Questions for Alicia Gaspar de Alba

As mentioned in “Out of the House, the Halo, and the Whore’s Mask: The Mirror of Malinchismo”, the exhibit of las tres marias was created to expose the three made-up women of the Chicano culture: La Malinche, La Virgen, y La Madre.  The piece was intentionally created for Chicanas to identify as one of the Marias. However, if it was a Chicano standing in front of the mirror, what would he have to identify as? What would be an expected reaction of a heterosexual man to have if, lets say the intended audience was men? I would hope that if it was made for the men it was to spread awareness of how they unintentionally, or unaware of how their expectations for women objectified them.  

I really enjoyed reading  “There’s No Place Like Aztlan: Embodied Aesthetics in Chicana Art.”, it was very interesting how Alicia Gaspar de Alba mentions that for men, Aztlan is an imaginary place, and for women, Aztlan is their body. Women are working towards reclaiming their bodies out of their expected role as a woman, to either use her body to please a man, using her body to make babies and being a tied-down mother.  Either way, these roles trap a woman to the feeling of disconnection with their bodies because it is internalized that they don’t own their own bodies, as Alicia Gaspar de Alba mentioned in the Wednesday lecture.  If a woman is abused, or violated, how can she reclaim the body that is hers? Although it is a lifelong journey to reconnect with a body that was taken away from you from an abusive person, how can she find a home outside of her body, and how can she reconnect herself with her body once again? That is during her journey of reconnection with herself.