Tropical Fish, parte deux

Saturday, December 24, 2005

 Tropical Fish, parte deux

Current mood:  sleepy

I wrote a blog many months ago about my ethnic background.

Here's yet another one about it and maybe something I can clear up.

I AM NOT HAWAIIAN!!!!!!

I went out again last night and I had some guy tell me that I looked like I was Hawaiian. I told him I was a Latina and he was like, "No, you don't look hispanic. You look like you're from Hawaii."

Just because most of my heritage is Hispanic doesn't mean that I have to look like the typical Latin person.

LOTS of Hispanics don't look like your stereotypical Hispanics. For example, I have green eyes and brown hair (when I don't dye it some crazy color). The stereotype for Hispanics is that we are only supposed to have brown eyes and brown/black hair. Well, I beg to differ there. I have some other Latin friends that are blonde haired and blue eyed. And yes, sometimes their Anglo features are due to their genes and the fact that their families didn't begin as Hispanic. But their families have been rooted in Hispanic culture for years and they may carry the surname of a German, Polish or Irish family, but everything about them says Hispanic. It's like that model, Gisele Bundchen. By looking at her, she looks German as her name would most likely suggest, but she's Brazilian. She speaks Portuguese as her mother tongue. Shocking, but interesting, right?

And my last name is not Spanish--it's Italian. Yes, my grandfather may have been Italian, but he was not your typical brown haired and eyed Italian. He had blonde hair and blue eyes. His fathers family was, most likely centuries ago, German or some other European ethnicity before they crossed the Alps into Lombardy and decided to settle there. My family is Italian, but we speak Spanish as our language during get togethers. And we may have immigrated from South America to the US, but I'm every inch American as well.

I'm not going to deny that this new found attention of mine is kind of fascinating and even puffs me up sometimes. But, like I was telling a friend a few days ago, I sometimes feel I should be put on display at a museum under "Rare Objects" and that my caption should read, "Rare Tropical Mermaid direct from the Galapagos with Green Eyes that Blast on command!"

I mean, if everyone is going to personify me as something that I'm not, perhaps I should just play with their minds. I certainly have a repertoire of foreign accents that I can use and plenty of make-up and costumes.

But back to the Hawaiian comment, it reminds me of something that my mom used to call me when I was kid-La Chinita (The China girl). I used to crinkle up my nose and my eyes would turn into small little crescents whenever I used to smile. Perhaps that's where he got the Hawaiian thing from.

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