Dont Call Me A Hot Tamale Analysis

In America, everybody’s beliefs and cultures are valid and worth expressing. But it doesn’t mean that American citizens should be able to distinguish who belongs in certain cultures and what their beliefs are and dress a certain way that is a social norm (the accepted behaviors within a society or group) in whatever country you live in. In America people get stereotyped and judged by the way they talk or dress. If a guy who is from another country and dress with super tight jeans and shirt, in America, people most likely think he is not manly. In Cofer’s essay, “Don’t call Me a Hot Tamale”, she describes how being raised as a traditional Puerto Rican by dressing in “tight skirts and bright colors” (592) is not socially acceptable in growing up in New Jersey if you just want to “keep cool as well as look sexy” (592). Instead of replacing her Puerto Rican bright colored dress code and accepting the American “tailored skirts and silk blouses” (592), Cofer complains that she should not change the way she is and she is doing something about being stereotyped in America by reading her composed stories, poems, and her dreams around the U.S and her goal is to get the
For example, Cofer describes an occasion in which “a Puerto Rican girl who is dressed in her idea of what is attractive meets a man from the mainstream culture who has been trained to react to certain types of clothing as a sexual signal…” (593). Coffer said that the Puerto Rican girl dressed attractive on purpose, why should the girl get offended if she purposely dressed like that. Americans have the freedom to express themselves, what this girl did was to express herself but in the way she was raised in her culture. Americans do not know that dressing like that is a social norm in Puerto