LATIN CLASS
As Latina singers, actresses, and models take center stage in droves, Nely Galán celebrates their beauty and style, and remembers a time when role models were harder to come by.

By NELY GALÁN
August, 1997

CONTRIBUTORS

Nely Galán Watch out, Daisy Fuentes! Cuban-American media maven Nely Galán is a self-proclaimed "beauty-product freak," owing to the dearth of products for Latina. In "Latin Class". Galán recalls the confusion of living in a household "where I was raised to care about beauty" and coming of age in an all-American culture "where images of beauty were not Latin women but blonde-haired, blue-eyed girls." Since then, she says, "I've learned to treasure what is considered exotic." Galán, who owns an L.A. production company, is at work on a book combining beauty and career advice.

At the end of a long day at the office, my hair is dirty, which, for a Cuban woman, is worse than being caught without makeup on. (And mine wore off hours ago.) I'm desperate to drive down to the nearest Starbucks for a double shot of espresso, but I can hear my mother admonishing, "Don't even think of leaving the house looking like that - you never know where you'll meet your future husband!" Needless to say, the craving is nixed.

In Latino culture, beauty is valued. When our parents emigrated from Caribbean and South and Central American countries, youth and beauty equaled success for many women. "The most inviting bait catches the biggest fish," my mother would tell me over and over. Fortunately, an appealing physical appearance is no longer the only path to success in the United States or Latin America, but even so we often feel subtly - or, where our mothers are concerned, not so subtly - encouraged to enhance our femininity, to use it as a tool in a society where we often aren't expected to get very far.

I arrived in the United States at age three and grew up wanting both to live up to the old-world expectations of my parents and to fit in with the customs of my new homeland. When it came to beauty, this cultural tug-of-war often led to disastrous results.

Like most Latinas, I received an earlier introduction to beauty than my younger American girlfriends. As a toddler, I was doused with Royal Violets - the Love's Baby Soft of Cuban-American colognes. At ten, I became the youngest Avon lady in New Jersey, secretly dealing tinted lip gloss for my aunt during my school lunch break. I spent hours staring at old photographs of my mother and her sisters in Cuba, praying that someday I would be blessed with large dark eyes, thick black hair, prominent cheekbones, and ripe red lips. I wanted to have curves I could pour into skintight dresses. I longed for my mother's spiky heels. By then, of course, I already knew how to swing my hair flirtatiously, dance seductively, and smile mischievously. I was the perfect student - until puberty struck. With my thighs expanding and my hair growing faster than weeds in the backyard, my beauty ideal was shattered - it was apparent I didn't look like anyone in those photographs. Nor did I remotely resemble the "all-American" beauties - those tall, thin, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, broad-shouldered girls who seemed to populate every magazine, TV show, and commercial.

My mother came to the rescue with her natural skin-care remedies - cranberry and avocado facials, egg yolk with mashed bananas to make my hair shiny, body scrubs made from sugar and lemon. Body hair was my archenemy. I tackled my peach fuzz and unibrow (Frida Kahlo was not cool yet) with every product available, from electric tweezers to waxing to the Persian technique of threading (stringing hair together and pulling - ouch!). Jolen became my most trusted friend.

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