Beautiful Señoritas (Characters)

Characters

Miss Conchita Banana

The MC introduces the beauty pageant contestant Miss Conchita Banana as an invention of Madison Avenue for the United Fruit Company. In other words, this character represents a figure created by advertisers to sell bananas. Like Carmen Miranda, this figure is a tropical stereotype. As Woman 3, this character expresses her wish to one day become a real person, as if to suggest that stereotypes deny the humanity of those who are stereotyped.

Beautiful Señorita 1

No character in Prida's Beautiful Señoritas has a proper name, the Beautiful Señoritas of the title not excluded. Rather, four actors portray four different Beautiful Señoritas, who, as their generic naming suggests, cannot be distinguished from each other in any appreciable way other than through their costuming, which points to Latin female stereotypes propagated by Latinos themselves. These four characters appear very briefly in the play, as a group, at the play's beginning. According to the stage directions, they are to appear on stage dancing, accompanied by rumba music, and they sing a song. Quite nonsensical, the song nevertheless conveys two major ideas. One is that most people have come to think of South American Latin culture largely in terms of clichés. One typical line of the song, for example, is "Guacamole Latin Lover." The second major idea is that Latin women are "always ready for amor," "amor" meaning "love." In other words, a stereotype of Latin women is that they are sexually precocious — "hot-blooded," "hot Latin," and so forth. Of course, since the Beautiful Señoritas resemble famous Latina women in popular culture, Prida points out that Latinos themselves reinforce these stereotypes. Eager to cash in, Latinos caricature their own culture.

One señorita — perhaps Beautiful Señorita 1 — is to be dressed as Carmen Miranda. Miranda is most well known in the United States as a singer and movie star who made her fortune portraying the stereotype of the heavily accented, happy-singing-and-dancing tropical woman. Her most notorious items of costuming are a dress that leaves her midriff bare and an immense headdress made of tropical fruits.

Beautiful Señorita 2

Judging from Prida's stage directions, Beautiful Señorita 2 is to act and be costumed so as to bring to mind the Latina entertainer Charo. Charo's famous suggestive trademark line "cuchi, cuchi" underscores her image as a sex symbol projecting the hot Latin stereotype.

Beautiful Señorita 3

Beautiful Señorita 3 appears as Iris Chacón, a Puerto Rican entertainer of the same stamp as Charo. Chacón hosted a widely popular television variety and talk show for many years.

Beautiful Señorita 4

According to Prida's stage directions, Beautiful Señorita 4 is to call to mind María la O, a stereotypical Latin female character in the style of Beautiful Señoritas 1, 2, and 3. María la O appears in a zarzuela (light opera) of the same name written by a Latin composer. A bit later in the play, this character is referred to quite simply as "María la O." In this second appearance, she is in conversation with the Beauty Queen. The women compare notes on how they can parlay their good looks into money.

Beauty Queen

Despite the large number of characters appearing in Prida's play, only a small number of actors are required. Actors simply exit as one character, make a quick costume adjustment, and then return to the stage as a different character. Thus, one of the Beautiful Señoritas next appears as the Beauty Queen.

The Beauty Queen converses with a character named María la O, explaining how she is tired of her life of competition and smiles. Hoping eventually to be discovered by a movie producer, in the meantime she appreciates whatever money she makes when she places in a beauty pageant.

Brother

This character appears in a scene designed to display gender roles within less educated Latino and Latin American families. In response to the news that his sister is pregnant by a friend, the Brother declares he will make his friend pay in blood ("con sangre"). Appearing as the Son, this character enjoys pride of place in relation to his sister (the Daughter figure).

Catch Women

There are three Catch Women in Prida's play, Catch Woman 1, 2, and 3. There is little difference between them. The only reason there are three and not just one is that they carry on a conversation. Their conversation is about how to please men so as to keep ("catch") them. They are manipulative and cynical characters; partnership with men brings them no joy.

Miss Commonwealth

Miss Commonwealth is the last contestant, a figure apparently representing a Caribbean hybrid culture, as her name is Lucy Wisteria Rivera. This suggests that she comes from an island that was once a part of the Spanish Empire (Rivera) before becoming part of the British Empire and Common-wealth (Lucy Wisteria). As Woman 4, she thinks of how an idyllic seaside childhood has given way to her present life in a large, unpleasant city.

Daughter

The Daughter is a somewhat tragic and pathetic figure in the play. In her guise as a tragic character, she dreams of freedoms her Mother and Father do not allow because she is a girl and not a boy. In her guise as a pathetic figure, she appears as a young woman who has been fooled by the promises of a faithless young man and who has failed to protect herself sexually. Thus she finds herself pregnant and without the means to support herself and her baby.

Father

The Father character appears as a man who enforces traditional gender roles in his children. For example, he speaks as follows to the Daughter, who has just asked permission to go out and play: "No. Stay at home with your mother. Girls belong at home. Why don't you learn to cook, to sew, to mend my socks." As the Husband character, he exerts control over his deferential Wife.

Girl

The Girl is the most important character in Prida's play. Unlike most of the other characters, she appears throughout. Most often, she is in a scene observing the actions of one or a group of the women characters. Then, she mimics their actions. For example, she watches María la O and the Beauty Queen converse in a scene that takes place in a dressing room where the two women are busy with cosmetics and the like. At the end of this scene, the little girl begins to apply makeup herself. By the time she has finished, she has made herself up like a clown. In this way, Prida conveys the ideas that girls learn by example and that women's obsession with beauty amounts to a disfigurement of their humanity. The Girl's presence in Prida's play communicates in no uncertain terms that each successive generation of women will continue to struggle with the same limitations and inequalities until notions of what is gender appropriate change and these new ideas are taught to little boys and girls.

Guerrillera

The Spanish word guerrillera means "female guerrilla fighter." (The Spanish term for nontraditional, small-scale warfare, guerrilla warfare, has been adopted in English; guerra means "war," and guerrilla means "small war.") Male and female guerrilla fighters are recognizable figures within Central and South American cultures, as so many small-scale insurgencies have been fought in so many of these nations. Quite often, guerrilla fighters represent an indigenous peasantry or a lower class that is fighting to wrest power from a corrupt or European ex-imperial elite. The Guerrillera in Prida's play is thus a revolutionary figure, a figure wishing to liberate others from an injustice or servitude. She tells a group of female characters named Martyr 1, 2, and 3 the following: "We can change the world and then our [women's] lot will improve!" In a humorous, if sad, denouement to this scene, the roused Martyrs and the energetic Guerrillera find they must put their plans to change the world on hold, as their husbands will be home any minute wanting their dinners.

Don José

Don José is the first character to speak in Prida's play. He is pacing, waiting to hear news of his wife, who is delivering a baby. He is dreaming of what he will do together with his son, as he is certain his wife is having a boy. When he learns that she has given birth to a girl, he is disgusted.

Don José's actions and words make clear that he is a Latin macho male. He is so certain of his godlike power and superiority over women that he believes he has controlled biology to guarantee himself a male heir. That he is the first character to speak in the play is telling. This conveys the masculine character of traditional Latin culture, the way that men always come first. The birthing scene also communicates the idea that young Latins are groomed in their gender roles from the day they are born.

Miss Little Havana

Miss Little Havana is one of the play's beauty contestants. The song she sings tells the story of one class of Cuban (now Cuban American) women, those upper-class women who fled Cuba with their families and as much of their wealth as they could gather in the aftermath of Fidel Castro's takeover of Cuba in the name of the country's impoverished masses. Castro confiscated the land and monies of the wealthy, redistributing the land and reapportioning the monies. As Woman 1, this contestant's inner thoughts are divulged. She thinks of how invisible she is in the United States, how her accent renders her a nonentity, how her social status has thus changed dramatically.

Man

The Man speaks to the Social Researcher character, who is an educated outsider in his village, studying the village's ways. Answering questions about his wife, he declares that she does not work because she stays at home. Then, quite ironically, he tells the Social Researcher what his wife does all day at home: cooking, cleaning, tending the animals, and so forth. His inability to see the contradiction reinforces Prida's point that men are deluded in their belief in their superiority.

Martyr

Three martyr figures named Martyr 1, 2, and 3 appear in Prida's play. They are presented as typical Latina women of the less-educated or less-privileged classes who are bound to the house and housework. Their lives amount to endless drudgery, and they accept as natural and inevitable the physical abuse their husbands dole out.

Mc

MC stands for "Master of Ceremonies." The MC appears throughout the play, as he is orchestrating the beauty pageant that, in fits and starts, unfolds as the play does. He is a stock comedic MC, always upbeat and treating the most trivial of matters with perfect seriousness, by turns smarmy and vulgar.

Midwife

The Midwife appears periodically in the play. She is an ambiguous figure, sometimes directing pernicious gender clichés in the direction of the Girl, sometimes commenting poignantly on the action. The following words illustrate this doubleness:

Yes. You have to smile to win. A girl with a serious face has no future. But what can you do when a butterfly is trapped in your insides and you cannot smile? How can you smile with a butterfly condemned to beat its ever-changing wings in the pit of your stomach?

Mother

In her brief appearance, this character exemplifies a typical, traditional Latin mother. She grooms the play's Daughter to be meek and indulges the Son as the more important child. As the Wife, this character defers to the Husband of the play in all things, training the Daughter to follow in her footsteps.

Nun

A stock figure, the Nun interacts with the Girl, encouraging the Girl to forget the profane concerns of beauty and to embrace the piety of Catholicism.

Priest

The Priest hears a confession in Prida's play in a scene that suggests that the Christian/Catholic policing of sex amounts to an unhealthy repression that breeds sexual hysteria.

Señoritas

The Señoritas (1, 2, 3, and 4) appear in the confession scene as confessors, admitting to a priest to having kissed their boyfriends. The combination of sexual matters and the confessional proves to be a heady mixture, eliciting sexual hysteria in the Señoritas, the Priest, and the Nun.

Social Researcher

A Social Researcher appears briefly, interviewing a peasant in a Latin American village. The opposition of Researcher and Man emphasizes the outdated nature of the Man's views.

Miss Chili Tamale

The beauty contestant Miss Chili Tamale hails from Mexico. She seems meek, and she tells the MC that her dream is to marry an American man so as to become a U.S. citizen. As Woman 2, she expresses the resentment some Mexicans and Mexican Americans who live in the American Southwest feel: they remember how the land was once part of Mexico until it was lost in land war with the United States.

Women

Four Women — Woman 1, 2, 3, and 4 — have a prominent part in the ending of Prida's play. They voice the concerns, longings, and dreams of all of the women of Beautiful Señoritas. They mourn how women the world over are treated as second-class citizens. They lament that women are raped, abused, and beaten and often have little or no recourse to justice. They long for a new day when women will be given all the opportunities and respect that men enjoy.