Posted inOpinion

COMMENTARY: As a Latina, why I never saw myself in Barbie

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with Barbie. She was blonde, thin, tall, the Americanized standard of beauty. As a young woman growing up in the early 1970s, Barbie made me feel ugly. I was nothing like her idealized beauty as a Brown, curvy, petite woman. I kinda hated Barbie because I knew I would never look like her. It took me into my 20s to see in myself that Brown is beautiful too.

Posted inOpinion

COMMENTARY: Why I left the Republican Party

As a disciple of Reaganomics and a proponent for a strong nation, the choice was clear: I registered as a Republican. Through the years I never imagined the journey that decision would bear in my life. As a student of political science at a very liberal university, I was accosted by fellow students and even faculty. As a Youth Advisory Council representative to Mayor Tom Bradley, I was an anomaly as a Latino Republican. Many chucked in confusion. But I have left the Republican Party for becoming a rudderless entity that has been overtaken by nativists and coincidentally can’t even agree on who will be speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.