One of the frustrating things about this project is when you find a lot of things to admire about someone and then one which just makes you cringe. I’ll mostly focus on the good, here. Salma Hayek is a fine and talented actress who mostly works in a language she didn’t fully speak until adulthood. And she’s dyslexic, so reading scripts does not come easily to her even in Spanish. She’s donated large amounts of her money to help battered women and has teamed with Procter and Gamble to get tetanus shots for mothers and children in developing regions. She’s a producer and advocate—and, yes, one of the women who’s come forward about being harassed by Harvey Weinstein. She has also worked with Ramtha of What the Bleep Do We Know infamy and doesn’t seem to understand what the word “feminist” means.
She is the daughter of an oil executive of Lebanese descent and an opera singer. Her brother designs custom chairs. She saw Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in the theatre as a child and knew that what she wanted to do was act. And so she did. She acted in the telenovelas, becoming a breakout success as the title character on Teresa. And then she came to America and was treated as a nobody, of course. But she quickly became a success in America, too, despite speaking very little English when she got here.
I have heard, many times, that it’s just because she’s beautiful and that she’s not a very good actress. And I mean, she is beautiful. That part is certainly true. She’s a strikingly beautiful woman, one who has been a model and developed her own makeup company designed to sell to Latina women. However, I dispute that she’s not a good actress. I think a lot of people either assumed that beautiful women can’t be good actresses or else assumed that people with thick foreign accents can’t be good at acting in English. In my opinion, she disproves both assessments.
Not that she’s always had the chance to give subtle, nuanced performances, of course. She herself admits that a lot of the roles she’s been given over the years have been “token beautiful woman.” She also says it’s a bit flattering that she still gets them, given she’s 51. She is one of the rare women in Hollywood who’s still allowed to be beautiful, even sexy, after she’s passed the age of 35.
She was once painted as Itpapalotl, an Aztec goddess whose nature appears to be as complicated as Hayek’s own—she is a warrior goddess who rules over Tamoanchan, place where humans were created and home of women who died in childbirth. She is patron of the day. (She is a villain on Elena of Avalor?) Hayek is an actress, a producer, a director. (Well, she directed a TV movie once, and a music video.) She is a humanitarian and a spokeswoman. She has fought for women’s rights and does not call herself a feminist. She is still strikingly beautiful and dismissed for it.
Be a good person like Salma; consider subscribing to my Patreon!
