Gordita: Built Like This Celebrates the Power of Female Friendship and Body Acceptance
There’s so much pressure for women, especially in the Latino community, to fit into unachievable beauty standards.
It’s not uncommon for our community to use labels and call us nicknames such as “flaca” or “gordita,” for them to comment on what we eat, or to criticize our bodies if we don’t fit into the curvy Latina stereotype.
And it’s not just strangers and childhood schoolmates doing the bullying, body-shaming and criticism – it can also come from our own parents and family members.
The beauty standards are impossible to meet and there’s a strong need for more realistic – and varied – representation of body shapes in media and pop culture.
A brand new comic released this past December from award-winning Chicana cartoonist Daisy Ruiz addresses exactly that.
The new 28 page autobiographical color comic is titled Gordita: Built Like This. It was published by Black Josei Press, an indie publishing company founded by Jamila Rowser, focused on celebrating comics by and for women and non-binary people of color.
Gordita: Built Like This is actually the expanded version of a 6-page black & white mini-comic called Built Like Spongebob that Daisy released in 2021.
In a virtual interview, I spoke to Daisy about what inspired her to create the comic, how her high school experience with friends and a kind guidance counselor impacted her adult life, and what she wants readers to take away from the comic.
Growing up, Daisy experienced criticism and bullying from her male and female classmates and her own family members (even her mother!). Her schoolmates called her names (like Spongebob), made fun of her clothing and at one point even rated her attractiveness on a list against the other girls in class.
Overall, she felt out of place and unseen as a Mexican-American girl in the South Bronx. Because of that, she suffered from low self-esteem and body dysmorphia.
What turned things around for Daisy was becoming friends with some of the other girls in her class that were picked on too. They banded together and stuck up for one another.
Daisy told me that “even though I was picked on, because I knew how to draw, that opened up an avenue for me to become friends with some popular girls. And even though I still got made fun of, they would come to my defense. I managed to make friends with several circles of people including the kids who liked anime, the goth kids and all that. And so because they were also being made fun of, it was kind of like we all had each other's backs in a way.”
Eventually, Daisy was introduced to Miss Payne, the school guidance counselor that became a mentor and a rare trusted adult in her life.
Miss Payne is the one that pushed Daisy to pursue her artistic talents. She told Daisy about an after school program at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) that provided weekend workshops for teenagers that wanted to learn about the arts. Daisy applied and got in and in those workshops she was able to paint and draw.
Once it was time to apply to colleges, Daisy then learned through Miss Payne that FIT offered an equal opportunity program for incoming college freshmen, and Daisy applied and received a grant to attend FIT for free!
FIT’s program not only matched Daisy with a guidance counselor that would be with her for her entire college experience, but also provided workshops such as how to work in a corporate environment and how to promote her artwork.
The comic mirrors Daisy’s real life closely. In our conversation, she told me the story follows “Gordita, a middle school girl who has no booty. She lives in the South Bronx where everyone is either shapely or just skinny. Gordita is Mexican-American and at the time, in the early 2000’s, there weren’t a lot of Mexicans in the Bronx.”
In the comic, Gordita eventually confronts her mother, who is constantly shaming her about her weight and what she eats. Her mother realizes that she’s been bullying and body-shaming Gordita – just like her schoolmates do – and she apologizes. Gordita comes back to school with a cute outfit and accessories, stands up for herself and also speaks up for her new homegirls. She’s a hero!
The story is beautifully vulnerable, relatable and inspiring. It got me thinking about those middle school and high school years when we learn how to manage criticism and input from the people around us, how to stand up for ourselves, and how to resolve conflict. It’s a time when we’re comparing ourselves, on both the inside and outside, to not just the people in our own lives but also to what we’re seeing in the media. Are we pretty enough, thin enough, tall enough, smart enough?
While there is still a huge gap in representation in books, movies and tv shows for women that look like the majority of us, at least there are a growing number of stories like Daisy’s being shared.
And for that I am grateful to creatives like Daisy Ruiz and to publishers like Black Josei Press.
To learn more about Gordita: Built Like This and to purchase it, visit here. Follow Daisy Ruiz on Instagram and Twitter.
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