Dressed in a black fedora, leather jacket, and white crop top, beauty vlogger Monica Veloz, known to her subscribers as MonicaStyleMuse, sat in front of a camera and answered a few questions. What’s your favorite dish? Can you talk about a household item that describes your culture? The vlog was a response to the “Latina Tag,” a series of videos on YouTube where Latinas answer a list of questions designed to allow them to share more about their nationalities with their viewers. In her video, Monica discussed how proud she was to grow up Dominican. She tells viewers she loves platano con salami (plantains with salami) and bachata, playing a snippet of Aventura’s popular song “Obsession.” She ended the video by telling her viewers to embrace where they come from and to tune out the noise of others who challenge them because they don’t fit a stereotype. But Monica didn’t expect for that noise to be from viewers in her comments section. “I’m sorry. No offense, but you’re way too dark to be Hispanic,” said one commenter. “You just look like a beautiful, black woman to me.” Another accused Monica of teaching herself Spanish to avoid calling herself black. The thread under her “Latina Tag” video turned into a debate about whether Monica was really allowed to identify as “Latina.” That prompted Monica to release another vlog titled, “I am too Dark to be Dominican,” explaining that identifying as Latina doesn’t negate her blackness. “For me to say I’m just black, it’s just almost like saying my family doesn’t have history,” Monica says. “So, I have to say I’m also Dominican and there’s no shame in that. It’s not saying that me being black isn’t good enough.” Her clarification resonated with other Afro-Latinas who saw themselves reflected in Monica’s video, some who have also been told they’re “too dark.” The comments, this time, were flooded with positivity. “I really needed this video. Thank you so much for taking the time to address something I have been struggling with for so long,” read one comment. Monica’s video highlights issues associated with the invisibility of Afro-Latinas in today’s mainstream culture. Confusion stemmed from commenters who expected Monica to look like Jennifer Lopez or Salma Hayek, the stereotypical image of what a Latina should look like – a lighter-skinned curvy woman, with soft, flowing hair. But the stereotype whitewashes the diversity of Latina faces and ignores the truth about Latin American history. During the colonization of Latin America, mixing occurred between indigenous people, white Europeans, and slaves from Africa and Asia. According to the Pew Research Center, about 15 times as many African slaves ended up in Spanish and Portuguese colonies than in the U.S. Today, more than 130 million Latin Americans are of African descent. Though the numbers are there, black Latinas are underrepresented in mainstream spaces like telenovelas and Hollywood movies. But the conversation regarding the Afro-Latina identity is just taking off and beauty vloggers like MonicaStyleMuse are helping to shape it. “There’s many of us who are trying to break this spectrum of what being a Hispanic woman is,” Monica tells Teen Vogue. “I think it’s up to us and hopefully many others to continue to push the envelope and try to break ceilings until people get uncomfortable.” Distributed on her YouTube channel, Monica creates videos about all kinds of beauty topics, from testing lipsticks against her darker skin color to showcasing how she styles both weaves and her natural hair. [But though she may be giving out beauty tips, Monica’s identity shines through her videos. Her videos are in Spanglish — a slangy mix of English and Spanish, sometimes contain cameos from her Dominican family, and serve as a tool that invite people to learn more about her life as a Dominican Afro-Latina. For women that have never seen themselves reflected in the spotlight, like Suyent Rodriguez, a Cuban graduate student studying Pan-African Studies at Syracuse University, videos from beauty vloggers like Monica help her feel included. “Growing up, your standards of beauty usually come from the television – what you watch, and usually it’s not people that look like me. It’s not people with my hair texture, my skin color,” Suyent says. “When I go on YouTube, it’s my way of controlling what I see and what I’m exposed to. I like to see people that share my identity in some way.” Suyent identifies as Afro-Latina and has had to explain to others how it’s possible for her to be both black and Cuban. “I never really understood why these two identities were conflicting,” Suyent says. Monica’s vlog also inspired beauty vlogger, Alexa Dolmo, known to her subscribers as AlexaBeautyHaute, to further the discussion of what it means to be an Afro-Latina on her own channel. Alexa moved to Houston seven years ago from Honduras. She speaks English with an accent and has received comments both on YouTube and in person from people who are surprised her native language is Spanish. “You always get those comments […] who don’t know much about the culture and they think that a lot of the people that speak Spanish, they’re only from Mexico and those places,” Alexa says. But in order to drown out the negative noise, Alexa created a video titled, “Being Afro-Latina: My Life.” The comments below her video were supportive, one person even commenting that Alexa taught him something new. “This is kinda embarrassing for me, but again it's certainly an eye opener for me. I am an African, from Liberia. I knew nothing about Afro-Latina until recently,” the comment read. Beauty vloggers like Monica and Alexa are using beauty, social media, and YouTube as their tools to educate and comment on identity, creating a more diverse space than Hollywood. Other vloggers like Carolina Contreras, known as Miss Rizos, consider themselves activists as well as beauty gurus. Though Carolina started out creating videos and blogging about natural hair, she has transcended the digital space. After her brand grew in online popularity, she took the next step and opened the first all natural curly hair salon in Dominican Republic. And for Carolina, it’s not just about hair. For her, beauty and identity have always intersected. “I think that if I teach a woman to comb her hair the right way with the right tools and the right products I’m empowering her to feel more beautiful in her skin, and I’m empowering her to be more proud of who she is and who she is as an Afro-Latina or black woman,” Carolina says. In addition to her hair salon and vlog, she travels the world conducting workshops that aim to empower women through topics such as navigating the corporate world as a woman with natural hair. But while Carolina says she agrees that conversations regarding Afro-Latinas have become more common, especially in the digital vlogging world, she’s afraid that these conversations won’t lead to permanent action. “I think that as influencers, as people with a large audience, we have a lot of responsibility because with great power comes great responsibility,” she says. “And I think that there’s so much more that we could definitely be doing to support and to change and to influence our communities.” And most agree with her. Alexa says she hopes to continue building her audience while living her true identity and one day go to school for communications. Monica says one day she hopes to continue having these kinds of conversations with influencers from all backgrounds on a digital talk show. And countless others like Iris Beilin, SunKissAlba, and AllThingsAda continue to show the world what it means to be an Afro-Latina. “As long as we continue to make ourselves visible, the next time another Afro-Latina comes into the platform, they won’t think it’s a shocker anymore,” Monica says. “It’ll be like, ‘oh, this is the norm.’”
Photos Courtesy of Instagram/@monicastylemuse, @miss_rizos.
