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A Real Woman of Today
In the fall of 1995, LATINA Style pointed out
a young up-and-comer named Josefina Lopez as a
“Latina of the future.”
Well, we were right. Ten years ago, the magazine and
the young Latina were still in the early stages of
their careers; now LATINA Style is closing
its celebration of its 10th anniversary year, and
Josefina Lopez is a Latina of today, celebrating
wild successes and an even brighter future than we
foresaw for her in 1995. |
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LATINA Style
first featured Josefina Lopez in its
Fall 1995 issue (see bottom left) as
a Latina with a promising future. |
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In 1995, Lopez was 26 and the author of several
plays — the first, “Simply Maria or The American
Dream,” which she wrote at age 17, was a finalist in
the 1988 California Young Playwrights Project — and
was working on a couple of television projects.
Those projects, unfortunately, never worked out, but
Lopez soon embarked on an even bigger project that
quickly became a national phenomenon.
“Real Women Have Curves” began as a play — Lopez
wrote it in 1988. By 1999 it was a film script, and
by 2002 it was a household name. But it was a long
road. Lopez had tried to make the movie for years.
“I had so many rejections — [they’d say] ‘Who wants
to see fat Latinas on screen?’” she says. “It was so
wonderful to be right. … It was so wonderful to wait
so many years to go, ‘Aha!’" “Real Women Have
Curves” went on to enjoy huge audience popularity
and critical success, racking up several awards and
nominations, all while making a strong statement
about the Latina experience.
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Lopez’s interest in playwriting was borne of her
frustration studying acting at the Los Angeles
County High School for the Arts but not fitting into
the mold of the eroticized Latina stereotype of
stage and screen. “I realized that unless I was a …
size six or something — tiny and pretty and exotic
and erotic — I wasn’t going to have much of a
career,” she says.
So she became a writer and dedicated her work to
creating roles for Latinas that represented the
Latin experience she knew — “roles with dignity.”
Lopez divides her time between writing and her work
as founder and artistic director of Casa 0101, a
theater company located in Lopez’s stomping grounds
of Boyle Heights in Los Angeles. Casa 0101, a “home
for brilliant ideas,” offers theater and playwriting
classes, and produces its own plays. This December
it is hosting its first Latina film festival, which
showcases mostly local films, all Latina-made. The
classes are essentially free, and though Lopez
welcomes students and theater buffs from all
backgrounds, she is dedicated to her founding
principle — that Casa 0101 “has to be accessible to
Latinos.” It is another avenue through which Lopez
hopes to accomplish her wider goal, to “transform
our image on screen and on stage.” In fact, the
official mission of Casa 0101 is to “bring live
theater, digital filmmaking, dance and art so as to
nurture storytellers of Los Angeles who will someday
transform the world.”
Lopez’s biggest accomplishment, though, is
off-screen. Her son Etienne was born a week before
the premier of “Real Women Have Curves.” “It was
really a remarkable experience,” she says. “Although
the movie was doing really well … I really wasn’t
aware of how well it was doing because I was taking
care of my son.”
Currently Lopez is trying to sell two movies she has
written, and she’s not letting rejection get the
better of her again. If “Real Women Have Curves” did
anything, it restored Lopez’s faith in herself. “It
made me believe in myself again — that I had
something important to say.”
We hope to hear a lot more of it soon. |
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