As a child 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 in the United States, where people constantly asked where I was from and what<\/em> 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 nor 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\u2014something Bad Bunny showcased beautifully during his Super Bowl Halftime performance last night. In reality, Puertorrique\u00f1idad encases 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<\/em> 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 Photo: Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n The Halftime Show production featured hundreds of background performers, and each of their looks were so different but so achingly familiar to me. In the short span of 14 minutes, I saw curls of many types, cornrows, slickbacks, intricate updos, laid-back blowouts, and everything 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 said.<\/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 herself, 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 look of blue eye shadow paired with a bright lip.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a child 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 in the United States, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":932,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beauty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sasgai.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=931"}],"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\"\/)
<\/picture><\/span><\/div>\n