The body is a major site for reproducing gender difference in Cuban society and it plays a central role in social relations. The distinct practices and meanings that create, reproduce, and break relationships are experienced in a very corporeal form. Emotions, reciprocal care, and experiencing a sexual orientation, all take place through the body and bodily practices. The body is also a significant site of social morality (Sobo 1993: 1-3). The close focus on the body in Cuban social life highlights differently valued, gendered distinctions on the basis of beauty, race, weight, ‘grooming’, clothing, and sexual skills.
Throughout the life cycle, close attention is paid to the beauty of female bodies. From an early age, women’s bodies accentuate and reproduce the gender difference in a markedly visible way. Baby girls are dressed in
decorated, frilly dresses, their ears are pierced as a way to mark them off from baby boys and from the age two they walk around in (moderately) high-heeled shoes. The adult female appearance favoured by both men and women consists of strong make-up, carefully manicured nails, and showy, skin-tight clothes that reveal the woman’s body shape (see also Rosendahl 1997: 66; Lundgren 2011: 119-134). Bodily features also connect with a woman’s moral worth.
While a ‘sloppy’ appearance from both men and women is considered impolite to others, especially a woman who does not tend to her looks risks both her own respectability as well as that of her close female kin, who share in the responsibility of taking care of her body. Different bodily features (such as hair texture and length as well as facial features) are also used by Cubans to make gendered, sexualised, and racialised distinctions and hierarchies by which sexual desirability and attractiveness are defined.
Racialised conceptualisations of attractiveness become materialised in actual relationships, which, as Fernandez (2010) points out, carry significant political significance to both support and undermine official policies of racial egalitarianism. While Martinez-Alier (1974) describes nineteenth century marital relations as governed by a strict race-class endogamy which can be superseded only by exceptional individuals, Fernandez (2010) argues that despite decades of official revolutionary egalitarianism and multiple forms of social mixing, in contemporary Cuba, the notion of class-race endogamy still continues to define romantic relations, although the frequency of interracial relationships varies by class. She states that interracial relationships are most frequent amongst the lower classes, while upper-class whites continue to practice the strictest forms of endogamy (Fernandez 2010; see also
Martinez-Alier 1974: 23-26; Safa 2009: 48-49). My ethnographic evidence gives a somewhat different image of race relations, as amongst the habaneros with whom I worked, love, relationships, families, and households were all marked by a considerable level of racial mixing. This may, however, be a reflection of their lower-income class position, as Fernandez’s account suggests.
Fernandez (2010) highlights the concept of “level of culture” (nivel de cultura) in her approach on Cuban notions of romance and attractiveness. She sees the level of culture as closely connected to race and wealth, and devaluing poverty and Afro-Cuban cultural features in particular. Similarly, Lundgren (2011) connects the level of culture closely to both race and class and describes it as a concept that her white, mostly middle-class research participants used to differentiate themselves from other Cubans in order to convey class and racial superiority.
While I noticed a connection between racialised meanings and a person’s level of culture, this was not a straightforward one-to-one correlation. For instance,
sometimes a white man could be designated as having a very low level of culture if he, for example, had not studied anything after secondary school, was violently hot-tempered, or had been in prison. Moreover, differing from both Fernandez’s (2010) and Lundgren’s (2011) accounts, while my research participants welcomed a partner with a high level of culture, I did not witness this as being an issue of major importance in people’s love relationships.
While the level of culture connects especially with a man’s wealth and his skin colour, I see both of these as individually more significant to my female research participants’ views of a desirable partner than the concept of the level of culture as such.
Dancing is considered to be an important skill of attraction for both men and women (see also Rosendahl 1997: 62; Allen 2011: 30-31, 140-141; Simoni 2012).
Being a good dancer, to be able to move one’s hips and body in a way that is
“delicious” (sabroso) is important for both men and women. Both girls and boys are urged to dance, move, and gyrate their hips since they are babies and girls are expected to prove their dancing abilities at their quince party at the age of 15 (as will be discussed in Chapter 4). My research participants also saw such skills as gendered and racialised: “white men can’t dance” (see Allen 2011:
45 for a critique). The ability to dance also connects with the idea of sexual performance for both men and women; being able to move uninhibitedly is a promise of a rich sexual performance. Such associations are used in a skilled way for attracting foreign tourists and the possibilities of social mobility that this may carry along (see also Simoni 2012), but they also hold great seduction value amongst locals.15 My research participants valued sexual skills in both men and women (see also Miller 1994: 120-121, 172-182). However, the expectation to be a capable lover tended to concern men more heavily than women, due to gendered conceptualisations that highlight men as ‘by nature’
possessing stronger sexual drives than women (see also Rosendahl: 1997: 61-73;
Allen 2011: 45-51, 166, 168; Lundgren 2011: 54-56).
My ethnographic evidence shows that throughout the life cycle, men and women pay very close attention to each other’s bodies. The male body ideal is tall, athletic, and agreeably muscled. My male research participants liked to dress well and were usually well groomed with short hair (see also Rosendahl 1997: 62). The female body ideal is represented by “la criolla”; the curvy “Creole” body shape with a narrow waist, big breasts, and a big bottom (see also Rosendahl 1997: 66; Lundgren 2011: 132-134). Plastic surgery was seen by my research participants as a normal way for women to enhance their looks. Plastic surgery is offered free of charge as part of the state-provided free health care.
15 Connecting with the tendency to sexualise black Cubans (see also Kutzinski 1993; Lumsden 1996: 42, 51, 147;
Schmidt 2008: 162; Cabezas 2010: 98-101; Fernandez 2010: 121-127, 131-132; Allen 2011: 39, 45, 49, 157-166; Roland 2011:
37-42, 54-58), such notions show the complexity of racialised notions of desirability.
Lundgren (2011: 119-138) argues that the great degree of acceptability of plastic surgery amongst habaneros implies an image of beauty that is made and produced from the outside rather than possessed ‘naturally’ and internally.
She relates this to the signalling off of class privilege, since according to her women usually need connections and money to have access to plastic surgery.
While I agree with Lundgren’s view of beauty as “made”, my data does not suggest a connection between plastic surgery and class privilege. Rather, in this context, the state significantly participates in the reproduction and highlighting of gender as a difference.
The embodied gender difference is also emphasised in everyday public spaces.
In the street, men pay close attention to women’s bodies, shouting comments such as “what a pretty mulata!” (qué mulata más bonita) or “how tasty you are, mami!” (qué rica tu esta’, mami). While women usually display indifference in front of such comments, my female research participants did take pride in instigating comments from men and enjoyed the attention as a sign of their femininity and beauty (see also Allen 2011: 35). A woman’s beauty gives her the ability to attract men, which grants her a certain form of power over men.
Beauty works to a woman’s advantage in very concrete ways when men give her gifts or offer her a ride in a car instead of letting her stand waiting in the bus queue. This way, beauty is seen as an important asset that gives a woman the power of seduction and manipulation over men. It gives a woman “erotic agency,” which Holly Wardlow (2006a: 232) defines as “the power and delight of being desired.”
Bodies matter also in another way. Cubans constantly comment on each other’s’ weight, on whether a person is fat (gordo) or skinny (flaco). Food is significant in social relations as an expression of love and care. Although the food situation has improved significantly since the 1990s when Cubans suffered serious malnutrition, the acquisition of food is still laborious and a rather limited array of items tends to be available at any one time (Garth 2009). Making sure that one’s loved ones get enough to eat forms part of the reciprocal praxis of care. At the sight of a very skinny person, my research participants assumed that the person might be ill or that the kin or partners around are not taking proper care of him/her, since they are letting him/
her go hungry. Being too thin signals a lack of care due to either neglect or loneliness and is considered highly unattractive. Since it is women’s job to prepare food, if a man was very slim, my research participants thought that his female partner does not care for him or love him. If a woman was very thin, my research participants thought that her man is not bringing her proper food to the table; signalling a lack of interest, extreme poverty, or possibly infidelity, suggesting that he is directing his resources towards another woman.
A fat man was sometimes said to have the “body of a butcher” (el cuerpo de un carnicero), meaning that he has wealth and access to resources, which makes him attractive to women. At the same time, being too fat was considered unattractive for both men and women. My research participants saw fatness as a sign of greediness, selfish unwillingness to share food with others, and of being “out of control” (fuera de control). The state has strongly promoted athleticism as a quality of the socialist New Man already since the early 1960s for reasons relating both to health as well as to the greater productivity of fit workers (Arbena 1990; Pettavino and Brenner 1999). Currently Cubans often refer to the fatness of Miami Cubans as a sign of their moral decay. In addition, the new hierarchy imposed by the arriving of foreign tourists to Havana in the post-Soviet era was often signalled out by commenting on the fatness of the tourists – how all the best food goes to them while locals have to manage on very limited diets. Moreover, the lines for defining who is “fat”
and who is “skinny” may often feel rather strange to a westerner as even slim persons may be designated as “fat” or somewhat normal persons as “skinny.”
This shows that the discourse on weight is often more about the state of an individual’s social relations than about weight as such. Thus, food and the body become an idiom for signalling proper care or neglect, whether this relates to Cubans’ personal social relations or to the state. Complaining about food becomes an idiom for critiquing both one’s personal social bonds as well as the state for insufficient care.
Rather than being signs of individual control and privilege like Lundgren (2001: 119-138) argues, I suggest that amongst my research participants, bodies are better understood as embedded in social relations. Bodies – women’s bodies in particular – are considered something that is constantly out in the open, visible and exposed to comments.