As a child growing up in Puerto Rico, I wanted nothing more than to be somewhere and someone else. I subscribed to \u201cAmerican\u201d beauty standards and followed YouTube hair and makeup tutorials from white influencers. But that changed when I was forced to leave in the aftermath of Hurricane Mar\u00eda. Suddenly, I was on the United States mainland, where people constantly asked where I was from and what I was because I didn\u2019t fit their idea of what a \u201cLatina\u201d should look like: I barely wore makeup, my hair wasn\u2019t long or luscious, and my nails were perpetually bare. My Latinidad became something I had to spell out for those around me.<\/p>\n
But contrary to the stereotypical depiction of Latine beauty in media, we don\u2019t have one defining look, something Bad Bunny showcased beautifully during his Super Bowl Halftime performance. In reality, Puertorrique\u00f1idad encompasses a variety of stories, styles, shades, and textures, which were displayed through every narrative tool possible, including the varied characters, scenery, and fashion choices of the production. The makeup and hair styling, though, immediately stood out to me\u2014specifically because there wasn\u2019t one standout look. It seamlessly destroyed the \u201cLatina beauty\u201d stereotype while celebrating its reality. It\u2019s not a singular experience or appearance. It\u2019s a mosaic of differences united by culture.<\/p>\n The Halftime Show production featured hundreds of background performers, and each of their looks was so different but so achingly familiar to me. In the span of 14 minutes, I saw curls of many types, cornrows, slickbacks, intricate updos, laid-back blowouts, and everything in between. That familiar variety was the exact goal for the performance\u2019s hairstyle designers. \u201cFor Benito\u2019s performance, the vision was rooted in storytelling and authenticity,\u201d Brian Steven Banks, the lead hairstylist for the background dancers, tells Allure<\/em>. \u201cEach group represented a different emotional world within the performance, and the hairstyling helped define that language. \u201cThe execution was about honoring identity, culture, and emotion through texture and shapes. Letting the hair support the story rather than overpower it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n The makeup followed a similar narrative, showcasing different aspects of Puerto Rican culture from scene to scene. During \u201cDie With a Smile,\u201d Lady Gaga, though not Puerto Rican, wore what I saw as a remix of the traditional \u201cglam Latin entertainer\u201d trope with red nails and lips to match the Flor de Maga (the national flower of Puerto Rico) on her light blue dress. Then, during the \u201cNuevaYol\u201d section, Mar\u00eda Antonia \u201cTo\u00f1ita\u201d Cay\u2014owner of the Caribbean Social Club in Brooklyn, a home away from home to New York\u2019s Puerto Rican diaspora\u2014made a cameo wearing her signature makeup of blue eye shadow paired with a bright lip.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Background performers wore golden hues, glossy lips with dark outlines, and dramatic lashes\u2014all looks born in Latine or Black communities that are now associated with the \u201cclean girl\u201d look in mainstream white culture. Though these looks served a statement of their own, so did their origin: an independent Mexican-owned brand, Aora, sponsored the background dancers\u2019 makeup by artist Jennifer Hatching. \u201cThis small brand from Mexico was founded and born to disrupt, to challenge the use of color, the wastefulness of plastic, but most of all, to scream in Spanish,\u201d says Nour Tayara, Aora\u2019s founder. \u201cEs tiempo de algo nuevo, desde otro lugar.\u201d That translates to: \u201cIt\u2019s time for something new, from somewhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n These small details may seem inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, yet they\u2019re anything but. I cried tears of joy during the performance and sobbed afterwards while processing how we got here. At a time when brown and Black people\u2014undocumented immigrants, legal residents, and natural-born citizens alike\u2014are being violently targeted by the federal government, those in power benefit from a societal good\/bad dichotomy. A dichotomy where the “enemies” (Latinos) are easy to identify because they all look the same\u2014and because they look different enough from their white neighbors to seem threatening or violent. But, as always, the truth is much more complicated.<\/p>\n You can\u2019t tell who is Puertorrique\u00f1o or Latine by just looking at us, nor can you dictate our value that way. We\u2019re united by culture, colonialism, struggle, and joy, not by a reductive stereotype of how we style our hair, do our nails, or wear our lip liner. Benito Martinez Ocasio perfectly showcased that for the entire world to see, just when we needed it the most.<\/p>\n More from the beauty news and culture desk:<\/strong><\/p>\n Now, Bad Bunny walks you through his hair evolution:<\/strong><\/p>\n Follow<\/em> Allure on<\/em>\u00a0Instagram<\/em>and<\/em>\u00a0TikTok, or<\/em>\u00a0subscribe to our newsletter<\/em>to stay up to date on all things beauty.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.allure.com\/story\/bad-bunny-super-bowl-half-time-show-latina-beauty”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/media.allure.com\/photos\/6989fb70949c3a4251807880\/16:9\/w_1280,c_limit\/bad%20bunny%20super%20bowl%20halftime%20performance.jpg”] As a child growing up in Puerto Rico, I wanted nothing more than to be somewhere and someone else. I subscribed to \u201cAmerican\u201d beauty standards and followed YouTube hair and makeup tutorials from white influencers. But that changed when I was forced to leave in the aftermath of Hurricane Mar\u00eda. Suddenly, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[52,226],"class_list":["post-1767912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-allure-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1767912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1767912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1767912\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1767912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1767912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1767912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Musician](\"https:\/\/media.allure.com\/photos\/698a2600a0e768185442191a\/master\/w_1600%2Cc_limit\/GettyImages-2260129021.jpg\")
<\/span><\/div>\n![\"Lady](\"https:\/\/media.allure.com\/photos\/698a257204cc76d46c08dae1\/master\/w_1600%2Cc_limit\/lady%2520gaga%2520super%2520bowl%2520halftime%2520show%252020206.jpg\")
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