By Benita Zepeda–

Stereotyping someone based on their race and ethnicity can be hurtful to those at the punch line of the joke, but as a Latina, I have found a television show that has completely recreated the way racism is viewed in mainstream media.

The television show “Modern Family” has been a recent addition to the ABC family this year. This show has gained popularity with prime-time audiences in the short time it has been on air. The writers have turned this sort of humor into a way of making fun of the people that actually believe those stereotypes to be true because they display them in such an over-the-top way.

Each of the main characters fills some sort of stereotype genre. There is the gay couple that adopts a baby girl from Asia, a “typical” middle-class family that fights constantly but loves each other at the end of the day and then there is the grandfather of the family that marries a much younger, hot Latina woman with a son.

The ingenious jest that has been filtered throughout the show allows many popular stereotypes to be let out in the open without saying them in an offensive way. Here is how.

The “spicy Latina woman” stereotype has to be my personal favorite. The character Gloria Delgado-Pritchett is played by Sophia Vergara. The beautiful and feisty Vergara portrays a Latina woman that fell in love with a much older white male, who provides the perfect American life for her an her son. Her son, Manny, is constantly let down by his “good-for-nothing” father that had been absent in Manny’s life because of prison in Columbia.

In the first episode, Gloria described her relationship with her husband Jay:

Gloria: We’re very different, he’s from the city, he has big big business and I come from a small village, very poor but very very beautiful. It is the number one village in all Colombia for all the, what’s the word?
Jay: Murders.
Gloria: Yes, the murders

Because that is how all Latinas grew up right? It is just so ridiculous and obviously not true.

Proud of their culture, each day Gloria shows Manny that he shouldn’t be ashamed to be who he is. In one episode, Manny is to start school and dons a traditional poncho and plays a wooden flute. After fighting Jay about letting him “show his culture with pride,” Gloria show’s up at Manny’s school to give him his poncho. After 30 seconds of watching her perfecto son play the flute and wear his colors proud, she orders Jay to break the flute by saying “The poncho by itself is fine. The poncho plus the flute plus the stupid dance? My son will die a virgin!”

Gloria’s character is an image of what popular media views Latinas to be. They are beautiful and wear a more sexed up wardrobe than others. They have long black hair and exotic thick accents. They don’t understand everything about America, which makes them seem cute and attainable. Vergara has perfectly displayed these characteristics.

Let’s be real here. What Latina doesn’t have long black hair and curves in all the “right” places? As a five-foot-two short-haired brunette, I know I look like a Latin Victoria’s Secret model… well, if it were up to racial stereotypes I would.

Obviously, this is not how every Latina is, nor should it be the idea that if you are Latina, you need to be this. The reason these overt stereotypes of the culture are not offensive is because of the way the show has been written. The dry-humor allows the audience to know this is poking fun at the idea of the stereotype, not so much the stereotype itself, because they are portrayed very outrageously.

Another episode pokes fun at her strong accent by having the entire family talk behind her back, calling her a gold-digger. Since she cannot quite say the word gold-digger, she ends up saying “coal-digger,” which causes a hilarious misunderstanding between Gloria and the rest of the family. That is making a parody of the language barrier that many people are faced with every single day. However, I still don’t find this humor to be offensive.

The way that Vergara acts out Gloria is ingenious, because even though the jokes and stereotypes of the culture are apparent, she doesn’t allow it to be in a malicious way.

I am thrilled to see a show that has racial humor in a way that makes fun of the people that truly believe those stereotypes. Anyone that is tolerant of others can understand the brilliant writing in this show. These viewpoints allow the viewers to open their minds and experience a clean sort of racial humor that is in no way offensive to someone that can understand the culture and how ridiculous stereotypes can be.

Until we have more shows like this, the media will continue to portray us as objects of beauty and attitude. All Latinas are beautiful, but in other ways more than skin deep.

Benita Zepeda is a journalism student at Columbia College Chicago.