Picture this: an eight year old girl walks up to her TV excited to watch her favorite show. She sits down with her pink Hello Kitty blanket and turns on the TV only to realize her show was cancelled. She starts scrolling through channels with the beat-up tv remote that’s covered in her latest art project of stickers and crayons. 

She stops on a show in her native language of Spanish and starts watching the story of a girl who ditches school to go hang out with the wrong crowd of people. For the longest time she watches in awe until “Mexico City , MX” pops up on the screen.

That’s when it hits her. The students that had pale white skin and bouncing blonde hair were Mexican. These characters are supposed to look like her, yet when she stares at the screen the characters stare back at her like an opposite reflection.

She stares at the bright screen wondering how these people on the screen are supposed to look like her. She looks down at her arms and sees a darker pigmentation. She looks at her brown hair and eyes, and asks herself whether or not she fits into what a Mexican should be. 

As she grows up this idea sits in the back of her head—“Am I ugly?” or “Why don’t I look like Mexicans on TV?” 

She discovers Netflix and starts watching shows that are supposed to represent her more. When On My Block premiered she was excited to see a actor that was supposed to be like her and yet when she watches the show she sees Ronni Hawk, a white woman who was supposed to portray a Mexican. How is this supposed to make her feel better in her own skin?

When she turns 17, she realizes she doesn’t need to look like the actors or models on TV who say they are Mexican. Some of them are Spanish or simply a different ethnicity. But how would she have known that as a little girl? 

If the media didn’t focus solely on looks, then maybe that little girl wouldn’t compare herself to celebrities on TV. Even in this day and age, she sees little girls in her shoes yet again because the media seems scared of the fact that darker Mexicans exist.