Coachella is here, and we are ready.

Every year, the desert turns into a runway, a playlist, and a personal branding exercise all at once. And in 2026, the trend cycle feels extra loud. According to HOLA, the big themes floating to the top include futuristic boho, Y2K nostalgia, Western core, sheer layers, thrifted and DIY looks, and comfort-first styling. Vogue adds a very specific correction: the boho energy is back, but it has to look 2026-worthy, meaning less costume, fewer one-and-done “festival fits,” and more repurposed pieces you would actually wear again.

So yes. We did the homework.

Below are the Coachella 2026 fashion predictions, plus an actual shopping guide that gets you dressed without spiraling into a 47-tab crisis.

Prediction No. 1: Desert Western is back, but it wants to look effortless

E! News calls it Desert Western, and the point is simple: cowboy boots, denim, fringe, sun-washed neutrals. The difference in 2026 is styling. Less “Halloween cowgirl.” More “I woke up like this, but this outfit has been living on my private Pinterest for months.”

Shop the vibe

Affordable cowboy boots that do not look like a prank

These Amazon cowboy boots are the easiest anchor piece if you want Western without committing to a full character arc. Pair with a mini skirt, a slip dress, or jorts and call it a day.

The skirt that makes boots make sense

A mini skirt is the fastest way to make cowboy boots feel intentional instead of random. This foldover-style skirt gives you that “styling happened here” silhouette without asking you to suffer.

Ruffle mini energy for when you want cute, not cosplay

If you want the Western look to read more flirty than rugged, a ruffle mini does the trick. Add boots and a simple top, and let the proportions do the talking.

Prediction No. 2: “Futuristic boho” is the new default boho

HOLA describes this as flowy silhouettes plus metallics, reflective accessories, and techy details. Think ethereal, but make it slightly cyber.

Shop the vibe

The lightweight poncho that looks like you planned layers

A crochet poncho reads boho immediately, but it also solves the desert problem: hot in the day, weirdly cold at night. Throw it over a tank, bikini top, or bralette and keep moving.

The linen tank option for when you want breathable, not fussy

If you want the “flowy” part of boho without the dramatics, a linen tank keeps you cool and still looks festival-ready once you add accessories.

Prediction No. 3: Y2K is still alive, but now it’s mixing with everything

HOLA calls out low-rise cargos and baby tees. Her Campus goes further: micro bottoms, belts, layering, and early-2000s pop princess energy. The key is to choose one Y2K signal and let it carry the outfit.

Shop the vibe

Cargo shorts for the full Y2K mood

If you want that throwback silhouette without committing to low-rise pants all day, these Y2K-style cargo shorts give you the vibe while keeping the fit practical.

A top that does the “going out” thing without overheating

This strappy-back top reads early-2000s in the best way. Pair it with cargos, a mini skirt, or denim, and you have an outfit without trying too hard.

Prediction No. 4: Sheer layers are still the easiest way to look “festival”

HOLA puts sheer pieces front and center because the desert demands light fabric. Vogue also signals sheer, breezy styling, but with a smarter approach: wear what you already own, repurpose and rework, and stop buying single-use costumes.

Shop the vibe

The poncho again, because it doubles as a sheer layer

Yes, we are repeating it. That is the point. One good piece that you can throw over anything is the difference between “I packed wrong” and “I have range.”

Prediction No. 5: Comfort-first is winning, because, in the end, the desert does not care about your outfit

IYKYK: Coachella style is evolving toward outfits that can survive the walking, the heat, the dust, and the long days. You can look good and still protect your feet.

Shop the vibe

Bohemian sandals for the moment your boots start feeling personal

These are the “I need a break” shoes. Keep them in your bag, switch when you need to, and save your nervous system.

The five outfit formulas that will actually work

If you want to stop overthinking it, pick one of these and build around it:

1. Cowboy boots + mini skirt + simple tank + sunglasses

2. Cargo shorts + strappy top + sneakers or sandals

3. Poncho layer + mini skirt + boots

4. Linen tank + ruffle mini + boots for night, sandals for day

5. One statement piece, everything else neutral

By: Ashley K. Stoyanov Ojeda

I used to think I wasn’t a history person. Turns out, I just didn’t see myself represented in the history that the teachers taught me. I went through my entire education in New York City public schools without a single Latine teacher or learning the name of a single Latina who changed history. The textbooks, I realized, didn’t include us. The timelines skipped over us. And when you’re a kid, you don’t question what’s missing. You just assume there’s nothing to find.

Then, in college, I took a class called Latina Women. It analyzed how Latinas are portrayed in the media, how we’ve been reduced, flattened, and made invisible. And something clicked. I got an A. One of my only As in school. (The others were music business, PR, and publishing, go figure.) It wasn’t that I couldn’t do the work; it’s just that no one had ever given me material that had anything to do with me.

When I finally saw myself reflected in what I was learning, I showed up differently.

As I was co-writing The Book of Awesome Latinas with Mirtle Peña-Calderón, the memory of growing up in the United States school system kept coming back to me, over and over again. Profile after profile, I kept finding women whose stories I’d never heard, women who changed the course of history in their countries and were then deliberately written out of it. Not forgotten by accident but erased on purpose.

This made me so angry. As a Latina who understands how powerful we women can be, I wanted to yell.

But as I was researching, one story stopped me in my tracks: Margarita Mbywangi’s. She is an Indigenous Aché woman from Paraguay who was taken from her community as a child during a period when her people were being systematically hunted and enslaved.

She was separated from her family, stripped of her language, raised in a world that tried to erase her people. By the time she returned to the Aché community as a young woman, she no longer spoke her own language. She felt like a stranger among her own people.

But she didn’t let that stop her. She trained as a nurse and went on to become a leader. She was elected cacique of her community, guiding forty families. She fought illegal logging and defended Indigenous land. And in 2008, she became Paraguay’s first Indigenous cabinet minister.

Latina stories are brimming with fire, spirit, redemption, and a serious amount of grit

When I read her story, I had to sit with it. I thought about what it means to have your identity taken from you and still find a way to lead. I thought about how many women like her I’d never heard of, and how that silence was never an accident. When you look at the pattern, it’s undeniable.

Across centuries and countries, Latina and Indigenous women have built, fought for, and created things, and then watched as their own nations tried to make them disappear.

In the 1880s, Peruvian writer Clorinda Matto de Turner founded her own press staffed entirely by women and wrote a novel so powerful in its defense of Indigenous communities that the Catholic Church excommunicated her and mobs burned her books. Peru exiled her.

In the 1930s, Argentina’s Victoria Ocampo founded Sur, one of the most influential literary magazines in Latin American history, and became the first woman admitted to the Argentine Academy of Letters.

In the 1970s, Cristina Peri Rossi fled Uruguay after a military regime banned her name from the media. She kept writing from exile. Teresa Martínez de Varela became the first Afro-Colombian woman to publish literary works in her country, yet when she passed, her decades of literary work were all but deleted.

These women published, created, and led. Their countries punished them for it, silenced them, or refused to remember them on their own terms. That pattern, unfortunately, didn’t end with them.

Dolores Huerta co-founded the United Farm Workers and coined the slogan “Sí se puede.” At 95, she is still using her voice, most recently to tell a truth she carried in silence for sixty years. Her courage is a reminder that our stories don’t expire, and neither does our right to tell them.

What we’re seeing here is a vicious cycle, and right now, it’s accelerating

Book bans are rising across the country, disproportionately targeting stories by and about communities of color. DEI programs are being dismantled. Latino history remains barely a footnote in most U.S. classrooms. And in the rooms where publishing decisions get made, only 4.6% of staff identify as Hispanic or Latino.

We’re not just underrepresented in the stories being told. We’re underrepresented among the people deciding which stories get told at all. Here’s what I want to push back on: the idea that advocacy has to look one way. That fighting erasure means you have to be on the front lines of a march or leading a protest.

Some of us will do that, and we need them. But we also need writers and educators who refuse to skip over our history. We need artists who keep documenting what happened so the next generation doesn’t have to start from zero. We need the person who isn’t afraid to pick up the phone and call a government official. We need the tía who tells stories at the dinner table so her nieces know where they come from.

Every woman I just named resisted in her own way. Some picked up pens. Some picked up megaphones. Some built entire institutions from nothing. The through line wasn’t the method. It was the refusal to be silent.

The prolonging of our history depends on all of us preserving our stories

So what can you do right now? You can start writing your own story. I don’t mean that in the abstract, inspirational poster sense. I mean literally. Write it down. Your family’s story. Your abuela’s story. The things that happened that nobody ever recorded because nobody thought they were important enough.

They are. They always were. And then share someone else’s. Talk about these women at dinner. Bring them up in a classroom. Post about them. Recommend a book. Refuse to let the silence win.

Because erasure only works when we cooperate with it. It wins when we accept that the stories aren’t there and move on. It wins when we don’t ask why we were never taught this. It wins when we let the silence feel normal.

It’s not normal. It was designed. And the moment we stop telling our stories is the moment someone else decides whether they matter.

They matter. They always have.

Ashley K. Stoyanov Ojeda is a first-generation Latina author, business strategist, and community builder. She is the author of Jefa in Training and co-author of the recently released The Book of Awesome Latinas with Mirtle Peña-Calderón. She writes about identity, entrepreneurship, and what it means to build something from scratch — for yourself and for your community.

Every few months, the internet rediscovers Becky G and asks some version of the same question: Why isn’t she bigger?

This week, that conversation picked up again on X, mostly in Spanish, with people arguing that Becky G lacks a defined musical identity, shifts genres too often, sounds too American for Latino audiences, or walked away from the wrong lane at the wrong time. Some insisted she should have stayed in English pop. Others said she should have doubled down on reggaetón. Others still argued that she is somehow too “Hollywood” to feel believable as a Latina star.

That whole debate reveals something, alright.

Because the Becky G question has never really been about talent, and it has never really been about whether she has had hits. She has, in fact—many of them. Billboard’s artist pages credit her with 29 top 10s on Latin Digital Song Sales, and Billboard just announced she will be honored at the 2026 Latin Women in Music event, which is not exactly something that happens to artists who failed to connect.

The real issue is that Becky G has spent her whole career sitting in the exact place this culture still does not know how to metabolize: the middle.

Too gringa for Latinos, too Latina for gringos

That tension is not new. Becky G herself explained it beautifully in her 2022 Teen Vogue cover story, when she brought up that scene from Selena where Edward James Olmos tells Jennifer Lopez, “You’re either too Mexican for the Americans or too American for the Mexicans. It’s exhausting.” Becky then added, “It’s this unspoken thing that you can’t be in the middle.”

That is the whole story, right there.

A lot of the commentary around Becky G still treats bilingual, bicultural identity as if it is a branding problem she failed to solve, rather than the actual condition of millions of Latinos in the United States. When she made English pop, plenty of people treated her like a generic industry product. When she pivoted into Spanish-language music, others started policing whether her Spanish sounded native enough, whether her aesthetics felt authentic enough, or if she had somehow “remembered” she was Latina only when it became useful.

That standard is impossible by design.

And it is worth saying clearly that this scrutiny is deeply gendered.

Because nobody is sitting around with this level of forensic obsession about whether Peso Pluma is too this or too that for crossing markets, or whether a male artist’s bilingualism makes him less legible, men get framed as versatile, global, strategic. Women, especially Latinas, get framed as confused, manufactured, or unserious the second they refuse to stay in one tidy box.

The Becky G discourse is really about gatekeeping Latina authenticity

Some of the takes circulating now are not even especially subtle. People are saying she does not “look Latina,” does not sound Latina enough, does not pronounce things the right way, or does not connect because she feels like a flattened export version of Latinidad.

And forgive us for calling a spade a spade, but that is identity policing.

And it gets uglier when you notice how selective the policing is. Eva Longoria has built an enormous mainstream career in the United States without having to prove herself in quite this way every five minutes. Yes, maybe because she had her breakthrough in a very stereotypical show, but still. For her part, Jennifer Lopez played Selena and was embraced as a star powerful enough to carry that cultural symbol. Yet, she has borne the brunt of the worst facet of public scrutiny. Becky G, meanwhile, is still somehow asked to stand there and explain her Mexicanidad, her Americanness, her Spanish, her market choices, and her right to exist in both worlds at once.

That is not because Becky G is uniquely unclear. It is because bicultural Latina women still get treated like they have to pass an authenticity exam that never ends.

Now, let’s make something crystal clear: Becky G is not an almost-star. She is a star whose center of gravity changed

Part of what makes this conversation so irritating is how much it depends on pretending that Becky G somehow never “made it.”

She did. She just did not stay frozen inside the version of success some people preferred.

Teen Vogue reported that after “Shower,” the multiplatinum English-language hit that introduced her to the mainstream, Becky G spent years caught in what she described as “many moving pieces,” including complex contract issues and legal trouble surrounding her early career. She said that point in her life felt like being “tied to a sinking ship.” Most people must’ve forgotten that part, because it complicates the fantasy that she simply wandered away from a perfect English-pop path out of indecision.

Similarly, the shift to Spanish was not a random detour. As she told Teen Vogue, she found “career freedom” performing in Spanish.

And the results were evident. “Mayores” and “Sin Pijama” were major records. Billboard previously noted that “Mayores” and “Sin Pijama” both hit No. 1 on Latin Airplay, and “Sin Pijama” became a top 10 hit on Hot Latin Songs and even crossed onto the Hot 100.

That is not what a stalled career looks like, is it?

So when people ask why Becky G does not have Karol G’s exact career, they are asking the wrong question. These are not interchangeable artists who got graded on the same test. Karol G built one of the clearest and most disciplined emotional brands in pop over the last several years. Becky G built something different. Not better; not worse. Just different.

The “no identity” critique misses the mark by miles

There is a lazy way to read Becky G’s catalog and say it sounds like a blender of genres. English pop here, reggaetón there, regional Mexican somewhere else, Spanglish somewhere in the middle.

But there is another, more honest way to read it. What if her identity is the blender?

That is what second- and third-generation Latino life in the U.S. often sounds like. Not neat purity or a stable genre lane. Not one language used in one socially-approved proportion. Becky G’s career has often mirrored the cultural reality that the discourse keeps trying to punish her for representing.

Teen Vogue described her as a “second-generation Mexican American pop superstar” whose power lies precisely in her bilingualism and multiculturalism. Anitta told the magazine that Becky represents “all the Latinos that live here in America” because “you feel like you belong to both places.”

That is not the absence of identity, if you ask me. That is an identity that many people still do not know how to value unless it is packaged more clearly.

And yes, it is fair to say some listeners prefer one Becky G mode over another. Some like the English-pop Becky G of “Shower.” Others prefer the reggaetón run. Others lit up when she moved into regional Mexican music. That is normal, and very Latino, by the way. Listeners do not have to love every turn. But that is very different from pretending the artist herself lacks shape.

The shape, my gentle readers, is bicultural risk.

When did we collectively decide the Girl Code was dead? I know it’s been years since we’ve been debating its boundaries, but the recent Summer House drama made us rethink the approach once more. After all, that’s what reality TV does.

On March 31, Summer House stars Amanda Batula and West Wilson confirmed their relationship in a joint statement shared on Instagram Stories: “We’ve seen the growing online speculation, so while this is still very new, we wanted to provide some clarity,” they wrote, adding, “It was never our intention to purposely hide anything.”

If you’re a bit lost on the context, let’s put you on: West previously dated Ciara Miller, who is also (or was) best friends with Amanda. In the hours after the statement went up, coverage across entertainment media turned into one loud question: Is the Girl Code officially out the window?

The Girl Code has always been kinda obvious

Since, well, forever, the Girl Code has lived in the space between friendship and dating, which means it lives in ambiguity on purpose. But let’s revise the rules, shall we?

Rule #1: Keep your friends’ secrets like they are sacred. If she trusted you with something private, you do not recycle it for entertainment, you do not “process it” out loud with your partner, and you do not let it slip just to be interesting.

Rule #2 (and the core of our discussion): Do not date the exes, the situationships, or the “I think I like him” crushes. If your friend ever had feelings there, or history there, or even a bruised spot there, you do not go shopping in that aisle.

Rule #3: Tell the truth, even when it is inconvenient. If you know her partner is cheating, you do not play dumb to keep the peace. If she asks whether the outfit works and it does not, you do not lie to protect your own comfort.

Rule #4: Hype her up like it is your job. Treat her wins as evidence that good things can happen to women you love. Do not compete, do not compare, do not quietly resent her when she shines.

And finally, rule #5: Defend her in public, then correct her in private. If she is being dragged, you do not join the pile-on to look fair or “balanced.” You stand with her, then you pull her aside later if you think she moved wrong.

Yes, these rules are rarely defined until someone gets hurt. But do we even have to get to that point?

The Summer House situation is a case in point

Amanda and West tried to thread the needle publicly. They framed their relationship as something that “grew out of a genuine, long-standing friendship,” and said they wanted to “approach this with care,” acknowledging that it “has had an impact beyond just us.”

But if the impact extends beyond them, we are already in Girl Code territory, where friendship becomes collateral damage, and the audience starts assigning blame like in a courtroom. In the end, every relationship has two components. And yes, the audience always prosecutes the women first.

Can the Girl Code be weaponized?

A Debate Mag piece calls out how Girl Code often claims feminist intention while placing “all of the onus on the woman in the equation,” even though two people are making choices. A friendship might be jeopardized, but, more often than not, especially in the straight community, there’s always a man playing the innocent.

That dynamic has always been there. The code tends to operate as a policing mechanism rather than a protection mechanism. It frames women as the managers of everyone’s boundaries, the gatekeepers of community stability, the ones who must “behave” so men can keep floating through the story untouched.

So when something breaks, the blame travels the familiar route. Woman to woman. Friend to friend. Public to woman.

The Vogue question still hangs there: Is Girl Code dead?

Eileen Kelly asked “Is Girl Code Dead?” in a Vogue column last year, and the question reads differently in 2026 because the culture has moved even further into surveillance dating: group chats, soft launches, Instagram follows (and unfollows).

What we are watching now is less about a “code” and more about a public negotiation over what friendship is allowed to cost. Maybe the “public” part is more harmful than anything else.

Kyle Cooke’s “Instagram vs. Reality” post shows how the internet turns pain into a sport

In the middle of the swirl, E! News reported that Kyle Cooke posted a photo with Ciara Miller captioned “Instagram vs. Reality,” and tagged the location as “Psych Ward.” At the same time, online speculation continued to spiral around Amanda and West.

People are treating the entire situation like a live poll on loyalty.

That is the part no one admits: Girl Code used to be enforced in private. Now it gets litigated in public, in real time, by strangers who confuse parasocial outrage with ethics.

If Girl Code survives, it needs to be rewritten as accountability

Here is what still holds up: if you claim friendship, you owe honesty. You owe a private conversation before a public reveal. You owe your friend enough respect to treat them as a person with a nervous system, not an obstacle. You owe it to yourself to be willing to hear “this hurts” without turning it into a debate over technicalities.

But the Girl Code cannot keep pretending men are background characters. If West made choices that affected Ciara, that accountability belongs to him, too. If Kyle’s marriage ended and the aftermath turned into a storyline, that does not erase the emotional reality for anyone involved.

A “code” that only disciplines women is not sisterhood. It is patriarchy with cute branding.

We have spent years being taught to sweeten what is hurting us.

That is why the Black Coffee Rule resonates like a church’s bell with women of color. On the surface, it looks like another internet-born metaphor, the kind social media loves because it can fit inside a carousel, a Reel, or a caption that sounds wise at 11:11 p.m. But beneath the aesthetic, the rule is getting at something much older and bitter: how often women, and especially women of color, are trained to tolerate what should have sent us walking.

The phrase has been circulating in a few different versions. In one, black coffee means accepting people exactly as they are, without asking them to dilute themselves for comfort. In another, it means getting honest about what you actually want, instead of describing life through everything you are trying to avoid. But the version that keeps lingering for me is the simplest one: stop adding sugar to things that are inherently bitter.

That sounds almost obvious until you realize how much of girlhood depends on teaching us the opposite.

The Black Coffee Rule is really about the stories we tell ourselves

We wouldn’t dare call it self-betrayal at first. We call it patience, grace. Maybe even emotional intelligence. We call it being understanding, being strong, being ride-or-die, being the bigger person, being realistic, being committed, being mature. And sometimes, just “being the eldest daughter.”

We say the job is just stressful right now. We say the relationship is complicated, or our friend is going through a lot. We say the family dynamic is cultural, and silence is temporary. We say the disrespect is not that deep. We say we are being flexible when what we are really being is slowly rearranged around someone else’s comfort.

That is what the Black Coffee Rule exposes. Sugar does not transform the thing itself. It only helps you swallow it longer.

And that’s the thing.

Because bitterness is not always the problem, sometimes bitterness is the information. It is the body clocking what the mind is still trying to negotiate away. It is the part of you that already knows something is misaligned, draining, humiliating, deadening, or wrong.

Women of color get taught to sweeten reality for everybody else

For women of color, the pressure is rarely just personal. It is structural. We are raised inside systems that keep telling us our rawness is too much, our anger is dangerous, our clarity is harsh, our directness is ungrateful, our boundaries are rude, our standards are unrealistic, and our truth is disruptive.

So we learn how to translate ourselves into something more digestible.

We make ourselves easier to manage at work, despite the toll it takes on us. We force ourselves to be softer in relationships and less intense in rooms that were never built for us.

We learn how to coat reality so everyone else can keep consuming it comfortably.

That is why black coffee feels like such a useful metaphor here. Just as black coffee does not apologize for being strong, we should not show up pre-diluted. Black coffee does not ask if you prefer it sweeter before it tells you what it is.

Maybe that is exactly the lesson.

The Black Coffee Rule is not about becoming cold

There is a version of this conversation that always goes wrong in the same way. Women get tired of being accommodating, and suddenly the culture starts romanticizing hardness as the only alternative. “Be ruthless,” some say. “Be savage. Cut everyone off. Stop caring. Become untouchable.”

That is not what I think this rule is asking for. After all, black coffee is not cruel. It is clear.

The point is not to become emotionally unavailable or perform strength through detachment. The point is to stop lying to yourself about the taste of what you are consuming. The point is to stop calling poison “complicated,” and stop dressing up depletion as destiny. Maybe it is time to stop converting your own discomfort into proof that you are “spiritually evolved.”

That is different.

And honestly, it is harder. Because it requires discernment. It requires you to trust your own palate and admit that some things looked right on paper and still felt wrong in your body. It requires you to leave before the ending becomes catastrophic enough to finally justify your exit to everyone else.

There is a bodily cost to all that sweetening

Chronic stress has been linked to a range of health problems, including autoimmune disease, and women shoulder a disproportionate share of autoimmune illness. NIH says nearly 80 percent of people with autoimmune disease are women, and NCCIH notes that chronic stress has been linked to the development of diseases, including autoimmune conditions.

That does not mean every difficult relationship becomes a diagnosis, or that every compromise becomes a symptom. But it does mean the old fantasy that silence is harmless has never really held up. The body keeps score in ways culture likes to dismiss until the consequences become undeniable. Think of it as the dairy you insist on putting in a coffee that's best served black.

So yes, there are moments when optimism helps. Delusion has its place. Manifestation, if we want to call it that, can be a survival tool. But there is a difference between hope and self-abandonment; between believing in possibility and sweetening something that is steadily eroding you.

What the Black Coffee Rule asks us to do now

Maybe the point is not to make life bitter on purpose. Maybe the point is to stop interrupting the truth the moment it tastes strong.

If the relationship is wrong, let it register as wrong.

If the opportunity is misaligned, let it register as misaligned.

If the room requires you to shrink before it can tolerate you, let that information do its job.

If the life you are building keeps demanding that you betray yourself in small, elegant, socially acceptable ways, stop calling that ambition.

Because the right things may still challenge you, they may still demand work, discipline, humility, and sacrifice. But they will not require that constant chemical operation so many women know by heart, the one where you keep adding sweetness to make a harmful thing feel normal.

That is the real appeal of the Black Coffee Rule. It is not cute. It is not really about coffee. It is about deciding that clarity matters more than comfort.

And for women of color, especially, that may be one of the most radical decisions available to us.

To stop sweetening.

To stop translating our pain into something prettier.

To stop assuming truth needs softening before it can be spoken.

To trust that we can handle the taste.

When people talk about bilingual Latino households in the United States, the conversation usually starts from the same assumption: English is the center of gravity, and Spanish, if it survives, should feel grateful for the leftovers.

That assumption has shaped parenting advice, school policy, children’s products, and the broader culture for years. It also helps explain why so many Latino parents say they want their children to speak Spanish, yet still find themselves navigating an ecosystem built around the expectation that English will take over eventually.

That is the real shift underneath the growing Spanish-first conversation. Some Latino families are no longer treating Spanish as enrichment, nostalgia, or a soft cultural add-on. They are treating it as the foundation of their children’s identity, and a way to preserve the roots. However, they do so in a country that has not yet built enough infrastructure to support them.

Spanish-first families are pushing past the old bilingual script

Lucía, the founder of Pato Pato, describes her work as helping families raise “Spanish-first, bicultural kids.” In her words, the goal is to help parents “prioritize Spanish in their homes so it doesn’t get replaced by English, which happens by default if we aren’t heavily intentional.”

For years, many Latino parents got fed the same fear-based message that if they centered Spanish too much, their children would fall behind in English, struggle in school, or miss out socially. Lucía says that fear still drives the conversation. Parents worry “that if they prioritized Spanish (short or long term) their children would be ‘behind’…that they wouldn’t speak English, wouldn’t succeed academically, and a lot of fear-based messaging that still exists in this space to this day.”

But what she is seeing now is a move from vague desire to deliberate action. “Before, a lot of parents would say, ‘I want my child to speak Spanish,’ but there wasn’t always a clear plan behind it,” she said. “Now, families are becoming much more intentional.”

That means the questions have changed. Families are no longer stopping at whether Spanish matters. Instead, they are asking, “How do I teach my child to read in Spanish? Can their education be in Spanish? How do I build a life where Spanish is actually the main language?”

The Spanish-first movement starts at home, then runs into a system gap

In practice, Lucía says, Spanish-first begins with “one clear decision: Spanish is the primary language in our family.” From there, the model expands. Parents commit to speaking Spanish consistently. They protect the Spanish-only stage instead of panicking about English. They teach reading in Spanish first. Some homeschool in Spanish. Others build Spanish literacy around English-dominant schools. They look for peer groups, co-ops, and community spaces where their children can hear the language used socially, not just inside the house.

That progression, however, reveals the actual problem. Once families decide to center Spanish, they quickly discover how few resources exist for children who are already being raised in Spanish and need to deepen it.

Lucía explains it from her own experience: “There are plenty of tools for learning Spanish as a second language. There are ‘bilingual’ toys and games, but they lack depth for families like ours.” What is missing, she says, are tools “designed for children who are being raised in Spanish and need to develop it further…reading, math, social-emotional learning, and critical thinking.”

Research on Spanish-first education keeps pointing in the same direction

The politics around language may swing back and forth, but the research stays far steadier than the public discourse.

According to the Ohio State University Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy, emergent bilingual students who spoke Spanish at home and received instruction in both Spanish and English in dual language immersion programs showed stronger outcomes in English vocabulary and reading. The Crane Center highlighted these findings, adding bilingual education “enhanced EB students’ English reading skills” rather than hindering them.

That cuts against one of the most persistent myths driving parental anxiety: English is not the fragile language in this equation. Spanish is.

Lucía says families are starting to recognize exactly that. “English is not at risk. Their children will learn it. It’s everywhere. Spanish is the language that requires intention and protection.”

The Century Foundation’s latest abbreviated report reaches a similar conclusion from a policy angle. It argues that current pushes toward English-only schooling under the Trump administration run directly against decades of evidence showing bilingual settings serve English learners better. The report notes that in 2023, nearly 22 percent of U.S. children spoke a non-English language at home, over 15 percent spoke Spanish, and 5.2 million students were formally classified as English learners.

The broader perspective makes clear that this is not a niche question affecting a tiny corner of the country. It is a structural issue touching millions of children.

Spanish-first parents are also reclaiming culture, not just language

That is why Lucía keeps pushing the conversation beyond vocabulary lists and pronunciation drills. In her framing, the stakes are not limited to fluency. Parents want their children to access “their own stories, history, humor, and traditions in the language they belong in.”

She sees many families approaching this work through grief as much as aspiration. Some parents, she says, feel they “lost something along the way, or that it was never fully passed down to them,” and now want something different for their children.

The Century Foundation’s research helps explain why that desire keeps surfacing so strongly. In its 2024 poll, nearly 70 percent of Latino respondents said they would choose bilingual education if it were available, compared to 15 percent who preferred English-only education. In a newer California-based study, respondents’ interest in bilingual education averaged 7.9 out of 10, while interest in dual-language immersion averaged 7.8. Fully 94 percent of respondents with multilingual children said it was “extremely” or “very” important that their children maintain their primary language as they reach English proficiency.

Put differently, families are not resisting bilingualism. They are asking for a fuller version than the current system typically offers.

And they are not asking for it only in gestures. They want schools, literacy tools, teachers, peer networks, and learning environments that treat Spanish as capable of carrying big ideas. Lucía makes that point directly when she says, “Teaching our children academic Spanish ensures they can think, question, and dream in our language.”

The Spanish-first gap is now forcing families to build what institutions did not

That is where Lucía’s phonics game, Lettería, comes in. She created it, she said, because families trying to teach reading in Spanish often end up “piecing things together, translating resources, or trying to adapt English-based systems that don’t fully align with how Spanish works.” The result, she says, is that many parents give up.

Lettería is her attempt to close that gap. She describes it as “a 2-in-1 phonics-based game to teach children the basics of reading in Spanish,” built to be simple, hands-on, and usable across different ages.

These kinds of products are key for families trying to build a Spanish-first ecosystem in a country that still assumes English-only outcomes are the natural endpoint. Parents are becoming the planners, teachers, translators, community organizers, and curriculum designers because the broader system has not caught up.

The good news is that there will always be an ingenious Latina who will find a solution.

A new report out of California is saying out loud what women of color in health care have been living for years: the state’s workforce shortage is not only about empty positions. It is also about who gets a real shot at training, credentials, and advancement.

The report, Pathways and Priorities in California’s Healthcare Workforce: Insights from Black Women and Latinas, was released by Black Women Organized for Political Action through its Training Institute for Leadership Enrichment (BWOPA TILE) and Hispanas Organized for Political Equality (HOPE), and it draws on the experiences of more than 800 young women across California.

The findings show a sharp contradiction: Black women and Latinas describe health care as meaningful, stable work, yet they also describe a system that keeps putting obstacles in the way.

A health workforce shortage, and a question of who gets access

The report opens with its central premise: “California’s healthcare workforce shortage demands urgent action, and equity must be central to the solution.” It argues that “workforce capacity is not only about filling vacancies; it is about ensuring that education, training, and advancement pathways are clear, affordable, and aligned with the realities of the communities most ready to serve.”

California Black Media situates that urgency inside a broader national crisis. The Association of American Medical Colleges projects the United States could face a shortage of more than 85,000 physicians by 2036. At the same time, advocates and researchers argue that building a stronger pipeline for women of color does double duty: it expands staffing capacity and helps address health disparities.

Women of color are still underrepresented, even in a majority-Latino state

According to the study, Latinos make up about 40% of California’s population but hold only 10% to 16% of key health care roles. Black Californians represent about 5.3% of the population but occupy 3% to 3.9% of physician positions and as little as 2% to 4% of midwifery roles.

“California’s healthcare workforce shortage is not just a staffing issue; it is an equity issue,” the report reads. “Who has access to training, paid pathways, and advancement determines who can serve our communities.”

The vocation is there. The supports are not.

The report makes a point of stating the obvious: “Interest in healthcare careers is strong among Black women and Latinas. What’s missing are the supports that turn interest into credentials, careers, and long-term leadership.”

The study was conducted by EVITARUS and included a statewide survey of Black women and Latinas ages 18 to 29, as well as online focus groups. It is described as the third installment in a multi-year initiative examining healthcare access and workforce equity.

And the women surveyed did not sound uncertain about the value of health care. Around 80% of respondents said health care jobs are highly important to their communities, and 85% described the profession as a stable career pathway.

The barriers equal the cost of living

Participants named concrete pressures that shape every decision in their lives: housing, bills, school costs, and time.

Nearly all participants (98%) cited the rising cost of living and housing affordability as major obstacles. Four in ten respondents said reductions in financial aid or job losses had negatively impacted their ability to pursue healthcare careers.

The report connects those realities to the pipeline itself, arguing that women of color run into barriers “at every stage of the education-to-career pipeline,” including “high training costs,” “seat caps in impacted programs,” “unpaid or inaccessible internships,” and “workplace conditions that make persistence and advancement difficult, especially for women balancing work and caregiving responsibilities.”

“Discouraged” before they even start

Money is one barrier. Direction is another.

According to the study, more than half of respondents said family members, teachers, or counselors discouraged them from pursuing health care careers, and fewer than half said they had received encouragement to enter the field. The report also calls out what participants described as missing from the system: mentorship, guidance, and career navigation that reflects how people actually move through education when they have responsibilities and limited margin for error.

“This research makes clear that Black women and Latinas see health care careers as meaningful pathways to serve their communities and achieve economic mobility, yet the systems designed to support them are not keeping pace,” said LaNiece Jones, State Executive Director of BWOPA TILE. Jones added: “Removing systemic economic barriers, expanding accessible training pathways, and strengthening workplace supports are essential to closing representation gaps. When we invest in their success, we strengthen families, communities, and California’s healthcare system as a whole.”

What women of color said would actually help

The report does not leave the reader with a generic call for “more investment.” It lays out practical fixes. In fact, respondents ranked expanding financial aid and loan forgiveness as the top priority, followed by increasing affordable transfer pathways into health care degree programs and improving workplace conditions. Other recommendations include expanding early STEM and health career exposure and increasing paid healthcare internships.

Inside the report, the language becomes even sharper about what counts as essential: “Paid training, flexible pathways, clear transfer routes, and culturally responsive mentorship are not extras; they are essential to building a stable healthcare workforce.”

The report’s roadmap is simple: build pathways that match real life

During a webinar held on March 11 to discuss the findings, health care professionals echoed every single finding in the report.

“This study is extremely affirming and validating,” said TaNefer L. Camara, a health care professional who participated in the discussion, according to California Black Media. “It mirrored my own experiences entering the healthcare field and navigating my post-undergraduate education while trying to map out a career.”

Myeshia Jefferson, a health equity navigator, also pointed to the gap between funding and access. “There’s funding available. The question is how we ensure it reaches the areas that resonate with communities and creates real opportunities for Black women, Latinas, and other women of color to enter the health care field,” Jefferson stated.

Josephine Appiah of BWOPA TILE summarized the report’s emphasis on lived experience and practical barriers: “The report highlights the lived experiences of Black women and Latinas across the state,” Appiah said during the webinar, according to California Black Media. “When we address the social and economic barriers they face, from scholarships to educational support, we create real opportunities for individuals to pursue the healthcare careers they intend.”

Netflix’s new documentary “Inside the Manosphere” is the perfect weekend watch if you want to feel enraged and informed. The Louis Theroux documentary takes viewers deep into the manosphere, a term for a network of male influencers who are peddling toxic masculinity and misogyny as strength. Theroux spent time with HSTikkyTokky (Harrison Sullivan), Justin Waller, and Myron Gaines (Amrou Fudl) to understand what makes the manosphere tick and the dangers the content poses to young men and children.

Netflix’s “Inside the Manosphere” is pulling back the curtain on a toxic corner of the internet

Social media is an ever-present part of life these days, and the lack of regulation allows for anyone to share their views as facts. This is increasingly true for men sharing their misogynistic, sexist, homophobic, and bigoted views to impressionable young followers. Major influencers such as HSTikTokky (Harrison Sullivan), Justin Waller, and Myron Gaines are featured in the documentary.

Louis Theroux managed to set up times to hang out with the three influencers to see just what they believe and what is for show. The documentary is a stunning look at the kinds of messages these guys are sharing that lead to clips of young boys approaching them in public, shouting phrases like, “F*** these women” and “Kill the gays.” It is also a way to understand how the toxic content is encouraging men and boys to behave in ways that exacerbate the male loneliness epidemic.

Overall, the men featured in the documentary were misogynistic, childish, and far from being deep thinkers. They are the perfect representation of men who were coddled so hard as children that they don’t know how to be functioning adults. Unfortunately, they have the eyes and ears of millions of young men and boys that they are grooming to be the same misogynistic, homophobic, and racist people.

The documentary shows that these men don’t love women, not even the women in their lives

The whole point of the manosphere is to tell young men and boys that masculinity is the only desirable quality. It is inherently anti-feminist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, and racist. Watching the documentary, viewers see the manosphere subjects fight for their lives to defend their views.

Hypocrisy and fragility underline everything that these influencers create. They offer nothing of substance and routinely default to degrading women for clout and views. Sullivan, for example, owns a company that manages women with OnlyFans accounts. Yet, at the same time, he calls the women disgusting and degrades them while they make him money. He even said he would disown his daughter if she did the same thing.

Waller claimed that women haven’t contributed anything to society. He went on to add that women have not invented or built anything. Rather, Waller believes that women are only concerned with finding husbands and having families. He must not know about Hedy Lamarr, who pioneered technology that is the foundation for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Waller relies on this woman’s contribution to society so he can make money by belittling women and selling bad financial advice.

Fudl offered the wildest take on women from the manosphere point of view. The streamer claims that women want one thing: a man who can dominate them. The idea that women are meant to be subservient is one of the lowest-intellect takes a man can have. During his interview, he brags about how his girlfriend cleans for him and does what he says. But what he thinks is strength is really just a little boy unable to take care of himself.

The manosphere agrees on one thing: one-way monogamy.

All of the influencers and the men who idolize them who were interviewed think that one-way monogamy is a valid relationship. Being in an open relationship is one thing, but one-way monogamy is just ridiculous. All of the men take pride in being able to sleep with as many women as they want, while their partners are not allowed to do the same.

Waller was the biggest advocate for one-way monogamy. He made sure to bring it up at the beginning of his interview in an attempt to shock Theroux. Instead, Waller’s impassioned defense of one-way monogamy made the documentarian laugh at its preposterous claims. It clearly triggered Waller.

Fudl, along with one-way monogamy, made a claim that blurs the line between consent and rape. While being interviewed, he stated, “I dictate when I put my d**k in you.” This caused Theroux to take a pause and repeat it back to Fudl for clarification. Instantly, the braggadocious person vanished, and he instantly started to backtrack, realizing that he might have said the quiet part out loud.

The biggest takeaway is that the manosphere is filled with grifters

One of the things that everyone in the manosphere pointed to was financial advice and investment opportunities. This was especially prevalent in Sullivan’s life. He often tells people about an investment platform he works with and brags about the money that he has made.

However, as Theroux exposes, the platform is just another scam being run by Sullivan. He gets a cut when people make investments through his link. This means he makes money regardless of the investment portfolio he holds. Theroux decided to see if it was worth it after reading reviews online warning people that it was a scam and just a way for Sullivan to make money. Theroux put in $500 and was promised by Sullivan that he would make money. Instead, Theroux lost his $500.

The unchecked spread of social media among young men and boys is dangerous

The manosphere influencers, mere servants of the algorithm and followers, offer nothing of substance to society. They peddle hate as if it were enlightened thinking. They rely on shock and violence but say it is the parents’ responsibility to prevent teens from watching the content.

The three men were angry when Theroux suggested that teenage boys are the largest demographic in their audience, and the algorithm is intentionally serving that content to them. There could be a lot of reasons why teenagers are getting fed that content specifically. For one, the influencers behave more like teenage boys than they do like men. Their ideas about the world are as stunted as their own development.

The kind of antics and flashy living they curate for their social media content doesn’t resonate with real men. This is why, when pressed, the self-proclaimed tough guys crumble very quickly. They can’t stand to be questioned about their beliefs.

The manosphere isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but Netflix’s documentary offers the first deep look into what the darkest corner of social media is doing to men. These extreme views about the world are only further isolating men from the rest of society.

If spring is supposed to mean “light layers,” somebody forgot to tell our nervous systems.

This week, we want softness. We want waistbands that forgive us. We want pants that feel like a deep exhale but still look like we tried.

So here’s the roundup of our fav soft pants: affordable, easy, and wearable in real life. Prices and availability can change fast, but as of publish time, these are the soft-pants standouts.

Walmart understood the assignment

If your goal is “airport comfortable” without looking like you rolled out of bed, Walmart has a shockingly solid option. The longantii Women’s High Waist Wide Leg Linen Palazzo Pants lean into that breezy, wide-leg silhouette, with an elastic drawstring waist and side pockets, which is basically the holy trinity of soft pants.

Get your longantii for $11.99 here.

Best for: spring errands, vacation days, and that “I need to look cute, but I refuse to suffer” mood.

Rare find: the yoga pant that reads like a trouser

Hesayep’s Women’s Wide Leg Yoga Pants sit in that sweet spot between lounge and “I can pretend these are tailored.” The product listing calls out a high elastic waistband, a wide straight leg, and a curved split hemline detail that makes them feel a little intentional, even if you’re wearing them like pajamas.

Get your Wide Leg Yoga Pants for $17.99 here.

Best for: dance class, travel days, long work-from-home stretches, and “I might leave the house, don’t pressure me.”

Our favourite deal: Old Navy’s PowerSoft trousers moment

Old Navy’s High Waisted PowerSoft Trouser Pants are for anyone who wants soft pants with a bit of structure. The brand positions PowerSoft as “light compression” with “peachy-smooth, sweat-wicking fabric,” and the details lean practical: pull-on style, elasticised waist, hip pockets, and a pocket for your phone.

Get your PowerSoft Trouser Pants for $19.99 here.

Best for: commuters, teachers, office days, and anybody who wants stretch without announcing it.

Zara’s “soft touch” palazzo pants are the polished option

When you want soft pants that still look crisp, Zara’s Soft Touch Palazzo Pants do the job. And the composition reads like a blend built for ease: 55% polyester and 45% cotton.

Get your Soft Touch Palazzo Pants for $39.90 here.

Best for: dinner plans, “jeans are a no” days, and the office when you want to look expensive on purpose.

Out-of-the-box pick: Classy Cozy Cool’s drawstring pants

If you want soft pants with that boutique energy, Classy Cozy Cool has the Sand Dollar Seas Drawstring Pants. The drawstring waist makes them adjustable, and the vibe feels very “put together in a coastal way,” even if your plans are just coffee and emails.

Get your Sand Dollar Seas Drawstring Pants for $46.00 here.

Best for: weekends, casual hangs, and the person who wants comfort without looking sporty.

Higher tier, still practical: Quince barrel pants

Quince’s Organic Stretch Cotton Twill Barrel Pants are the “I want shape, but I also want to breathe” pick. The listing describes a high-rise, relaxed leg, tapered ankle, and functional pockets, made with 97% organic cotton and 3% spandex.

Get your Organic Stretch Cotton Twill Barrel Pants for $59.90 here.

Best for: elevated basics people, capsule wardrobes, and anyone trying to stop buying disposable pants.

Writing a novel is a test of discipline and patience. Juggling multiple deadlines while also managing a personal life and family is demanding. Yet, in the end, a finished product is something to be so proud of. That is what Karla Montalván is feeling these days. She can now call herself a published author with the release of her debut novel, “The Sun and All the Other Stars.” The book took two years to complete, and the journey there was as exciting as the finished product.

“The Sun and All the Other Stars” by Karla Montalván was inspired by a moment in her life.

“The Sun and All the Other Stars” is a love story, but not a romance. Better yet, it is inspired by reality. In an interview with FIERCE by mitú, Montalván opened up about her debut novel, the inspiration for the story, and the journey in her personal life that led to its completion. It was after her 30th birthday and freshly laid off that Montalván found herself looking for her next chapter in 2024. After a birthday road trip from Madrid to Milan, Montalván started on a novel, an endeavor she has always wanted to pursue. The original manuscript, however, wasn’t “The Sun and all the Other Stars.”

That year, a friend of hers made a goal of finding a boyfriend and roped Montalván into it. The friend convinced her to download Bumble Premium, and she matched with a man in Florence, Italy. The two first connected over going to the same college, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The conversation then moved to social media, and they made a plan to meet in Florence.

“Actually, when we met, it felt like we had known each other for a really long time. Like, you know, one of those things where you meet somebody and it feels like you’ve known them forever,” Montalván recalls. “We had a really good time. But then the last day, the day that I was meant to leave, when I got to the airport, my flight was cancelled.”

Unfortunately, her date had plans that day, so she was left alone in the city without a companion. Yet being there and experiencing the moments together with her Bumble date inspired her.

“I walked the entire city, but I was feeling this crazy nostalgia, like this really deep sadness,” Montalván remembers. “Then this idea started to come to me of one of the characters whose name is Beatrice. Just this girl in the Renaissance period who was a painter. She was like a hidden painter. I bought a notebook, and I just started writing [in it.] I wrote the first chapter of the book, which is now not the first chapter, but the idea came to me, and then it just kind of flowed, and I remember I couldn’t stop crying.”

For Montalván, the book was a chance to craft a character she’s never seen.

The main character of the book is Marisol, the daughter of Cuban immigrants. However, she didn’t want Marisol to go through the often-told experience for children of immigrants. One that is beholden to the same trials and tribulations of paying back their family’s sacrifices at the expense of her own joy. She also wanted to create more Cuban stories that didn’t center on the revolution and its hardships.

“I myself, as a Cuban, have struggled a lot. But I didn’t want to have a character who was centered on that,” Montalván says. “I wanted to have a character that was a product of immigration that came here, but that now wanted to forge her own path.”

Instead of following the same journey of falling in love within the community and living near home, Marisol spreads her wings and determines her own destiny.

“However, I wanted her to have been born in the States, and then she chose to migrate to Madrid, right? So, she chooses to leave the place that her family has had to establish themselves in and that they have chosen to live in because of need,” Montalván explains. “I have her choose to live in another city because she wants to, because she likes it. So she later immigrates because she wants to see what’s there. I want to explore immigration from a different vantage point and [...] from a vantage point of prosperity.”

Like all art, Karla Montalván created “The Sun and All the Other Stars” while living her own life.

Any novelist will let you know that the process of writing a book takes years. Between the first draft, edits, additional drafts, reframing, digging deeper, and creating a finished product. Some advice Montalván got early in the process that helped was to just write. Get it on paper and edit it later. During that time, life is happening in the background. For the writer, it was no different. It all came into clearer focus when her editor gave her insight into each character’s emotional state.

“When my editor gave it back to me, she said, ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but your characters are all going through the different stages of grief,’” Montalván explains. “I wrote the book in one period of my life, right? Then I edited the book at another point in my life. And in that period, I was grieving because I had just had a miscarriage. I actually got the manuscript back the day that I found out that I was miscarrying.”

Through her own grief, Montalván saw the book’s structure differently because of her life experience. Without meaning to, she created multiple storylines about grief and sadness, set against a backdrop of love and romance. Additionally, the characters, like the author, were grappling with the human experience of life being different from the expectations they each had for themselves.

“I think that is something that we all struggle with; the life that we wanted and the life that we have, or is presented to us. There’s not really one path of way of living,” Montalván says. “That was the story that I needed to tell, and I think that was the message that I needed to tell. When you have to tell a story, that story will push you there, I mean, the book is very esoteric in that sense of energy and like finding your destiny and your path.”

More than love, the book is rooted in art and self-love.

The author wanted to lean into representation and art when it came to the book cover. She also wanted people to get some ideas of the themes and moments within the book. She partnered with Argentine illustrator Sol Cotti to create the cover art.

“The back jacket is kind of like the hair, and it’s sort of like the reflections of the soul and the poppies and all of the pieces that have to do with lots of little Easter eggs about the book,’ Montalván explains. “But, also, the cover, the title of the book, ‘The Sun and All the Other Stars,’ is a play on the last phrase of Dante’s Paradise.”

She adds, “We really wanted it to be very obvious that this book is about the soul and that it’s about love and not just romantic love, but just like love of family, love of yourself, love of your life that you’re living right now in the present.”

“The Sun and All the Other Stars” is out, and you can order your copy here.

On the morning of March 18, after reading the last word of Dolores Huerta’s statement, I felt my heart break and a heavy knot form in my throat. I rushed downstairs with my phone in my hand to tell my parents. My Colombian father’s face fell into disappointment. He lowered his eyes and admitted with sadness, “Machista men have held too much power. I’m not surprised.” I got ready for work, and I couldn’t hold back the tears that fell down my cheeks behind the wheel. Why did this feel so personal?

And then it hit me: I thought she was safe. I thought Dolores Huerta had been protected, even when she was the face of a movement considered dangerous by the establishment. I naively thought that my devotion, and that of millions of Latinas who know what she sacrificed and the power of her fight, would have protected her from what we have all experienced one way or another. And I see it every day. The days go on, and more women in my life share their experiences. It happened to me when I was a young girl, and I grew up to become the friend who had already been through it, so my close friends felt comfortable enough to tell me their stories.

It is as if being subjected to sexual misconduct has become a rite of passage for young women. Worse still, as much as we speak out, the more we realize this system is not designed to defend and protect us. Yet we persist, even while we are still healing.

Dolores Huerta, Ana Murguia, and Debra Rojas are not victims. They are survivors, just like me, just like hundreds of millions of women. They kept their silence in the name of an entire movement, and it burdened them like stones in the pockets of a drowning man. No one should carry that weight. Not them, not the hundreds of girls trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein, not me.

The farmworker movement was pivotal for my community. It humanized us and transformed labor rights, mobilizing thousands of people who joined with other communities in civil rights efforts. It secured better pay, safer conditions, and recognition for exploited agricultural workers. It empowered Mexican Americans and Filipinos to fight against poverty, discrimination, and powerlessness. It also gave us political identity and power. It started in 1962 through the cult of personality, one in particular: César Chávez.

Chávez became a beacon of hope for millions. While the uncomfortable silences that often arose when discussing César Chávez Day were familiar to all of us, we needed that figure. We all heard about his disdain for undocumented immigrants and Filipino workers. Latino outlets would remain silent. For God’s sake, people would compare him to Martin Luther King and Gandhi. We had “one of our own,” and we were proud. Maybe not of him, but of the force of the movement he had set in motion.

Because we have always known we are more than the stereotypes and the vilification of governments and media alike. We know the value of our community, and having someone in the public sphere who was “fighting the good fight” was a life raft in an ocean of desperation.

Now, that figure has crashed at our feet, this time with horrible accounts, stomping on our hearts and forcing Dolores Huerta to say out loud the horrors she suffered in silence to protect such an important movement for our community.

“I carried this secret for as long as I did because building the movement and securing farmworker rights was my life’s work,” Huerta said in her statement.

“I wasn’t going to let Cesar or anyone else get in the way. I channeled everything I had into advocating on behalf of millions of farmworkers and others who were suffering and deserved equal rights.”

This is happening at a moment when many U.S. Latinos are so desperately grasping onto any source of home, inspiration, or haven. It is also happening at a moment when our own government is at the center of a whirlwind of sex trafficking allegations and millions of documents that are evident proof for everyone except those in power. And we are enraged. But we have a similar situation within our own community, so I wonder: is it time to face our history for its facts, not for what it could better serve in public discourse?

I can’t help but think about California’s Governor Gavin Newsom’s statement: “The farm workers movement and a labor movement are much bigger than one man — and we celebrate that, and that will be our focus as we process what the next steps are.” And that’s precisely it: it is much bigger than one man. In fact, it is much bigger than any man.

As survivors, we face the scrutiny of people in disbelief—people who are either uncomfortable with the truth or want to protect the perpetrators. More often than not, the United States court system fails to advocate for our stories. In other instances, it is even more traumatizing to proceed with a legal case and have your entire life opened up for interpretation and debate by a bunch of, again, men.

Dolores Huerta, for example, had to find out she was not the only survivor through The New York Times investigation, and that devastated her. That’s how the system works. Yet she spoke. She refused to remain “calladita,” and more than 60 years later, she still reminds us that “sí, se puede.”

A report from the UK is now giving language to what many women have been describing for years in less polite terms. According to The Independent, the Centre for Social Justice claims “hundreds of thousands of women are ‘missing out’ on having children,” partly because of a “delay” in young men “maturing into adulthood.” The report projects that around 3 million women aged 16 to 45 are on track not to have children under current trends, compared with around 2.4 million if patterns matched those of their grandparents’ generation. That gap translates to roughly 600,000 fewer women becoming mothers, according to the think tank.

What’s more, that trend is being perceived in every corner of the earth.

The “motherhood” gap they are finally naming

The Centre for Social Justice frames this as a “birth gap” and calls it a societal failure, arguing that demographers consistently find the two-child family remains an aspiration in Britain while the UK birth rate has dropped to 1.41, a record low, according to the CSJ. The think tank says this “baby bust” reflects “fewer mothers, not smaller families,” and that the tragedy sits with “missing mothers,” women who hoped to have children but did not become mothers due to social pressures.

And here is the finding that caught our attention: the CSJ points to a 2023 poll finding that nine in ten young British women hope to be mothers one day, with an average desired family size of 2.3 children, even as family formation slides further out of reach, according to its press release.

So no, the story is not that women suddenly stopped wanting kids. The story is the distance between what women say they hope for and what their lives allow.

The think tank is blaming men’s “delay,” and it is not subtle

The CSJ report argues that “male employment and education trends may play a role in falling birth rates.” It draws a stark comparison: “In the past,” a 24-year-old man would likely have been married, had a child, and been working for a decade. Now, the report says, men leave home at an average age of 25. In our experience, however, men oftentimes leave home when they’ve found a substitute for their mother or primary caregiver.

The Times described the claim in even blunter language: a “delay” in male maturity means men become “marriageable” later, which delays when couples feel ready for children, and that delay can push women closer to the end of their childbearing years.

Now, let’s stop there for a sec. Women should be able to choose whatever path suits them best--whether it’s marriage, motherhood, or the freedom and comfort of single life. However, what’s interesting here is that the think tank found many women actually want to be mothers, but not to their kids and husbands.

“Motherhood” keeps getting pushed later, until it becomes a cliff

This is not only about romance or personal preference. The CSJ links delayed family formation to pressure points that sound like daily life: housing costs, delayed financial independence, later marriage, and career uncertainty. It also points to the rise in the average age at which women have their first child, from 23 in the early 1970s to 29 in 2024, according to its press release.

And the Office for National Statistics has been tracking the same direction of travel. In the ONS projection cited in The Independent, fertility rates for women under 30 are projected to decrease, while rates for women over 30 are projected to increase between 2022 and 2047. The ONS panel also listed factors that could shape fertility, from the cost-of-living crisis to immigration patterns and international conflicts.

In other words, this is a society that tells women to “wait” and then acts shocked when waiting becomes permanent.

The policy solution they are selling feels like a throwback

Whenever we talk about women’s rights, we do so with receipts. We are the first on the chopping block when it comes to liberties. So, whenever the system feels it’s running out of workforce because of our choice to be free, they immediately blame us and find ways to “course correct” us.

The CSJ recommendations are not far from this hypothesis. As reported by The Independent and described in its own release, lean hard on traditional levers: encourage marriage at younger ages, help men “enter adulthood” earlier, explore “pro-natal” policies like tax cuts and benefit changes, and treat family formation as a national priority. This aligns with the rhetoric the U.S. government is pushing here at home.

The CSJ also argues that creating financial incentives for children without addressing the decline in relationships is “putting the cart before the horse,” citing an analysis published in the Financial Times that links falling birth rates to a “relationship recession” among adults.

The Times adds that the report proposes steps such as more in-work training and apprenticeships, and even reducing the school leaving age, as part of accelerating adulthood.

If you are hearing echoes of social engineering, you are hearing correctly.

“Motherhood” is becoming collateral damage in a wider economic math problem

The CSJ proves our argument to be correct. According to The Independent, the CSJ warns that falling fertility rates could affect the balance between pensioners and working-age people, and argues that to maintain the ratio, the state pension age would need to rise to 75 by 2039. The CSJ press release also points to the Old Age Dependency Ratio shifting from 4 working-age people per pensioner in 1970 to 3.5:1 by 2025, with projections toward 3:1 in the coming decades.

The CSJ also calls for a national conversation about how “having enough children is essential for the economic survival of the nation,” and argues that too much policy treats children as a burden rather than central to the future, according to its release.

The quiet detail hiding in plain sight

The report is trying to describe a fertility crisis. Many women will hear something else entirely: a partnership crisis.

Because when a think tank can publish a straight-faced argument that women are “missing out” on motherhood partly due to men delaying adulthood, it is accidentally admitting the thing women have been saying in private for years. The gap is not only biological: it is relational. It is structural. It is the daily grind of carrying emotional labor, domestic labor, and the consequences of someone else’s stalled development.

Frida Kahlo has been watched, rewritten, consumed, and explained to death. She has also been reduced, for decades, by the very people who claim to “canonize” her, often filtered through male art historians who positioned her as Diego Rivera’s companion who also happened to paint.

Time has corrected some of that. Yet it has also created a new problem: Frida as a Benjaminian object of consumption, endlessly reproduced and endlessly purchasable, a face on mass-market products. For anyone who has not read Claire Berest’s Rien n’est noir, Frida can still feel like an enigma, or a symbol, rather than a person with a historical body, a political mind, and a life shaped by events that never stop arriving.

So when I learned Berest’s book would guide the new Netflix adaptation, my expectations shifted. Berest has been one of the few who delves into the depths of Frida’s complex personality while contextualizing her within the historical moment that framed her life, even though Frida herself often lived out of sync with the era she inhabited. And when the new Netflix series is being developed by Patricia Riggen (Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan), that detail alone raises the stakes. Riggen is one of the few directors of color in the industry and the first Latina director to helm action thrillers. If any life qualifies as an action thriller, at least emotionally, it is Frida’s relationship with pain and love.

Berest argues Frida Kahlo’s life revolved around two pivotal events: the car accident that left her with a broken spine and meeting Diego Rivera. Those events shaped everything that followed. They also risk becoming shorthand. So here is what I hope the Frida Kahlo series refuses to leave out.

The Frida Kahlo series has to start with her self-invention

Something has puzzled scholars of Frida’s life for decades: there are two versions of her birth date.

Frida said she was born on July 7, 1910, the same year the Mexican Revolution broke out. That date appears on the plaque at her famous Blue House in Coyoacán. “Frida said she was born with the Mexican Revolution. She used to take three years off her age,” explains art historian Julia Buenaventura. “It was her way of saying she was born with modern Mexico,” she explains.

According to her birth certificate, she was actually born on July 6, 1907. It was the first time Frida edited the history she wanted to live.

The facts that shaped the girl before the icon

Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón.

Her father, Guillermo Kahlo, was German and was her first great love, while her relationship with her mother was distant. Guillermo cared for her when she contracted polio, even though he suffered from constant epileptic seizures. She did not speak German but spoke very good English from a young age.

Even her name carries a political biography. Until the late 1930s, she spelled it the German way, Frieda, derived from Frieden, the German word for peace. With the rise of Nazism in Germany, Frida stopped using the “e” in the middle of her name.

In her personal papers, she sometimes signs as Frida Kahlo, sometimes as Frida Kahlo de Rivera, sometimes as Frida Rivera, and even as Carmen Rivera.

Identity, in other words, was never stable.

The Frida Kahlo series should show her ambition before the tragedy

She was so intelligent and daring that she was one of the first women to enroll at the National Preparatory School in Mexico City, aspiring to study medicine. At school, she met intellectuals who stimulated her ideas and her thirst for political and philosophical discussions.

While the common myth makes it sound as if painting was a romantic calling for Frida, it was not. She had a plan, but so did life.

Frida did not always dress like “Frida”

For many, the image of Frida is associated with her Tehuana outfits made of colorful fabrics, traditional to the Oaxaca region. But the artist did not always dress that way.

Historian Julia Buenaventura notes that, as seen in one of her 1926 self-portraits, where she wears a red velvet dress, the young Frida dressed in the French style, like the women of her time and class. There are also several photos showing her dressed in men’s suits during her youth.

Guadalupe Rivera, who was Diego’s wife when Frida met him, described her as a “flapper,” the term used for the modern women of the 1920s who wore short dresses and corsets.

The Tehuana dress came into fashion after the Revolution. It is a symbol of Mexican identity. “Wearing Tehuana dresses was part of Frida’s self-creation as a legendary figure,” wrote Hayden Herrera in her biography of the artist.

One of Kahlo’s paintings, “There My Dress Hangs,” depicts precisely one of her Tehuana dresses against the chaotic backdrop of Manhattan. “The Two Fridas” also uses the Tehuana dress to represent the intensely Mexican Frida she became, in contrast to the Frida with European roots from before she met Diego.

The first accident has to feel as deep as her broken bones

On September 17, 1925, Frida suffered a devastating crash on her way home from school. The bus she was riding in collided with a streetcar, and the impact wrecked it. She was with Alejandro Gómez Arias, her boyfriend at the time. The injuries were catastrophic: her spine was fractured in three places, she broke two ribs and her collarbone, and she fractured three pelvic bones. Her right leg was shattered in eleven places, and her right foot was dislocated.

Regarding this, Kahlo remarked that this must have been the brutal way in which she had lost her virginity.

The medical practices of her time subjected her to multiple surgical operations, at least 32 throughout her life, plaster and various types of corsets, as well as various stretching devices.

Shortly before, she had begun working as an apprentice in Fernando Fernández Domínguez’s engraving and printing workshop. Before her accident, she had shown no particular interest in painting. Nor did she follow the art class at school with much interest. The battle against the aftereffects of polio led her to lean toward sports activities. However, after the accident, she tried to move as little as possible to aid healing. Thus, painting took center stage in her life.

Early paintings, early circles, and the road to Diego

In 1927, she painted the Portrait of Miguel N. Lira, an oil on canvas measuring 99.2 x 67.5 cm, in which she depicts her partner wearing a cap against a distinctive, symbolic background filled with objects and symbols alluding to his name. A year later, she painted a portrait of her sister Cristina with very clean lines and soft tones.

By this time, Frida had already begun to frequent political, artistic, and intellectual circles. Through Germán de Campo, a student leader whom Frida greatly admired, she met the Cuban communist Julio Antonio Mella, who lived in exile in Mexico with his Italian partner, the photographer Tina Modotti. Through them, Frida came into contact with the painter Diego Rivera, 21 years her senior, with whom she would begin a relationship.

Ergo, she was already a painter and a complete individual before meeting Diego.

Diego as a footnote

Many know about Frida and Diego’s love story. However, few people know she was 15, and he was 36 when they met in 1928 at the National Preparatory School, where Diego painted a mural. Two years later, they married for the first time, and love put Frida’s tenacity to the test. “It’s a marriage between an elephant and a dove,” Frida wrote, recalling what her mother told her upon hearing the news.

We all know the story of Diego’s affair with Frida’s half-sister. Fewer know of Frida’s affair with the exiled Russian politician Leon Trotsky.

Both Frida and Diego were members of the Mexican Communist Party, although Diego was expelled. Both declared themselves Trotskyists until the start of World War II.

The relationship was tumultuous because of their personalities. It was also due to the circumstances.

Pregnancy, Detroit, and the paintings that changed art history

A year after their marriage, Frida became pregnant for the first time, but her body could not carry the pregnancy to term, and it had to be terminated.

In 1932, Diego Rivera was commissioned to create the Detroit Industry Murals for the Detroit Institute of Arts. In April, Frida painted “Sideboard on a Detroit Street,” heavily influenced by Giorgio de Chirico. She became critical of the American way of life, and this reflected in her paintings from that period. However, they were living in the U.S., not just visiting.

In August, she witnessed a solar eclipse, prompting her to incorporate the duality of night and day into some of her paintings, which became a recurring iconographic element in her work.

While in Detroit, she suffered a second miscarriage. During her recovery, she painted her self-portrait, Abortion in Detroit, executed in a more penetrating style, inspired by the small votive paintings of Mexican folk art known as retablos. What few people know is that, just as today, abortion was taboo, yet Frida spoke loudly about it, and about the pain behind.

Surrealism, refusal, and Frida’s own sentence

In 1938, the Surrealist poet and essayist André Breton described her work as Surrealist in an essay he wrote for her exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York. However, she later stated: “They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted my dreams. I painted my own reality.”

However, few women were allowed to be part of the “boys club” in art history, no matter the genre or period. Women were often sidelined. Yet, Frida made it without even asking for it.

Politics as plot

In 1937, she and Diego met Leon Trotsky, an exiled Soviet revolutionary, and offered their home in Coyoacán for him to live there with his wife. Soon after, Frida began a brief affair with him.

Around this time, Diego Rivera adopted Trotskyist ideology. Within the Single Union of Construction Workers of Mexico City, the union led by Juan R. de la Cruz, whom Fernández Vilchis had trained and politically educated, discussions began regarding joining a faction of the Fourth International.

Faced with discord among the members, and because the movement was being sacrificed to Trotsky’s personal interests, Diego Rivera deemed it necessary to dissolve this Mexican section. Subsequently, Kahlo and Rivera changed their political views, becoming Stalinists, which caused a rift between them and Trotsky.

Nevertheless, Trotsky tried to rekindle his relationship with Frida, writing to her to ask her not to abandon him, but she never replied.

The divorce, the self-portraits, and the interior war

In 1939, Kahlo completed The Two Fridas, a self-portrait that reflected her two personalities. In this painting, she processed her marital crisis through the separation between the Frida in the Tehuana costume, Diego’s favorite, and the other Frida, of European roots, who existed before she met him. A vein connects the hearts of the two women. The rejected European part of Frida Kahlo threatens to bleed her dry.

After enduring a dysfunctional marriage marked by emotional abuse and infidelities on both sides, Rivera filed for divorce on November 6, 1939. Frida temporarily returned to her home in Coyoacán, where she suffered a period of depression during which she turned to alcohol as “a way to alleviate her physical and psychological suffering.” Their divorce was finalized in January 1940.

Trotsky’s assassination, her detention, and the remarriage contract

On May 24, 1940, David Alfaro Siqueiros attempted to assassinate Leon Trotsky, who was still residing at Frida’s home in Coyoacán. Following this attack, a raid was conducted at the residence, and the police detained her for several hours.

On August 21, Trotsky was assassinated at the age of 60, leading to accusations that she and Diego Rivera had killed him due to their close relationship with him. Both were arrested but were eventually released.

Unable to bear being apart from one another, they decided to remarry on December 8 of that same year. However, it was under certain conditions: Frida demanded financial independence and shared expenses. Many speculate that Frida refused to have sex with Diego, but there is no evidence to support this.

Teaching, recognition, and the U.S. institutions that framed her late career

Starting in 1943, she began teaching at La Esmeralda School in Mexico City.

In the late 1940s, her artistic work received increasing recognition, especially in the United States. She participated in major group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She also took part in The Exhibition by 31 Women, organized by the patron and collector Peggy Guggenheim.

Death, the missing autopsy, and the Communist flag

No autopsy followed her death, and that absence left room for a competing version of events: that she took her own life. The basis for that account, as it has circulated, comes from her nurse, who said she monitored Kahlo’s painkillers and claimed that on the night before she died, Kahlo overdosed. The nurse’s version hinges on a specific detail: Kahlo had been prescribed a maximum of seven pills, but she took eleven. That same night, she also gave Rivera a wedding anniversary gift more than a month early.

Afterward, her body was laid in state at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. Her coffin was draped with the flag of the Mexican Communist Party, a decision that drew heavy criticism from the national press. Following the funeral ceremonies, she was cremated at the Panteón Civil de Dolores, and her ashes were returned to the Casa Azul in Coyoacán, where she was born and which later became a museum.

Rivera later called her death “the most tragic day of his life.” He died three years later, in 1957.

The 2026 Oscars had plenty of spectacle. But the moments that stuck did not come from that. They came from women who refused to let the night float away on jokes, gowns, and a highlight reel.

Because while Hollywood loves a polished “celebration,” women kept pulling it back to reality, to the craft, and the work.

At the 2026 Oscars, Gloria Cazares made the room go still

One of the most devastating moments of the night came after All the Empty Rooms won Best Documentary Short. In the middle of all that glamour, Gloria Cazares, the mother of Jackie Cazares, spoke with a clarity that left no space for small talk.

“My daughter Jackie was nine years old when she was killed in Uvalde. Since that day, her bedroom has been frozen in time. Jackie is more than just a headline. She is our light and our life. Gun violence is now the number one cause of death in kids and teens. We believe that if the world could see their empty bedrooms, we’d be a different America. Thank you.”

The first Best Casting Oscar finally had a woman holding it

The Academy introduced Best Casting, and Cassandra Kulukundis became the first person to win it for One Battle After Another. In her acceptance speech, Kulukundis “paid tribute to casting directors who previously went unrecognized by the industry,” while also thanking Paul Thomas Anderson and referencing the “PTA protection program.”

It was the kind of win that felt overdue on principle. Casting shapes the entire emotional architecture of a film, yet it hardly ever goes to women. Kulukundis put that truth onstage, and she did it while calling out the invisible labor behind the credits.

Amy Madigan finally got her moment

Amy Madigan, 75, won Best Supporting Actress for Weapons, and the timeline behind the win reads like its own story. According to the Associated Press, her previous acting nomination came 40 years ago for Twice in a Lifetime (1985), which set “a record for the longest gap between nominations for an actress.” On Oscar night, she won for playing Aunt Gladys, a villain role that the Academy would have side-eyed in another era, but that voters finally rewarded in this one.

Then came Misty Copeland

During the show’s “Sinners” musical number, ballet icon Misty Copeland joined the onstage recreation of the film’s juke joint dance sequence as Miles Caton performed the movie’s Oscar-nominated song “I Lied to You,” alongside “Sinners” cast members Jayme Lawson and Li Jun Li, with Jack O’Connell popping up in character as Remmick, complete with vampire teeth. Copeland’s performance brought the power and importance of ballet to the center stage. Sorry, Chalamet.

“Golden” made the new generations feel relevant

KPop Demon Hunters was definitely a late-show jolt that reminded the room that pop still belongs on the Oscars stage when the craft is there. The song won Best Original Song, and the film also took Best Animated Feature, giving Netflix one of the cleanest wins of the night.

Autumn Durald Arkapaw made history

And then came the cinematography win that should have happened decades ago.

Autumn Durald Arkapaw won Best Cinematography for Sinners, becoming the first woman to win in the category.

If you watched the way the room responded, you saw recognition and relief at the same time. The camera department has kept women out for so long that a single win can speak volumes.

Jessie Buckley reminded the room who the night belongs to

Jessie Buckley won Best Actress for Hamnet, and she honored the emotion and value of motherhood.

The 2026 Oscars kept circling back to women’s work

Even the broader shape of the night reinforced it. One Battle After Another dominated the ceremony, and while the reporting out of the show framed it as Paul Thomas Anderson’s long-awaited coronation, inside that sweep, women kept showing up as the people who made the machinery visible: in casting, in craft categories, in speeches that named the labor behind the product.

Everyone loves a Latina on the red carpet. The gowns, the glam. The headlines that call us “spicy,” “fiery,” “exotic,” whatever the adjective-of-the-week is. But when it comes time to hand out the trophies, the room falls silent.

Because the numbers tell a story Hollywood rarely wants to tell out loud: Since 1929, the Academy Awards have had 13,445 nominees. Only 6% were people of color, 17% were women, and less than 2% were women of color, according to USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative data.

So yes, the question stands, especially as the Oscars roll around again: where are the Latinas at the Oscars?

Representation still feels like a guest list

Let’s start with the uncomfortable truth: the Academy has gotten better at celebrating “diversity” as a headline, while still keeping power and recognition concentrated in the same places.

In 2016, none of the nominees in the four acting categories were from an ethnic minority, a major flashpoint that helped fuel the #OscarsSoWhite backlash and boycotts. Since then, we’ve been tracking the pattern. We get moments, yes. We eventually get exceptions. We get a “historic year.” Then we get another year where the gap looks painfully familiar.

What we’re seeing in 2026, and what we are not

The 98th Academy Awards take place on March 15, 2026, and yes, Latino talent shows up across major categories this year. That range stretches from Wagner Moura’s Best Actor nomination for The Secret Agent to Benicio del Toro’s Best Supporting Actor nod for One Battle After Another, and from Guillermo del Toro’s double recognition for Frankenstein in Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay to craft-category standouts like José Antonio García’s Best Sound nomination for One Battle After Another and Adolpho Veloso’s Best Cinematography nomination for Train Dreams. Animation also carries real weight this year: Yvett Merino returns in Best Animated Feature as producer of Zootopia 2, Adrian Molina lands in the same category for Elio, and Mexican coproducer Nidia Santiago appears for Little Amélie or the Character of Rain. Colombian American photographer Juan Arredondo is also competing for Best Documentary Short for Armed Only with a Camera.

But when you narrow the lens to Latinas, the story still feels thin, and the contrast becomes the point. The Latina nominees and contenders that stand out in this ecosystem are largely concentrated outside the most visible performance categories: Florencia Martín is nominated for Best Production Design for One Battle After Another (with set decoration by Anthony Carlino), and Yvett Merino and Nidia Santiago show up through animation producing, a lane where Latina work has carved out hard-won space.

Meanwhile, Emilie Lesclaux appears in Best Picture as a producer of The Secret Agent, another reminder that women can be part of the year’s most significant films and still not see the spotlight translate into acting-category recognition for Latinas.

Did you see the shift? Latinas appear in the architecture of the work, the craft, the production, the building of the thing, proving we are not going anywhere. At the same time, the categories that drive the loudest cultural conversation still struggle to make room.

Latinas at the Oscars and the “historic” narrative we keep getting fed

You can feel the temptation to call 2026 a turning point because the broader Latino footprint is real. Hispanic Executive framed it as a “historic Latino harvest,” citing major nominations across the acting, animation, and craft categories.

But the angle here is different: Latino gains are not automatically Latina gains. A surge that still leaves Latinas out of the acting conversation isn’t a victory lap. It’s a reminder that Hollywood knows how to diversify without evenly redistributing the spotlight.

The receipts: what the Oscars data says about women of color

USC’s tracking gives us the clearest, most blunt context. Again: since 1929, 13,445 nominees. 6% people of color. 17% women. Less than 2% women of color.

That’s precisely how rare it is for the Academy to recognize women who live at the intersection of race and gender. Latinas sit inside that sliver. Sometimes we get named. Often, we get skipped. Even more often, we get treated like a visual accessory to the night.

A quick timeline of Latina breakthroughs that should not feel this rare

If you want to understand how slow this has moved, look at the milestones people still cite as “firsts.” Latina Oscar history traces back to 1954, when Katy Jurado became the first Latin American woman nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Broken Lance.

Then, in 1961, Rita Moreno won for West Side Story, a breakthrough that still sits in the cultural memory as a glass-ceiling moment.

Decades later, the modern era finally widened the frame. However, it still did not widen it enough: Salma Hayek earned a Best Actress nomination for Frida in 2002, followed by Catalina Sandino Moreno’s Best Actress nomination for Maria Full of Grace in 2004 and Adriana Barraza’s supporting nomination for Babel in 2006. In 2018, Roma brought two crucial breakthroughs in the same year, with Yalitza Aparicio nominated for Best Actress and Marina de Tavira for Best Supporting Actress, and more recently, the Academy recognized Ana de Armas with a Best Actress nomination for Blonde in 2022 and America Ferrera with a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Barbie in 2023.

And even that list, stacked like this, makes the point: we celebrate a handful of names across nearly a century of awards. That is not what representation looks like when the industry is actually healthy.

Latinas at the Oscars deserve more than “red carpet love”

Hollywood loves Latinas when we boost the vibe. When we make the photos look better and fill the room with charisma. Even better, when we play the part of the beautiful supporting character in somebody else’s story.

But the Oscars are supposed to be about craft, performance, and artistic risk. They’re supposed to reward the people who build culture, not just decorate it.

And if the system keeps producing years where Latinas barely appear in the most visible categories, that’s undoubtedly a pipeline problem. A gatekeeping problem. A power problem.

So where are the Latinas at the Oscars?

They’re here. Working, writing, directing, producing, designing, editing, scoring, and carrying entire films on their backs.

The real question is whether the Academy can stop treating Latina recognition like a special occasion. Because we are sure as hell tired of being props for the carpet.

Nicole Fernandez has spent more than a decade in sports media, but her work has never been only about the game. She’s a bilingual journalist and creator who cares about what athletes carry with them long after the scoreboard fades: their values, their families, their origin stories, the parts of them that never fit neatly into a highlight reel.

She’s also a first-generation Colombian-American, born and raised in Miami, with family roots in Barranquilla. And like a lot of us who grow up between languages, between cultures, between expectations, she learned early how complicated the identity crisis can feel even when you’re surrounded by people who look like you.

That tension, between where you come from and how the world sees you, now runs through everything she builds. It shows up in the way she reports, in the way she shows up online, and in the decade-long commitment she has poured into Game Time Foundation, her sports nonprofit that collects baseball and soccer equipment in Miami and delivers it to kids in Colombia and other Latin American countries.

She grew up in Miami, but still wondered where she fit

Fernandez described the cultural tug-of-war that can come with being born in the United States, surrounded by Spanish, but still feeling pressure to perform “American” correctly.

“You go to school, you wanna be American,” she said.

Then she offered a detail we know very well.

“I remember going and reading, like going to the library,” she said. “And I would get books, but I’m like, all these girls are blonde. And I was like, I don’t see anyone like me.”

Even in Miami, where Latinidad often feels like the default setting, she still carried questions. “It was hard to [answer the questions] ‘Am I American? What’s a Latina?’ I didn’t know what Latina was,” she said.

Over time, that confusion evolved into something else. “As I got older and now giving back to Colombia, it’s like, okay, I’m really proud of my roots and where I came from,” she said. “It makes you think back on everything your parents have gone through so we can have a better future.”

Spanish became her edge, even when she didn’t realize it would

Like many first-generation kids, Fernandez once treated bilingualism as something to neutralize. No accent, no extra attention. Just blend in.

Then life did what it does: it flipped the script.

“When I started journalism,” she said, “I saw so many people learning Mandarin or Spanish.” And that’s when she realized she had a skill under her belt that many would pay for.

“All the jobs I’ve gotten in sports are because I know Spanish,” she said.

The thing she once tried to smooth out became the thing that made her stand out. “Now I’m grateful that I have that right and that’s what makes you different,” she said.

That’s also where her storytelling lens deepened. Language is not only about communication. It’s about empathy and understanding what it feels like to navigate a world where you cannot order lunch without translating yourself.

@nicolefer_

Nicole ♡ on Instagram: "A Miami girl who bet on herself for man…

Sports never interested her in the stats. She wanted the human story

Fernandez told FIERCE she always felt drawn to journalism, even as a kid. “I think I [always] did,” she said. “I just didn’t know how to do it.”

She described early curiosity, the instinct to record, to ask why, to capture reality as it is. Later, in college, she said she had to find a niche, and she kept circling back to sports. She felt it was a natural equalizer.

And soon, she knew what she wanted from it.

“I don’t like the stats so much,” she said. “I like more the human side of it, how each athlete has a story.”

That perspective shapes how she moves through sports today. “Even now, I don’t like to follow certain teams,” she said. “I like to follow the athlete.”

Because for her, the point has always been the person behind the performance.

@nicolefer_

Nicole ♡ on Instagram: "My 4th #SpringTraining Media Day with @…

She built a career anyway, even when the industry made her prove herself twice

Fernandez described the grind as constant. The need to stay visible and the pressure to self-promote could take their toll, especially the reality of being a Latina in spaces where you still feel like an exception.

“I’m 36 years old,” she said. “[And it is still] hard to know your worth, and you get tired of proving yourself.”

Then she said something many women will recognize in their bones. No matter the obstacles, “you have to be constant,” she said. “Trying to put your work out there, and you are the only one who believes in yourself. You’re the only one who can celebrate your victories so that you can open more opportunities.”

Her résumé reflects that range. She earned a Bachelor of Communications with a minor in Marketing from Florida International University, and studied abroad in Seville, Spain. She has worked in journalism, production, and social media, including a role with major Spanish-language departments in the sports industry, where she has focused on social media marketing and innovation.

@nicolefer_

Nicole ♡ on Instagram: "Happy Women’s International Da y! 💜 On…

Even in moments that looked glamorous on paper, she described a familiar internal battle

When she spoke about recently attending the Super Bowl as a journalist, she confessed she still felt the imposter syndrome creep in. “I felt like I didn’t deserve it,” she said. “I felt like I was too old.”

Then she looked around and saw what she had seen too many times.

“There was maybe like a hundred different media outlets from all over the world,” she said. “And even being there, I’m like, wow, I’m still one of the few Latinas here.”

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Nicole ♡ on Instagram: "A year later I’m even more grateful to …

Game Time Foundation started as an instinct, then became a decade of work

If Fernandez’s journalism focuses on the human side of sports, her nonprofit makes that belief tangible.

She started Game Time Foundation in 2014. The foundation provides sports equipment for kids who play baseball, softball, and soccer, and it has helped more than 5,000 children across Colombia, Puerto Rico, Honduras, and Venezuela.

Fernandez was only 24 and ready to give back to her community and help others see the opportunities beyond the horizon. However, doing good work does not mean doing easy work.

“Funding is hard,” she said. She described how she learned the unglamorous parts too: the laws, the taxes, the logistics, the shipping, the documentation.

Still, she did what so many mission-driven women do: she learned anyway.

@gametimefound

Game Time Foundation on Instagram: "Happy 10th birthday Game Ti…

The kids she met pushed her into authorship

Fernandez’s reporting and her nonprofit work eventually led her to a new format: a bilingual children’s book.

She self-published A 9-Inning Dream Un Sueño de 9 Entradas in late December 2022, describing it as a culmination of her professional and philanthropic experiences and a story about the impact of sports, bilingualism, and celebrating your roots.

In our interview, she traced the origin back to childhood, to the library, to representation, and to the books that didn’t have a character who looked like her.

Then the adult version of that childhood question returned: where are the stories that look like us?

So she wrote what she wanted to exist, and she did it in English and Spanish. She self-published and taught herself how to do it, the same way she taught herself so many other things.

And she made an intentional choice about who would visually bring it to life.

“I wanted an illustrator from Colombia,” she said. Then she explained why. “It’s an homage to my family, what I saw growing up when I was little.”

@mvpbooks

MVP BOOKS on Instagram: "Diago from A 9-Inning Dream Un Sueño d…

The through line is simple, even when the work isn’t

Fernandez’s story is full of moving parts: sports media, social platforms, major leagues, travel, nonprofit logistics, and book publishing.

Still, the emotional engine stays consistent.

She wants girls to see themselves in stories earlier than she did. She wants athletes treated like humans, not as stat sheets. She wants kids in small towns to have equipment, dignity, and a reason to show up to the field with pride.

And she wants Latinas who feel stuck in the proving cycle to know resilience and identity are our superpowers.

Few things feel as triggering as being called “hysterical” or getting hit with, “Are you on your period?” And with good reason.

For centuries, one of nature’s wonders, our menstrual cycle, has been weaponized against us by a patriarchal society that never tried to understand it nor had any interest in doing so. The spiritual and physical transformation that happens to us across a typical 28-day rhythm has been framed as weakness, impurity, inconvenience, comedy, or pathology. So, of course many of us grew up feeling like something was wrong with us.

So let’s start at the beginning.

What actually happens in your body

The day one of your period marks the beginning of the menstrual phase, when the uterine lining sheds, which causes bleeding. This phase is a time of lower estrogen levels and nutrient loss due to the shedding process.

Your body also moves through a normal range of cycle lengths. A normal menstrual cycle can last between 21 and 35 days. We often expect to bleed between three and seven days.

Meanwhile, mood and energy can change, but those shifts do not make you “crazy.” Lower energy and irritability can come with this phase, and it can be common to experience increased feelings of sadness and depression during the whole menstrual phase. Similarly, it is a moment when estrogen and progesterone sit at their lowest, which can help explain why energy tanks and moods dip.

What happens in the days leading up, and why everything feels louder

For many of us, the hardest stretch is not the bleeding. It’s the lead-up.

What’s known as the luteal phase follows ovulation and lasts about 12 to 14 days, as the body prepares for a potential pregnancy. During this phase, a ruptured follicle becomes the corpus luteum, and progesterone levels rise. If fertilisation does not occur, the corpus luteum atrophies, progesterone declines, and menstruation begins.

That hormonal change can show up as mood shifts, bloating, and fatigue. Common luteal symptoms include mood changes, bloating, and energy fluctuations.

Now, let’s talk about the cultural and religious stigma around the menstrual cycle

Many societies taught women to hide menstruation, treat it as unclean, or avoid even naming it. We are talking about centuries of indoctrination.

In Western industrial societies, many norms around conduct and communication rest on the belief that menstruation should remain hidden. In fact, many traditional religions consider menstruation ritually unclean, and menstrual taboo can involve menstruation being seen as embarrassing.

Even outside religious practice, that cultural hangover sticks. In Western industrial societies, menstruation is expected to remain hidden, both verbally and physically.

So when a woman tries to speak plainly about her cycle, she will probably face disgust, jokes, or silence, both from men and other women. What’s worse, she’s encountering a rulebook a lot of us never agreed to.

Hysteria, medicine, and how the menstrual cycle got tangled on purpose

Language tells on power.

The Online Etymology Dictionary traces the word “hysterical” to the 1610s and notes it originally meant “of the womb,” tied to hysteria, a nervous disease once defined solely by men as a condition “peculiar to women” and believed to be caused by dysfunction of the uterus.

That history bleeds straight into modern stigma. In a column for The Daily Texan, London Lack writes, “The word ‘hysteria’ comes from a misogynistic and overgeneralized female medical diagnosis,” and notes that what we now recognize as depression, anxiety, epilepsy, or menopause was once dismissed as “female hysteria.”

Historically, women were often dismissed as “hysterical,” and symptoms of anxiety and depression were attributed to fragility and “wandering wombs.”

So yes, when men call women “hysterical,” they echo a long tradition of medicine and culture labeling women’s reality as pathology.

The magic of hormones, without the mystification

Hormones run the show during your cycle, but they are not a moral verdict.

The menstrual cycle is the body’s monthly prep for pregnancy, driven largely by estrogen and progesterone, which rise and fall, affecting mood, energy, sleep, appetite, stress, and confidence. Estrogen often boosts mood through serotonin, while progesterone can contribute to mood swings and irritability, especially as it drops before menstruation.

At the same time, we should hold onto nuance. Hormones influence mood, but they do not single-handedly define your emotional life.

That being said, our cycle is more than medical terminology

It’s not surprising that men don’t understand how a person can, in fact, be 28 different people in a month. After all, what happens in our bodies is not simple. But there’s a big difference between that and stigma, or worse, teaching us to stigmatize ourselves.

This is to say that there is nothing to “control” during our menstrual cycle. There is no calendar to follow, as if we were afraid of turning into Mr. Hyde. While it is true that learning about our bodies and their rhythms helps us feel more comfortable—God knows how uncomfortable our periods can be—perhaps the first thing we should learn is to be kind to ourselves and stop repeating the echo that was forced into our heads.

Prioritizing sleep, dietary supplements, vitamins, exercise, and meditation are not recommendations only for women, but for any human being who wants to improve their lifestyle.

The problem has never been the menstrual cycle, but the story we were told

Here’s the truth that cuts through all of it:

We live in a culture that calls women hysterical for having feelings, then tells us our menstrual cycle “proves” we cannot be trusted with power. Just watch the current status of the world and see how that argument debunks itself.

This bias has created glass ceilings for women in leadership, despite a lack of evidence that menses alone drives mood instability in healthy young women.

Furthermore, the mental health system, like many institutions, was built by men in a time when women were considered the “weaker sex.” That dismissal still echoes in how women experience healthcare today.

So when you feel like a different person at different points in your cycle, you don’t need shame. You need context. You need language. You need care. And you need a world that stops treating the emotional complexity of women as a punchline.

Because the problem was never you, it was a patriarchal system based on emotional simplicity and fear of what it cannot control.

You know that moment when a woman says, half-laughing, half-exhausted, “I swear I’m trying,” but her life still feels like a browser with 47 tabs open?

For a lot of women, that moment doesn’t even bring up a hint of ADHD. It leads to another planner, or productivity hack. Another quiet decision to work later, sleep less, and carry the shame in private.

And that is a big part of why ADHD in women so often gets diagnosed later in life.

ADHD in women gets missed early because we still picture the wrong kid

Most people still picture ADHD as a loud little boy who cannot sit still. Even clinicians have historically learned about ADHD through that lens, which skews what gets noticed, referred to, and diagnosed.

Henry Ford Health points to the childhood diagnosis gap and notes that it can look like boys are much more likely to have ADHD. Dr. Lisa MacLean, a psychiatrist at Henry Ford Health, says, “That doesn’t necessarily mean that fewer girls have ADHD,” and adds that “symptoms of ADHD in girls and women can be more subtle and harder to recognize. That can delay diagnosis.”

More recent CDC data still show a difference, even if the ratio is not always framed the same way across reports. A CDC NCHS Data Brief using 2020 to 2022 data found 14.5% of boys ages 5–17 had ever been diagnosed with ADHD compared with 8.0% of girls.

Meanwhile, research has also highlighted how the gap narrows in adulthood. The University of Calgary systematic review notes that in childhood, the ratio of boys to girls with ADHD is about 3:1, while in adulthood it is closer to 1:1, suggesting many girls get missed earlier.

Why ADHD in women often looks “subtle” to everyone else

A major issue is presentation.

According to Henry Ford Health, girls and women are more likely to show inattentive behaviors, which can be read as daydreaming, disorganization, or forgetfulness rather than disruptive behavior. Dr. MacLean says, “Girls (and women) are more likely to have inattentive behaviors,” and adds, “But that doesn’t mean that’s their only symptom.”

Even hyperactivity can show up in ways adults misread as personality. Dr. MacLean explains: “Unlike the stereotypical presentation of a boy who’s jumping up and down and getting in classmates’ faces, girls with ADHD may just seem energetic, talkative, and social.”

This means that hyperactive boys are noticed because they “disrupted the class,” while girls are often labeled rather than evaluated. It describes how adults joked about “Chatty Cathy,” “Tomboy Tara,” and “Shy Samantha” rather than recognising signs of ADHD.

ADHD in women gets masked by the pressure to be “good”

Here is where gender norms do real damage.

How many girls worked hard to hide their struggles because they wanted to fit in, avoid trouble, and meet expectations that girls should be “sugar and spice and everything nice”?

The University of Calgary review digs into that same mechanism through research: social expectations for girls and women often reward organisation, obedience, emotional control, and caretaking. When ADHD symptoms clash with those “feminine” norms, many girls learn to mask to avoid judgment.

Furthermore, masking can work for a while, but in the end, it can also cost you your mental health.

ADHD in women can look like anxiety, depression, or burnout, so doctors treat the wrong thing first

Misdiagnosis plays a starring role in delayed diagnosis.

Henry Ford Health says years of living with untreated ADHD can put women at higher risk for depression, anxiety, and eating disorders, because undiagnosed ADHD can undermine self-esteem and mental health over time.

In fact, more often than not, many older women are diagnosed with anxiety or depression instead of ADHD.

And the University of Calgary review describes how women with undiagnosed ADHD often spend years feeling “different,” “stupid,” or “lazy,” blaming themselves for underachievement. It also notes that receiving a diagnosis can become a “lightbulb moment,” offering an external explanation and opening the door to self-acceptance.

WebMD also adds that ADHD symptoms in women can get mistaken for mood disorders, with some doctors diagnosing anxiety or depression rather than ADHD.

ADHD in women often becomes obvious when life outgrows the coping strategies

Girls who get missed become women who keep functioning, until they cannot.

Henry Ford Health describes how women develop coping mechanisms that can further mask symptoms. Dr. MacLean says, “Women are good at hiding their struggle,” adding that they may compensate with strategies like working late into the night to keep up.

ADDitude Magazine describes a similar turning point in older women: many seek evaluation when “daily demands finally exceed their coping abilities,” or when hormonal changes cause symptoms to spike.

Similarly, many women only seek diagnosis as adults because they no longer need a parent or teacher to initiate testing. That autonomy changes everything, especially when work, parenting, and household management collide.

Hormones can turn the volume up, and ADHD in women pays the price

Hormones do not “create” ADHD, but they can shape how symptoms feel across a woman’s life.

Specialists explain that ADHD can be better or worse at different points, “especially true for women,” and highlight how lower estrogen levels during perimenopause and menopause can greatly increase ADHD challenges. They also note that some women report significant improvement with hormone replacement therapy, though anyone considering it should do so with medical guidance.

WebMD echoes that hormonal shifts can affect symptoms, noting that pregnancy may temporarily improve ADHD symptoms due to increased estrogen, while menopause can worsen symptoms as estrogen declines.

So yes, a woman can make it through school and early adulthood with brute-force coping, then hit perimenopause and suddenly feel like everything stops working.

ADHD in women can be diagnosed late, but the relief can still be real

A later diagnosis often brings grief, but it also brings clarity.

ADDitude, in reporting based on interviews with dozens of women over 60 diagnosed later in life, says regret is common. Still, relief often comes first because a diagnosis offers answers and changes how women interpret decades of struggle.

Understood describes the feeling many women express: “finally, an explanation.”

The University of Calgary review similarly reports themes tied to adult diagnosis, including impacts on social-emotional well-being, difficult relationships, lack of control, and self-acceptance after diagnosis.

If you suspect ADHD in women applies to you, here’s what experts suggest looking at

ADHD does not suddenly appear in adulthood. Dr. MacLean warns about this: “You don’t just develop ADHD as an adult.”

WebMD explains that clinicians generally look for ongoing symptoms in at least two settings and a history of symptoms believed to begin before age 12.

Both research centers and doctors describe a common “lightbulb” moment: a woman is diagnosed and begins recognizing herself in the criteria.

As for support, the sources land on a similar message: you do not have to white-knuckle your way through it. Henry Ford Health notes behavioural and lifestyle strategies, such as coaching and working with a professional organiser, can help, and it also describes stimulant medications as the gold standard, with Dr. MacLean stating that “about 80% to 90% of people respond very well to medication therapy.”

Additional supports include therapy, coaching, and finding community, including support groups for women with ADHD.

If anything in this story feels uncomfortably familiar, you deserve an evaluation that actually considers how ADHD in women can present across a lifetime, not just how it looks in a seven-year-old boy.

Before Stephanie Vasquez founded one of downtown Phoenix’s longest-standing coffee shops, she was a middle school science teacher who thought she had her life mapped out.

A third-generation Phoenix native, she grew up in a traditional Latino household and became the first person in her family to graduate from college. She was also a young mother, balancing responsibility early. But her dream was clear.

“All I wanted to do was be an educator,” she says. “That was my big dream in life.”

She began teaching in 2004 at Santa Maria, a migrant community, and dove in fully. At the time, she believed she would teach forever.

Which is why her journey into coffee still feels unexpected.

“You start out in life thinking you have goals,” she reflects. “And you pursue those goals, and then life just takes you in a completely different direction.”

That turn happened during a trip to Costa Rica in 2006. On her last day, she joined a tour of a coffee plantation.

“I didn’t even know coffee came from a plant,” she says, laughing. “Entrepreneurs feel this pressure that they need to know everything. And I’m a case in point that you don’t. You just need passion and desire.”

What she learned during that visit stayed with her. Coffee, she discovered, is the second-most-traded commodity in the world after oil, the second-most-consumed beverage after water, and one of the most exploitative industries affecting both people and the planet.

“Once I learned that this thing I was doing every day — drinking coffee— was impacting our people and our planet in a negative way, I thought, there has to be another way,” she says.

That question became the foundation of Fair Trade Café.

Today, the café diverts more than 700 pounds of waste from landfills every week. Composting is embedded into daily operations. Cups and straws are recyclable. Every coffee and tea served is fair-trade certified, shade-grown, and organic.

But for Stephanie, sustainability was never about optics. It was about alignment.

What keeps a mission alive when everything tries to break it.

Fair Trade Café didn’t just survive time — it survived timing.

Stephanie opened the café in 2007, right before the economic downturn. Then came downtown construction that placed the light rail directly on her street. Years later, a global pandemic. And in between all of that, the everyday, invisible challenges that come with running a small business.

What carried her through wasn’t optimism or luck. It was clarity.

“What’s kept me going is my commitment to my mission of creating a positive impact in this world,” she says.

For Stephanie, the café was never just a business; it was an extension of how she wanted to move through life. Her work as a founder, a community builder, and later as the leader of a nonprofit supporting Latina entrepreneurs all stem from the same personal goal: to leave the world better than she found it.

That lens shaped how she learned to see difficulty.

“During all these challenges, the way that I look at them is that this is simply an opportunity for me to learn and to grow,” she explains.

It didn’t come naturally at first. Stephanie describes growth as something that mirrors education itself, where each level is unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and demanding more than the last. But once she accepted that challenges weren’t signs to stop, but signals of progression, something shifted.

“I’m a mission-driven person,” she says. “I’m living in my life’s purpose, and these challenges are getting me to the next level.”

Doing the right thing before it was popular

When Stephanie opened Fair Trade Café in 2007, sustainability wasn’t a buzzword.

Ethical sourcing, compostable materials, and organic ingredients weren’t trends yet. At the time, even finding recyclable cups felt like a challenge. Compostable options were nearly nonexistent locally, forcing her to source from outside the community, which conflicted deeply with her commitment to staying hyper-local. For someone trying to build a values-driven business from the ground up, it meant constant compromise, creativity, and resistance.

“I’m a social entrepreneur by true definition,” she says. “That’s who I am, and that’s how I operate my business.”

In those early days, Stephanie often found herself defending her choices. At business roundtables, other owners questioned why she was willing to pay more for organic ingredients or eco-friendly materials.

@the_stephanie_vasquez

STEPHANIE VASQUEZ on Instagram: "Can someone tell me how to clo…

One mission, many lanes.

On paper, Fair Trade Café and E.L.L.A. (Empowering Latina Leaders in Arizona) are separate entities. Different structures. Different goals. Different audiences. But when Stephanie talks about them, the separation feels almost technical, not personal.

“Everywhere I go, there I am,” she says.

The same personal mission powers both the café and the nonprofit: creating positive impact.

Stephanie’s work with E.L.L.A. began in 2015, sparked by a statistic that stopped her cold: the gender pay gap. At the time, conversations around pay equity weren’t mainstream, especially not conversations centered on women of color. What she discovered was deeply unsettling: Latina and Indigenous women were among the lowest-paid groups in the country for the same work.

As a woman, a mother, and a business owner, the reality felt unacceptable.

What started as a single community event, a pop-up market highlighting Latina-owned businesses on Latina Equal Pay Day, was never meant to become an organization. It was supposed to be one-and-done. But the community's response said otherwise. People showed up. They asked for more. They needed more.

Nearly a decade later, that “simple act” has grown into a full-fledged nonprofit with three flagship programs serving Latina entrepreneurs across Arizona.

While Fair Trade Café focuses on ethical consumption and community space, E.L.L.A. centers economic empowerment and visibility. Together, they reflect the same belief: systems don’t change unless people build alternatives.

“This is how I’ve curated my life,” she says. “There’s a lot of responsibility in it, but it feels really good to look in the mirror at the end of the day and say, I did good work today.”

@fairtradecafeaz

Fair Trade Cafe | Phoenix Coffee Shop Since ‘07 on Instagram: "…

Loosening the grip

When the conversation turns to the future, including what’s next for her and for Fair Trade Café, Stephanie pauses. She’s been asked this question many times before.

Earlier in her journey, she was intensely goal-driven. Every milestone had to be reached. Every box had to be checked. And she did it by working relentlessly and pushing through no matter the cost.

But over time, she noticed something unsettling: the work was getting done, but there was a growing disconnect between her mind and her heart.

That realization changed everything.

Today, she still has goals for her businesses, her nonprofit, her family, and her health. But she approaches them differently. Instead of forcing outcomes, she allows things to unfold in their natural order.

“The looser the grip, the tighter the hold,” she says, a reminder she gives herself often.

As a natural doer, letting go doesn’t come easily. But she knows now that control isn’t where her power lives. Alignment is.

And from that place, the future doesn’t need to be forced; it reveals itself.

One step at a time

Stephanie’s advice to young Latinas or anyone looking to carve their own path is to start. “My power is to allow things to flow in the order that they are supposed to flow,” she says. “Yes, I have revenue goals for my business. Yes, I’ve got goals for my nonprofit. However, I don’t know what’s next. And if we are all honest with each other, none of us knows what’s next. None of us does. However, I am fully equipped and capable for whatever is to come next for me.”

That philosophy of trusting yourself and your journey shapes how she lives, leads, and guides others. For anyone overwhelmed by the fear of starting, she has a clear take: take one step at a time.

“A lot of times, what happens is we get caught up in our heads,” she explains. “We tell ourselves, ‘I can’t do this because of that,’ or we get paralyzed by fear, excuses, and overthinking. So we do nothing.”

Her advice? Move. Even if it’s small. Even if it’s imperfect. Looking back years later, you’ll see the results, growth, progress, and perhaps a thriving business, community, or life you never imagined.

For Stephanie, that’s the essence of being a Jefa: starting, stepping forward, and trusting that each step counts.

Sofía Paloma Juárez did not launch a luxury spirit to secure another seat at the table. She launched it because she wanted her missing half back.

For more than 20 years, Juárez lived with a gap she could name but could not fill. She grew up with her mother, who is Italian American, surrounded by “this Italian cultural hospitality, food, beverage, wine, and this beautiful connectivity through family and community,” as she told FIERCE in our interview. But her “other 50%,” her Mexican heritage and Spanish language, stayed out of reach after her father left when she was “about two, three years old.”

Then, when she was 27, her father reached out after nearly two decades of separation and asked her to visit him in Jalisco. She said yoga and meditation helped her show up “more open-minded and open-hearted.” She hopped on a plane and decided to keep things light, to start with a clean slate. And somewhere between the meals, the stories, and the tasting glasses, she found the emotional spark that would later become CASA J.

“On a quest to discover my heritage, I bottled the spirit of Jalisco,” she says when introducing her brand.

Tequila became the language her father-and-daughter relationship could finally speak

When Juárez landed in Mexico and saw her father for the first time in 20 years, she did not romanticise it. She described a human, nervous kind of relief.

“The first thing was a visual recognition,” she told FIERCE. “He looked good and healthy. I was just happy that he looked healthy.”

She also chose not to dive into heavy conversations right away. “I kept a light vibe,” she said. “I wasn’t diving deep into any massive conversations.”

Instead, she let the reconnection unfold through the everyday. Her father wanted to show her the town and introduced her to friends. They moved from place to place and explored. She said she felt “very included,” and she noticed his pride. “He was very proud to introduce his daughter to all of his community there,” she said. “He was very, very proud.”

Her father is a chef, and Juárez said he connected by cooking meals inspired by his grandmother’s recipes and pairing them with tequila authentic to Mexico. Through his passion, she said, he passed down “the history, the culture, the heritage, the significance” of tequila.

“He was sharing and passing down to me the significance of tequila in the way that it’s normally passed down from grandfathers to grandsons and fathers to sons,” she said.

In the press release, she reflects on that same tradition and names her own place inside it: “The Mexican art of tequila production is a tradition that’s culturally passed down from father to son, from grandfather to grandson. I have a different story.”

Before the brand, Sofía Paloma Juárez built other people’s brands for a living

Juárez did not walk into spirits without a toolkit. She told FIERCE her background is “360 brand marketing,” and she learned early how to shape identity, narrative, and visuals.

Right after college, she worked in editorial, “writing and editing and sourcing feature stories.” She moved through fashion and culture, then stepped into agency life, where she built strategy and content for clients including champagne brands, Coca-Cola brands, and names like Bloomingdale’s and David Yurman. She described hands-on work that spanned concept ideation through directing shoots, casting, delivering assets, and building a full strategy across platforms.

At the time her father reached out, she said she worked “exclusively for the Veuve Clicquot Champagne brand,” and she drew inspiration from “a female-founded Heritage Champagne House.” She also said she felt inspired by “the work of Madame Clicquot,” describing a woman leading a champagne house in the 1800s as “magnificent.”

Later, she ran her own digital marketing and brand strategy business for eight years, helping clients build brand identity, websites, and social platforms. Years later, when she started CASA J, she approached it the same way she had approached campaigns for other brands.

“I began doing what I did at the agencies,” she said. “Finding the illustrator, finding the artist, finding a designer, finding the ceramicists.”

Tequila, for her, is about region, process, and dignity

Juárez’s origin story sits in a very specific place. Her father is from Jalisco, Guadalajara, which she called “the land of the blue agave, tequila.” In the interview, she compared tequila’s protected regional identity to products like champagne and Parmigiano Reggiano, saying it is specific to “the culture and the land where it’s crafted.”

That sense of place runs through the brand’s positioning. CASA J is “a refined expression of region, process and heritage,” and Juárez says the brand debuts “as the first ever Tequila Blanco Ensemble.”

She also outlines how the product aims to bridge past and present through its methods: “Handcrafted by harmonizing old world and new world processes including hand mashing, earthen pit roasting, copper pot still distillation, wooden barrel and stainless steel fermentation.”

Juárez told FIERCE her first non-negotiable was quality. She wanted to create a blanco as “the purest expression of the spirit.” Then she went straight for the bigger question she kept asking herself:

Why does the world assign automatic value to European craft and hesitate when the craft comes from Mexico?

“I really wanted to raise the bar of the world view of Mexican artisanal crafts in the way that we look at European artisanal crafts,” she said. She pointed to champagne and Italian ceramics as examples of categories where consumers do not blink at high price points. “Well, why aren’t we willing to pay a price for a Mexican artisanal craft?”

Then she grounded the argument in time: “Before one bottle of Tequila Blanco is created, that plant is growing in the earth for seven years,” she said. “It’s already a seven-year-old product that we’ve been working on before we even bottle it.”

The bottle had to carry the same weight as what’s inside it

Juárez wanted the outer experience to match the inner craft. So she built a physical object meant to live past the pour.

In our interview, she said she worked with artisans in Hidalgo at an artisanal ceramic factory, describing pieces that are handmade and take months to create. She described the ceramic vessel as something she hopes people reuse and regift.

“You could reuse it in various ways,” she said, listing ideas like flowers, olive oil, a batch cocktail, even a “batch of coquito.”

The brand’s press release also frames artisan collaboration as a core commitment, saying CASA J “actively supports the artisans of Mexico through their commitment to bespoke, commissioned collaboration.”

And it positions the brand as “female, Mexican, and LGBTQ+ owned.”

Tequila is still male-dominated, but Latinas keep pushing the door wider

Juárez’s story falls within a broader shift that has begun to show up in reported numbers.

In 2023, Bloomberg Businessweek reported that “only 11 of the 174 registered tequila distilleries were headed by women,” highlighting how limited women’s representation has been even amid tequila’s growth. Bloomberg also reported that Mexico exported $4.1 billion in tequila in 2022.

And yet, the women who have carved out a space in the industry have changed the narrative anyway. The Asociación Mujeres del Tequila, for example, has aimed to increase visibility and leadership.

Juárez fits into this moment in her own way. She told FIERCE she wanted to bring “this beautiful feminine perspective,” with “one foot in Mexico, one foot in New York.”

That vision did not happen overnight. Juárez said she spent seven or eight years travelling to Jalisco whenever she could get time off, meeting artisans, building community, and then building the brand step by step. “This is why it took me eight years from the start of the company,” she said. “Now, finally, we just launched in January of 2026.”

The press release confirms the January 2026 launch and says CASA J debuts in New York and online, with distribution in over 40 states.

What she wants people to taste when they taste it

Juárez said consumers often fall for the visual identity first, then the liquid seals it.

“The number one consumer feedback that I get is how incredibly smooth it is,” she said. She described CASA J as “a sipping tequila first,” meant to be enjoyed slowly, “in a glass,” the way she says people drink it in Mexico.

“This isn’t a shot cocktail or a drink,” she said. “This is to sip and savor and enjoy.”