The Argentine actress Cecilia Roth, with a long career in film and theater behind her, mainly in Argentina and Spain, encourages women and men to “become active” in favor of beauty canons that do not only reflect “the hegemonic” and be inclusive and diverse.
In an interview with Efe via Zoom, Roth spoke of the documentary “Voces”, which premieres on November 19 throughout Latin America on the cable channel E! Entertainment, which describes it as “a unique injection of female empowerment.”
“Voces” seeks to “enhance the voice of women and question the canons of beauty and prevailing stereotypes in the media.”
The documentary was made from an experiment carried out with the help of artificial intelligence on more than 350 women and showed that “Latin America still continues to live under racial canons,” asserts E! Entertainment in a statement.
It is a “discouraging” result, because it comes to say that “what is beautiful is what is white and what is beautiful is what is skinny”, that this is what you have to be to be accepted, says the actress, who played “Manuela”, the central character in “All about my mother”, the film by Pedro Almodovar, winner of the Oscar for best foreign film in 1999.
RACIAL CANONS
In addition to Roth, other prominent women from the region give their testimony in this original production, such as the Colombian singer Andrea Echeverri and the Chilean Moyenei Valdés and the actresses Michelle Rodríguez (Mexico), Alejandra Borrero (Colombia) and Brenda Kellemnan (Costa Rica) .
Also journalists like the Argentine Ana Torrejón or the Mexican Danielle Dithurbide, models like the Colombian Belky Arizala, chefs like the Mexican Martha Ortiz or doctors like the Argentine plastic surgeon Mónica Milito.
The participants were asked to create imaginary faces from four questions: What do you think a pretty woman looks like? What does a woman who appears on television and screens look like? What does the woman who appears the most in the media look like? communication? How is the woman who should occupy a leadership role?
Of leftist ideology, Roth emphasizes that these canons based on the hegemonic also gravitate on Latin American politics, as there are low-income and dark-skinned people who vote for candidates who are the opposite with the illusion of getting to “look like them.”
And he mentions the specific case of former conservative president Mauricio Macri and his voters among the “little black heads”, as Evita Duarte de Perón called them.
The worst, says Roth, is that liberal politicians “end up shitting (hurting)” the poorest sectors with adjustments and other restrictive measures.
As for beauty, the canons that extol being blond, thin and young and that have to do not with “being” but with “consuming” have been in existence for “centuries” everywhere, she asserts, convinced that it will be long. and difficult to change.
“The beauty canon is very installed,” he says, but still urges “militancy” in this field.
He mentions that when a woman with a different body from the canon appears on the pages of magazines or fashion brands and that she has “a size 46” and underneath phrases such as “we are all the same” appear, it is that we still have to work hard for the change of mentality and cultural necessary is real,
Roth lived for many years in Spain, where she was one of the muses of the so-called “movida madrileña” of the 1980s and later triumphed in Spanish cinema, as evidenced by her two Goya awards, among many other awards from her career.
The documentary is part of the institutional campaign of E! Entertainment “Voces de E!”, An initiative that brings together efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion of NBCUniversal International Networks in the region.
The objective is to promote female empowerment and enhance the voice of women regardless of their race, age, gender and beauty patterns.
“Voices of E!” joins a series of original NBCUniversal International Networks productions that promote those values, such as “Con Carmen”, “Escuela Imparables”, “Belleza XL”, “Born To Fashion”, “Popsulas” and “JuJu Boot Camp”.
