More like an american soap opera complete with

more like an American soap opera, complete with extramarital affairs and money
laundering scandals. These two programs tell very different stories of what it means to be
Latina in the United States, and the character of Gloria Pritchett fits somewhere in the
middle of the two. The prime difference between Gloria and Betty from Ugly Betty and
Gabrielle from Desperate Housewives is that Goria is a first-generation American.
Although her age of immigration reason for coming to the United States are never
18 Isabel Guzmán and Angharad Valdivia, “Brain, Brow, and Booty: Latina Iconicity in
U.S. Popular Culture,” The Communication Review, 7(2004): 205-219.

Misner 11
explicitly stated, “in my village in Colombia” has become a catchphrase of sorts that
Gloria uses to assert her ethnic difference, of which I will speak more later. Therefore,
she expresses her Latinidad , or Latin-ness, in different ways with different American
(both North and South) experiences.
In the pilot episode of Modern Family, each couple is introduced through a
documentary style interview (with a silent interviewer) that ends up continuing
throughout the series. It is at this moment that the viewers learn Gloria is married to Jay
Pritchett, the graying patriarchy of the whole family, and that she is from a village in
Colombia, presumably chosen because the actress Sofia Vergara is Colombian. Although
the show never specifies when or why she immigrated to the United States, she mentions
having an ex-husband with whom she would passionately fight. Throughout the first
three seasons to which I limit my analysis, her character remains relatively static,
although she gives birth to a son at the end of season three.
It could be tempting to toss Sofía Vergara’s character Gloria into a pit of “hot
Latina” representations that have made their way onto television, especially within the
last 10 years. However, she deserves more understanding than that because of the way
she express her Latinidad. Debra Merskin looks at Eva Longoria’s character in Desperate
Housewives as the absolute epitome of the hot Latina archetype. She argues, and
rightfully so, that these characteristics are reductive and that “Latina tropicalism erases
difference between specific Latino groups and conflates cultures into a single pan-
Latino/a identity.” 19 Aesthetically, Desperate Housewives ’ Gabrielle Solis and Gloria
19 Merskin, “Three Faces of Eva,” 139.

Misner 12
Pritchett appear very similar. The tight clothes that show off an almost caricature-like
curvaceous physique are matched with the same voluminous hairstyles and dark makeup.
In many ways, Gloria embodies the “Cantina Girl,” a third of G.D. Keller’s “tripartite
typology of Latina stereotypes,”
20
which he describes as having “great sexual allure.” Her
physicality throughout the show may not always be completely graceful, but she often
dances to Latin music and enjoys wearing what some would call over-the-top clothing.