By Mariela Quintuna–

It was July 23, 2009 when I went to the World Cup game of Mexico vs. Costa Rica. I went with my fiancé and his brothers. It was a rainy day and we got there early so we walked around the booths to see what was there. There was the radio station, La Que Buena, State Farm Insurance, and then we saw a long line of men. We didn’t know what it was so we walked toward it. And I thought that it was like something that had to do with soccer.

As we got closer, it was a booth with the Miller Lite Models. In my mind, I was thinking to myself that, “Puta madre, estas pinche viejas!” I think that some of their girlfriends were on the side waiting for them as they were getting their pictures taken.

I told my fiancé that I don’t want him to go on taking a picture with them. I turned around and there he was in line along with his brother. I got pretty mad and just seeing the models up close, I noticed that they are too young like if they 19 years old.

All these men waiting in line shoving and pushing, also they were drunk. I looked at all those men posing with the models and the position that their hands were on the girls was too close to their bottom. I was wondering, how those girls can be sex symbols. It was Chino’s turn to take the picture.

Next, Victor went along and he didn’t say much to me. These girls had blue jean short shorts and a white shirt that had the logo of the World Cup with the Miller Lite brand. They were tall skinny Latina’s with, I guess breast size that everyman would imagine to see, but there were some who didn’t have those luxurious breasts. Some of them were browned-skinned or light-skinned and with blond or brownish hair with highlights.

After that moment, I was thinking that it is always the skinny girls that get the attention on TV or anywhere that had fashion. You will see a bunch of men lining up to take a picture with a sexy and beautiful model that is most likely a size 0 or 1, but do you see men lining up to take a picture a Latina who is a size 14 or 16 with the beautiful curves? The answer is NO. Why? Because men look at these skinny models as if they were girls from their fantasies.

I just think that seeing those Miller Lite models gives us the normal beautiful all natural Latina’s low self-esteem. Seeing models like that and then seeing our boyfriends or husbands staring at them would make us feel that we are not beautiful enough for them. It would make us think that we are ugly and fat, when in reality we are the beautiful queens in their eyes.  And that is because they are being sex symbol for men and that is the kind of attention that they want from a woman.

Most of the models like these Miller Lite girls get a whole of attention because it has sex and sport at the same time. Not only are there beer commercial girls, but girls modeling the team’s jersey. The Mexican soccer team, Cruz Azul, Chivas, or team Mexico are modeling with the jerseys and are put on the back page on the sports section.

There are probably women that have their husbands just staring at these models and my guess is that the wives feel bad because their husbands are paying more attention to those models, but not to them. I am not saying that being a model is bad, but do they have respect for themselves?

I think that if I were a size 5, I would be proud of myself, but on the other hand, I would not be parading my body all over men who are dogs and all they want is to look into my breast rather into my eyes.

We plus size women are better models than those skinny women who have their rib cages showing. Some men like the ones that have a little more meat on them, they all have their tastes. But the bottom line is that plus size women son las reinas para cada hombre.

Mariela Quintuna is a journalism student at Columbia College Chicago.