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As a child growing up in Puerto Rico, I wanted nothing more than to be somewhere and someone else. I subscribed to “American” beauty standards and followed YouTube hair and makeup tutorials from white influencers. But that changed when I was forced to leave in the aftermath of Hurricane María. Suddenly, I was on the United States mainland, where people constantly asked where I was from and what I was because I didn’t fit their idea of what a “Latina” should look like: I barely wore makeup, my hair wasn’t long or luscious, and my nails were perpetually bare. My Latinidad became something I had to spell out for those around me.
But contrary to the stereotypical depiction of Latine beauty in media, we don’t have one defining look, something Bad Bunny showcased beautifully during his Super Bowl Halftime performance. In reality, Puertorriqueñidad encompasses a variety of stories, styles, shades, and textures, which were displayed through every narrative tool possible, including the varied characters, scenery, and fashion choices of the production. The makeup and hair styling, though, immediately stood out to me—specifically because there wasn’t one standout look. It seamlessly destroyed the “Latina beauty” stereotype while celebrating its reality. It’s not a singular experience or appearance. It’s a mosaic of differences united by culture.
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The Halftime Show production featured hundreds of background performers, and each of their looks was so different but so achingly familiar to me. In the span of 14 minutes, I saw curls of many types, cornrows, slickbacks, intricate updos, laid-back blowouts, and everything in between. That familiar variety was the exact goal for the performance’s hairstyle designers. “For Benito’s performance, the vision was rooted in storytelling and authenticity,” Brian Steven Banks, the lead hairstylist for the background dancers, tells Allure. “Each group represented a different emotional world within the performance, and the hairstyling helped define that language. “The execution was about honoring identity, culture, and emotion through texture and shapes. Letting the hair support the story rather than overpower it,” he says.
The makeup followed a similar narrative, showcasing different aspects of Puerto Rican culture from scene to scene. During “Die With a Smile,” Lady Gaga, though not Puerto Rican, wore what I saw as a remix of the traditional “glam Latin entertainer” trope with red nails and lips to match the Flor de Maga (the national flower of Puerto Rico) on her light blue dress. Then, during the “NuevaYol” section, María Antonia “Toñita” Cay—owner of the Caribbean Social Club in Brooklyn, a home away from home to New York’s Puerto Rican diaspora—made a cameo wearing her signature makeup of blue eye shadow paired with a bright lip.
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Background performers wore golden hues, glossy lips with dark outlines, and dramatic lashes—all looks born in Latine or Black communities that are now associated with the “clean girl” look in mainstream white culture. Though these looks served a statement of their own, so did their origin: an independent Mexican-owned brand, Aora, sponsored the background dancers’ makeup by artist Jennifer Hatching. “This small brand from Mexico was founded and born to disrupt, to challenge the use of color, the wastefulness of plastic, but most of all, to scream in Spanish,” says Nour Tayara, Aora’s founder. “Es tiempo de algo nuevo, desde otro lugar.” That translates to: “It’s time for something new, from somewhere else.”
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These small details may seem inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, yet they’re anything but. I cried tears of joy during the performance and sobbed afterwards while processing how we got here. At a time when brown and Black people—undocumented immigrants, legal residents, and natural-born citizens alike—are being violently targeted by the federal government, those in power benefit from a societal good/bad dichotomy. A dichotomy where the "enemies" (Latinos) are easy to identify because they all look the same—and because they look different enough from their white neighbors to seem threatening or violent. But, as always, the truth is much more complicated.
You can’t tell who is Puertorriqueño or Latine by just looking at us, nor can you dictate our value that way. We’re united by culture, colonialism, struggle, and joy, not by a reductive stereotype of how we style our hair, do our nails, or wear our lip liner. Benito Martinez Ocasio perfectly showcased that for the entire world to see, just when we needed it the most.