(Eye)Line(R)?: Makeup and the Consumption of Latina Bodies Amanda L

Where Do We Draw the (Eye)Line(r)?: Makeup and the Consumption of Latina Bodies Amanda L. Matousek Wofford College Abstract This article examines the social media responses to the marketing of two MAC Cosmetics makeup campaigns inspired by deceased Latinas. The conception and creation of the MAC-Rodarte Juárez collection and the MAC Selena collection represent an awareness of increasing Latinx visibility and buying power in the U.S. However, each exoticizes Latinas and contributes to their social and political invisibility in particular ways. While superficially it seems obvious why consumers would reject the Juárez collection and not Selena’s, a more profound analysis within the contexts of body studies and Deborah Paredez’s notion of Selenidad, or the acts of remembering Selena, reveals a deeper distinction. That is, the contrast of these MAC makeup campaigns reveals the line between the agency of claiming Latinx memory and identity and a politics of the corpse that banalizes violence and furthers impunity, invisibility, ignorance, and indifference toward real suffering bodies. Introduction Scholars and artists, including Deborah Paredez, Isabel Molina Guzmán, Angharad N. Valdivia, and Coco Fusco, have examined U.S. culture’s hyper-commodification of Latinas, with particular focus on the posthumous fame of icons like Selena Quintanilla, Frida Kahlo, and Evita Perón. In her book, Latinos Inc., Arlene Dávila looks critically at how “Hispanic marketing” shapes U.S. Latinidad, or latinness (29). Whether Hispanic marketing is regarded as a Latinxs’1 “coming of age” or a condemnation of “their commodification,” Dávila contends that this “…selling and promoting [of] generalized ideas about ‘Hispanics’ to be readily marketed by corporate America” further alienates them as “…a foreign rather than intrinsic component of U.S. society, culture, and history, suggesting that the growing visibility of Latino populations parallels an expansion of the technologies that render them exotic and invisible” (29-30). This article examines the social media responses to the marketing of two MAC Cosmetics makeup collections inspired by deceased Latinas. The conception and creation of both collections represents an awareness of increasing Latinx visibility and buying power in the U.S. However, each exoticizes Latinas and contributes to their social and political invisibility in particular ways. To illustrate, while “…commercial representations may shape people’s cultural identities…[and] affect notions of belonging and cultural citizenship in public life,” they do not automatically translate to social or political empowerment (Dávila 2). Despite the fact that a record number of Latinxs are currently serving in congress, they are still underrepresented when juxtaposed with the roughly 59 million Latinxs who form the largest minority group in 1 A gender-neutral inclusive term used to reclaim identity and reflect the multiracial, multiethnic, and multilingual Latinxs in the U.S. 17 - Hispanic Studies Review - Vol. 5, No. 2 (2021): 17-38 the U.S. This underrepresentation combined with toxic anti-immigrant rhetoric, targeted violence against Latinxs2, and inequitable educational outcomes in the U.S. complicates the message that the ability to consume and be consumed affirms Latinx identities and points to their prominence and relevance in U.S. society. In 2010, beauty bloggers, who were previewing the products, successfully brought down the controversial MAC-Rodarte Juárez makeup collaboration before it could officially launch on the market. Inspired by the maquiladora3 workers in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, the makeup featured ghostly and bloody palettes called “factory” and “Bordertown.” In 2016, the Selena Quintanilla MAC collection4, honoring the late singer, sold out within 24 hours of its release. While the latter collection explicitly furthers the invisibility of the murdered women of Juárez, the former seeks to celebrate the life and memory of “the Queen of Tejano Music” to maintain her visibility and relevance. Superficially, it seems obvious why people would reject the Juárez collection and not Selena’s. However, a more profound analysis within the contexts of body studies and Deborah Paredez’s notion of Selenidad, or the acts of remembering Selena, reveals a deeper distinction between celebration of these Latina bodies and abhorrence to their fe- tishization. That is, the contrast of these MAC makeup campaigns reveals the line between the agency of claiming Latinx memory and identity and a politics of the corpse that banalizes violence and furthers impunity, invisibility, ignorance, and indifference toward real suffering bodies. Necropolitics and Gore Capitalism Before analyzing social media responses to both MAC makeup collections, it is essential to contextualize them within the theoretical frameworks of necropolitics and gore capitalism. In “Necropolitics,” Achille Mbembe asks how life, death, and the human body are “inscribed in the order of power” (12). He expands upon Michel Foucault’s discussion of biopower, sov- ereignty, and the state of exception5 by focusing on the sovereign power to decide who lives and dies. This includes the power to dictate norms and laws and to wage wars that make cer- tain populations, like slaves and survivors of colonial/imperial occupations and contemporary wars/war machines, live in a precarious third state between life and death. Mbembe …put[s] forward the notion of necropolitics and necropower to account for the various ways in which, in our contemporary world, weapons are deployed in the interest of maximum destruction of persons and the creation of death-worlds, new and unique forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjected to conditions of life conferring upon them the status of living dead. (40) Ciudad Juárez is one example of a death-world where violence (especially femicidal) and impunity coalesce to transform its terrified residents into the living dead—a fact visually mani- 2 This includes the massacre of Latinxs at an El Paso, Texas Walmart in August 2019 and the burning of Latinx literature at Georgia Southern University in October 2019. 3 Free-trade factories at the U.S.-Mexican border characterized by exploitative labor practices 4 Originally borne from an online petition 5 For example, Nazi concentration camps and plantations 18 - Hispanic Studies Review - Vol. 5, No. 2 (2021): 17-38 fested through the MAC-Rodarte makeup and fashion collaboration. Similarly, Sayak Valencia draws from necropolitics to examine Tijuana, Mexico as a case study on gore capitalism6. Borrowing from the film genre characterized by extremely brutal violence, gore capitalism is “…the undisguised and unjustified bloodshed that is the price the Third World pays for adhering to the increasingly demanding logic of capitalism” (Valencia 19). Consequently, in gore capitalism, “…the destruction of the body becomes in itself the product or commodity…as death has become the most profitable business in existence” (Va- lencia 20-21). Although Valencia focuses on criminal entities, her ideas relate to how violently murdered bodies can be depoliticized to sell makeup and fashion. Valencia explains that or- ganized crime infiltrates and becomes part of the legitimate political system through necro- empowerment. In other words, criminals utilize dystopian practices such as drug-trafficking, killing, kidnapping, etc. in order to self-affirm and acquire wealth within the gore capitalist system (22, 25, 301). These endriago7 subjects, or “radical capitalist subjects,” respond to their being left out of the legal economy through violence and the black market (Valencia 26-27). Valencia’s perspectives on socialization through consumption are especially relevant to the subject/identity formation prompted by both makeup campaigns. She argues that [t]hrough the establishment of hyper-consumption, capitalism…creates a neo-ontolo- gy that re-posits the fundamental questions of any subject: Who am I? What is the meaning of my existence? What place do I occupy in the world? Why? The response to these questions is founded on an obsession with consumption…8 (Valencia 82). While erasing the real subjects of the Juárez makeup collection, the First World designers and the targeted wealthy consumers affirm their own identities as separate from the living dead of the Third World. Conversely, Latinas can point to Selena’s collection as evidence of their self-discovery and significance within U.S. culture. Therefore, the logic goes that consuming Selena gives meaning to the buyer’s existence and place in society. Further, Ksenija Bilbija agrees that “…the logic of late capitalism constructs identity through consumption and not through human relationships” (303). The analysis of social media responses to both makeup campaigns will show that while consuming Latina bodies has the potential to validate Latinx identities, they are still rooted in a hyper-consumerist logic that disproportionately devalues and destroys brown (female) bodies. While seeing oneself represented in advertising and pop culture is certainly a positive development in terms of cultural belonging, as Dávila and Valen- cia9 have pointed out, it does not necessarily translate to political empowerment. Moreover, it can exacerbate gore capitalism and its dystopian practices. It is well known that makeup and fashion capitalize on the body as product. Valencia adds that 6 Valencia argues that the brutal violence of gore capitalism is more intense within border

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