In pop culture, the sexuality of women are often depicted as a binary: either as a slut or a whore, or pure and innocent. Adelina Anthony’s and Margaret Cho’s performances challenge these representations with their comedic performances and being open with their sexuality. They disidentify with hegemonic cultural representations by working with and against dominant representations such as sexism and classism. They use humor such as sarcasm to make people see how absurd about people’s stereotypical views on sexuality. Furthermore, the alternative representations that Cho and Anthony offer are an unabashed performance of who they are as part of the LGBTQ community. They very much reveal that the performance of sexuality is a political act that
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A note is that she doesn’t translate the Spanish she sprinkles in. This could be seen as a political practice, to make the viewers work for the material that she is presenting. As Anthony presents personal and historical reasons about why a chicana might be angry, she takes the stereotype of an emotional woman and turns it on its head - disidentifying with it. Because it’s from the perspective of a queer feminist woman of color who speaks in her native language, it fights the dominant cultural ideologies, racism, and sexism. Her cultural references span things such as the dominant religious ideology - She takes cultural ideology and spins on her fun, flirty, and brazen humor to critique it. Another example is taking on this big religious ideology - Catholicism and disidentifies with it, with Jesus Christ and crucifixion. She pleads in her performance “Can’t we just please place ourselves in the poor white man’s Armani’s shoes” (D’Lo 2011), which is an example of a comedic jest towards white privilege and white dominance in society. Not only that, but she brings up the TV series The L Word and jests about that too. “This corporate creation of the lesbian community basically legitimized a new closet, one in which lesbianism was accepted, but only a narrow vision thereof” (Kessler 607). The LGBTQ community starts to appear more in popular culture but it still skews their image and goes along with the dominant
A note is that she doesn’t translate the Spanish she sprinkles in. This could be seen as a political practice, to make the viewers work for the material that she is presenting. As Anthony presents personal and historical reasons about why a chicana might be angry, she takes the stereotype of an emotional woman and turns it on its head - disidentifying with it. Because it’s from the perspective of a queer feminist woman of color who speaks in her native language, it fights the dominant cultural ideologies, racism, and sexism. Her cultural references span things such as the dominant religious ideology - She takes cultural ideology and spins on her fun, flirty, and brazen humor to critique it. Another example is taking on this big religious ideology - Catholicism and disidentifies with it, with Jesus Christ and crucifixion. She pleads in her performance “Can’t we just please place ourselves in the poor white man’s Armani’s shoes” (D’Lo 2011), which is an example of a comedic jest towards white privilege and white dominance in society. Not only that, but she brings up the TV series The L Word and jests about that too. “This corporate creation of the lesbian community basically legitimized a new closet, one in which lesbianism was accepted, but only a narrow vision thereof” (Kessler 607). The LGBTQ community starts to appear more in popular culture but it still skews their image and goes along with the dominant