"Out of the House, the Halo, and the Whore’s Mask"

Professor Alicia Gaspar de Alba starts Chapter 3 of in Chicano Art Inside/Outside the Master’s House: Cultural Politics and the CARA Exhibition with the subtitle “Out of the House, the Halo, and the Whore’s Mask: The Mirror of Malinchismo.”This subtitle introduces the reader to the essentialist tropes of Chicana femininity that reduce women to either the whore/virgin/mother. This virgin/whore/mother paradigm lacks complexity, and fails to incorporate the full range of female personhood. Additionally, sexuality for women within these tropes becomes attached to duties, or desires, outside of the women herself.

César Martinez, La Fulana (The Other Woman), 1985. Oil on canvas, 70 x 60 inches. 

Despite the function of the vigin/whore/mother trichotomy to prescribe personal identity, this paradigm is not a woman’s reflection of self but rather a projection imposed on a woman's sense of self.  Take for example, Cesar Martinez’s La Fulana(The Other Woman). The “other woman” is not a title created by the woman herself, and the painting is a reflection of how Martinez imagines the woman. Deeply personal activities for women, such as motherhood and sexuality, become collectively regulated, and identity becomes publicly prescribed within the virgin/whore/mother paradigm.