The Woman in the Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory

by Catherine S. Ramírez

The Mexican American woman zoot suiter, or pachuca, often wore a V-neck sweater or a long, broad-shouldered coat, a knee-length pleated skirt, fishnet stockings or bobby socks, platform heels or saddle shoes, dark lipstick, and a bouffant. Or she donned the same style of zoot suit that her male counterparts wore. With their striking attire, pachucos and pachucas represented a new generation of Mexican American youth, which arrived on the public scene in the 1940s. Yet while pachucos have often been the subject of literature, visual art, and scholarship, The Woman in the Zoot Suit is the first book focused on pachucas. Two events in wartime Los Angeles thrust young Mexican American zoot suiters into the media spotlight. In the Sleepy Lagoon incident, a man was murdered during a mass brawl in August 1942. Twenty-two young men, all but one of Mexican descent, were tried and convicted of the crime. In the Zoot Suit Riots of June 1943, white servicemen attacked young zoot suiters, particularly Mexican Americans, throughout Los Angeles. The Chicano movement of the 1960s–1980s cast these events as key moments in the political awakening of Mexican Americans and pachucos as exemplars of Chicano identity, resistance, and style. While pachucas and other Mexican American women figured in the two incidents, they were barely acknowledged in later Chicano movement narratives. Catherine S. Ramírez draws on interviews she conducted with Mexican American women who came of age in Los Angeles in the late 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s as she recovers the neglected stories of pachucas. Investigating their relative absence in scholarly and artistic works, she argues that both wartime U.S. culture and the Chicano movement rejected pachucas because they threatened traditional gender roles. Ramírez reveals how pachucas challenged dominant notions of Mexican American and Chicano identity, how feminists have reinterpreted la pachuca, and how attention to an overlooked figure can disclose much about history making, nationalism, and resistant identities.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Gender, Feminism, Queer, Fashion, American History

256 pages, Paperback

First published December 26, 2008

About the author

Catherine Sue Ramírez is an Associate Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research and teaching focus on twentieth-century Mexican-American history, histories of immigration and assimilation, Latina/o literature, feminist theory, and comparative ethnic studies.

Reviews

[Alok Vaid-Menon · Rating 3 out of 5]

The zoot suit is a high-waisted, wide-legged trouser paired with a long coat with padded shoulders worn predominantly by Black &/ Latinx communities in the 1940s. Jazz artist Cab Colloway wore it during his performances in Harlem in the late 1930s, and soon the zoot suit came to symbolize “an affront to convention – particularly Jim Crow” (4). Dr. Ramirez interviews Mexican women who came of age in Los Angeles in the late 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s to tell the neglected story of pachucas: Mexican woman zoot suiters (also known as “zooter girls” “cholitas” “malinches,” and “slick chicks.”) While some pachucas wore a zoot suit coat with a pleated skirt, fishnet stockings, platform heels, dark lipstick, and a bouffant – others donned the same style as men. These women were some of the first to wear pants in public and have been erased by feminist histories on account of their race and by anti-racist histories on account of their gender.

In 1942 during the “Sleepy Lagoon Incident” the Los Angeles Police Department arrested almost twenty Mexican youth as suspects on charges of murder without sufficient evidence. In June 1943 where white servicemen attacked young (predominantly Mexican) zoot suiters across Los Angeles (leading to what is now known as the Zoot Suit Riots). The political protests in responses to these events were important events for the Chicanx movement. The press continued to depict Mexican people as dangerous, even though they were the ones being assaulted. The zoot suit was central to this racist demonization. Dr. Ramirez argues this is because the zoot suit – especially on women – came to represent ways of living that challenged racist and heteronormative imaginations of who Mexican people were supposed to be.

First: zoot suit wearers were seen as betraying their position in society as workers. After World War II workers were “discouraged from wearing loose clothes, which were deemed both impractical and unpatriotic” (62). The zoot suit announced that Mexican youth would not stay in the places they were policed into, they would move around the city on street-cars and loiter on sidewalks, make their presence known (61). Zooters demonstrated that they had the ability “to afford a life of idleness” (59) and “flaunted disposable income” (60). With their distinct style, they prioritized spectacle over utility – challenging the racist imagination that didn’t believe that Mexicans were worthy of leisure.

Second: zoot suiters were seen as unpatriotic. The zoot suit was seen as a “sign of personal extravagance and assertive individualism during a period of collective conformity” (62). The symbol of the Mexican in a zoot suit was used to argue that Mexicans were “undeserving of the rights and privileges of full citizenship” because they were “not ready yet to accept the responsibilities of democracy” (63).

Third: pachucas defied gender roles. Pachucas’ appearances were “regarded…as rejection of a middle-class, Mexican-immigrant femininity” (18). Pachucas were demonized for “betraying gender norms during wartime,” and were thus seen as “betraying the nation” with their appearance (8). Dr. Ramirez argues that pachucas were simultaneously critiqued for being “dangerous masculine” and “monstrously feminine” at the same time, and therefore were not absorbed into Chicano cultural nationalism which relied on traditional binary gender roles (20).

Pachucas were demonized because they “refused the heterosexual imperative of citizenship” (20) and “deviated from the feminine space of domesticity” (20). They modeled a version of femininity that was not coupled with marriage and reproduction, and this was posed as a threat to the state. Indeed, to combat “sex delinquency” the Office of Community War Services’ set up a “social Protection Division” to correct the behavior of “women who were suspected of engaging in sex outside of marriage” (69). Pachucas were a prime target. This departure from normative womanhood meant that the press was able to depict them as dangerous, even as they experienced rampant physical/sexual violence. One popular narrative was that pachucas hid knives in their in their hair. (47).

Style is political. Systems of oppression assign uniforms that people are meant to comply with, otherwise be punished. It’s not that certain aesthetics are “wrong,” it’s that they become a problem because they represent a challenge authority. We shouldn’t have to change what we wear in order to be worthy of dignity and justice.

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

read for class, the most interesting book assigned so far but ultimately overly repetitive and the “modern day” connections and analysis feels rushed and underdeveloped.

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes it felt like this book strayed a bit from the topic, but when it WAS overall an interesting subject matter to look into and discuss. I wish it had been a bit more in-depth because I felt like there were places it could have gone where it didn't.

[Alea · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned a lot about a topic that I didn't previously know about, but it was overshadowed by a lot of information irrelevant to the author's argument. The author spent a lot of time repeating previously stated information in different ways. But hey. I learned something.

[kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

For class: fascinating history I didn’t know, lots of relevance to today, wish it relayed more about the people/experience of La pachucas, a bit repetitive, good example of cultural studies (its merits and limitations)

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was definitely worth reading, and its project (of recuperating the lost figure of the Pachuca) has my great admiration. But I feel it kept writing around its subject, never quite confronting it directly. And the reference to the "cultural politics of memory" in the title is misleading; the book does not employ memory studies, though memory inflects it as itt tacks back and forth between the 1940s and the 1970s+.

[Mills College Library]

979.49405 R1732 2009

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for my US Women's history class during my senior year of college. It really exposed me to a whole new culture and sparked my interest in Chicana studies.