que divinas esas piernas.” One of the first compliments I ever received. I was somewhere between 4 and 5, and the shape of my legs created an excitement in the women of my family that echoed all the way through puberty. There was a sense of pride around my
piernas, my grandmother called them, “delicious” legs a promise and a security that I would grow up to be a desirable woman. Among the elders of my family, there has always been talk about my advantage over my cousins whose skin wasn’t as pale, whose features were less Eurocentric, whose curls are rougher and harder to transform into a Penelope Cruz-style coif with a good blow out. I hold a privilege in my proximity to the Latina feminine archetype, but like all mythologies, that archetype is a construct never meant to be comfortable. The moments of my life where I’ve tried to ascribe that identity onto myself hold some of my most painful memories.