señoritas

girls vs. boys girls vs. boys

We assembled a six-strong team
of girls vs. boys writers this month and
charged them with the prickly task

señoritas
of describing Spanish girls in little more
than 400 words. Here’s what they said:

Advanced Section
Luc Ciotkowski Helen Macrae Ryan Craggs Hayleigh Stewart Matt Johnson Susana López

I Y
’ll begin with the purely physical and the
first thing I have to mention is the north/
south divide. I noticed it years ago when I was
studying (interpreting and translating, not Spanish
women) in Granada. Madrid being the capital and
also in the centre of the country makes it more
difficult to spot here, but I think there is a clear
tendency for bigger breasts and smaller bums in
the north and smaller breasts and bigger bums
in the south. Couple that with the reputation of
northern Spanish girls to be more sexually liberated
than their southern counterparts (which may just
be right in the most general sweep), and you have
got the basis of a headlining article worthy of the
free daily newspapers Qué!, 20 Minutos or ADN. Just
add some manipulated stats and they’d be off.
I’m surprised dying their hair blond is still quite popular. Even
if lots of girls were brought up on Barbie or Nancy dolls, and
classist attitudes that perceive lighter, straighter hair as more
classy than curlier, darker ‘common’ or, God forbid, ‘gypsy’ hair
still seep into some Spanish families. I’ve always thought
that so many of the Spanish girls who go rubia de bote end
up looking a bit dirty (in the unwholesomely sexy sense of
the word). I don’t know if it’s to do with skin tone, eyes, bone
structure or what, but there’s something not right about it.
They’re far more independent than their male
opposite numbers, but the molly-coddling they tend to get
from their mothers makes them as domestically useless
as the boys. I can imagine a Spanish couple, just moved
into their new house (after marrying, first time properly
living outside the parental home) asking each other how
to use the iron/switch the washing machine on. Sadly, my
intuition tells me it’s more likely to be her than him who
finally assumes the mantle in this arena.
At work, they’re easily as hard or harder-working
than the guys, but come up against glass ceilings to their
professional development all over the place. They’re
nothing like their mothers, and yet few can survive an
entire day without reporting back to the mothership, no
matter where she may be or how little there is to report.
There always is something to report, however, because
talking is a Spanish girl’s favourite thing.
Never mind Venus and Mars: Spanish girls are from planet
talk, and Spanish guys shout over the top of them. No wonder
over 80% of Spaniards have irreparable ear damage by the age
of 30. (Although, I might have read that in Qué!)
our first impressions tend to be the most vivid
and stay with you the longest, often colouring
any subsequent experiences you have. For this
reason, I will always and forever think that Spanish
girls are brilliant, as I was lucky enough to live with
four of the loveliest chicas you could hope to meet
during my first sojourn in Spain. When I tumbled off
the bus with my gargantuan suitcase in Zaragoza
back in September 2003, I was a bit apprehensive
to say the least. A hapless Erasmus student, I knew
no one and despite several years of study and a
couple of qualifications under my belt, my Spanish
was decidedly ropey. These girls were my guardian
angels: they took me in under their collective wing
and are probably the reason I’m living in Spain now.
Gradually they familiarised me with the nuances of
Spanish life. They chided me for eating sandwiches and
crisps for lunch, and taught me that mealtimes were
a social affair, to be enjoyed at leisure and not simply
scoffed down in the shortest time possible. They helped
me overcome my fear of hanging my washing out on
the balcony and dropping my underwear onto the patios
below. They took me out to bars so smoky my eyes would
water and showed me how to party until 8am Spanish-
style. They tried (and failed) to teach me how to make
tortilla española. They even welcomed me into their
pueblito at weekends so I could get a glimpse of España
profunda. Of course, my Spanish improved dramatically,
too. We never spoke in English, and the girls provided
sensitive error correction as I got my past tenses mixed up,
confused ser and estar, and muddled my way through the
subjunctive. I learnt more in those 12 months than in 8
years of study back in the UK.
Of the inevitable stereotypes, I think some do have a
grain of truth in them. Spanish girls like to talk. A lot. We
would have many a heated debate over dinner, and on the
occasions we had dinner parties with so many guests we'd
run out of plates and chairs, the noise would be deafening.
They also always look immaculate, even (annoyingly) for
9am lectures whereas I'd turn up looking like I'd been
dragged through a hedge backwards. And most of them do
smoke far too much. But more importantly, they are warm,
open and make fantastic friends who will show you an
amazing time...even if things happen several hours after
you'd planned. So Noelia, Belén, Imma, Bea and Spanish
girls everywhere – here's to you!
“Y
ou shouldn’t worry about her,” this Dutch
guy tells me at a party. Despite just
meeting me, he rolled me a cigarette and
broke down life. “What you want is a German girl,
or a Swede. They [take greater care in removing
body hair from] their [lady parts].”
Forgive my puritanical editing there, but you get the picture.
I was doing what any heterosexual American male would
do; I was pining after this Spanish girl I’d met on a trip I took
to Portugal. She was dark and alluring; I was twenty-one.
Something had to give.
Unfortunately, Laura’s French boyfriend was the only
one giving anyone anything, or so I found out that night.
Ugh. Not to mention, I was leaving the continent for who-
knows-how-long two weeks later. End of story. Sort of.
Coming back to Spain a year and a half later, I had this
idealized image of Spanish girls. Thin, beautiful dark, exotic.
Penelope Cruz, Elena Anaya. Then I started dating them.
“I can’t stand my roommates,” Ana told me in bed.
She smiled to their faces. “I can’t stand my classmates,” she
told me on our way to meet them for drinks. After a while,
I couldn’t stand her not standing anybody. We didn’t even
fight. We just stopped calling.
Spanish women aren’t mysterious figs; they’re nuts.
I’m not even just talking about the ones I’ve dated. Whether
it’s the girl sticking her tongue in her boyfriend’s ear, three
inches from my face on a crowded metro, or the hippy in
Retiro who wouldn’t put down her Devil-sticks to wash her
clothes, none of them make sense.
Worst of all, I have no idea what age to catch them at.
Here’s how to tell how old a Spanish girl is; if she’s wearing
loads of makeup and yelling, she’s 18-50. If she’s dressed
to the nines, she’s 18-50. If her mood flips on a dime, she’s
18-50. If she looks like Snow White would call her “Ugly”…
she’s hit 50. I swear, Spanish women must sell their souls for
being attractive youths, because when they hit the wrong
side of 50, they look like something out of the Lord of the
Rings.
I guess I could still see myself settling down with a
Spanish girl; they do seem to treat their men well enough.
The only problem is, I couldn’t ever see one settling down…
period. Seriously, do they ever stop yelling?
T T
his morning, while half-jogging to the nearest
metro stop and praying that my students were
also running later than usual, I nearly ran over
a Spanish woman walking her dog. When I turned
around to utter a breathless, perdón, I wasn’t
surprised to see that not only did she look like she
just stepped out of a Massimo Dutti store window,
but she was wearing lipstick and extremely high
heels. It was 8:00 in the morning. Did I mention she
was walking her dog?
I consider it a feat for me to even be awake and out of
my house at 8 am. The fact that I am dressed and don’t
have a raging headache is a bonus. And I go to work
wearing neither lipstick, nor high heels. Meanwhile,
Spanish women are all so dapper that I have lived here for
seven months, have been to several salsa classes that are
meant for exercise, regularly go running in the park, and
have never once seen a Spanish woman in a T-shirt. I’m
beginning to suspect that there is a governmental ban on
the things.  the “¡Guapísima!” cat calls from the homeless newspaper
Other than their seemingly innate ability to walk,
or run, for miles on 16th century cobblestones in 6-inch
heels, I’ve also never seen so many dedicated mothers,
who give so much attention and affection to their children.
This might be because Spanish people typically wait
longer to start a family than Americans do, or maybe I just
haven’t paid similar attention to American mothers, but it
seems to me that every Spanish child is lucky just for the
fact that someone will still be eager to do their laundry
when they’re 35 years old.
Another characteristic that I admire Spanish women
for is the fact that they don’t take their husbands’ last
names. I quite like my last name, and don’t really want to
screen my potential suitors for equally strong surnames
(“Nice to meet you, Matt...Focker? Ohhh, no.”) Now,
whenever posed with arguments for conformity, I can cite
the women from Spain, and act very well-travelled as I do it.
Although, like all of us, Spanish women have their
flaws - can you ever really tell whether they are outraged
or just having a normal conversation? – overall, I have
found them to be caring, loquacious, generous, and
inevitably well-dressed people. Some may argue that the
previous sentence could also be used to describe Spanish
men, but I would be quick to point out that the women do
it all in high heels.
he best way to paint an accurate picture of
women in this country is found in a spectacle
that can be observed every day on your way
to the metro. Stopped at a crosswalk, checking your
watch and grimacing with disgust at the garbles of
garbage which somehow mysteriously manage to sneak
their way onto your iPod, let’s say you notice a full-lipped,
olive-skinned, brown-eyed twenty something business
professional in a tight fitting skirt, four inch heels and
bowl-cut bangs, walking at an alarmingly brisk rate.
Suddenly, as that green walking man sign cheerfully chirps
to life, she dives, cell phone to ear, into a skillfully swift
sprint, and like a receiver beating the secondary on a Hail
Mary, overtakes the crowd of slow-walking smokers and
breaks through triumphantly, first at the finish to the other
side of the street. Her phone still held daintily upright,
eyes are focused, forward; she doesn’t crack a smile, show
the faintest glow of perspiration, or have even a misplaced
hair from her surprisingly athletic crosswalk jogging. Then,
shifting her phone from one ear to the next, she ignores
salesman, exercises a perfectly executed, no look purse
dig, pulls out a Lucky Strike red, lights it without breaking
stride, swims smoothly as a salmon through the upstream
crowd, indifferently knocks a few people off the sidewalk
and onto the street, gracefully dodges the freckles of
doggie land mines dotting the sidewalk with nimble-
footed ease, and keeps on her way to meet up with her
short, balding, forty year old banker boyfriend whom
she will make out with aggressively (because they both
still live in their parents’ flats where they aren’t allowed
to make out) at the café where they’ll soon be sipping
senselessly small cervezas. You shake your head now as
she disappears into the waves of pedestrians, wondering
her name, what she does, where she lives, and how in the
hell it’s possible for one human being to talk at such an
incredible speed. Just like that – after a fleeting moment
of first-sight love, she’s gone; out of your life forever.
Your heart slumps. “¡Hasta la vista!”, you imagine yourself
calling, silently. “Until next time!” or until the next one
comes running by, at least.
M
e preguntaba un amigo australiano de
visita en Madrid si todas las chicas que
desfilaban por delante de la terraza donde
nos estábamos tomando unas cañas se habían
vestido para ir de boda. Para Duncan, el vestuario,
el maquillaje y la altura del tacón de las chicas
que pasaban eran propios de una ocasión especial.
El comentario de mi amigo me hizo sonreír pero
también me llevó a pensar en algo que, con el
paso de los años se me ha ido confirmando: a las
españolas nos encanta prepararnos. Prestamos
especial atención a nuestro aspecto físico pero no
solo cuando vamos a salir de copas, como es el caso
en otros países. ¿Coquetas? Creo que sí lo somos.
¿Guapas? ¿feas? ¿gordas? ¿delgadas? Depende. Muchos
extranjeros nos consideran guapas, sin tener por qué serlo
necesariamente. Simplemente, tenemos algo que no
tienen las mujeres de su país. Recuerdo con mucho cariño
un texto de un manual que he utilizado durante años en
mis clases de español para extranjeros. En él se hacía una
descripción muy general sobre los españoles. La frase
mágica era “y tienen las mujeres más guapas de Europa”.
En ese momento todos los chicos de la clase sonreían
para sus adentros orgullosos de poder decir que se habían
ligado a una española mientras que las chicas solían poner
cara de no estar de acuerdo con esta afirmación. Viéndolo
de una forma objetiva, me atrevo a decir que muchas
españolas “se hacen guapas” por esa atención especial que
prestan a su aspecto físico, que ya notó mi amigo Duncan
al segundo día de estar en Madrid.
Dejando de lado cuestiones físicas que saltan a la vista
de todos, quisiera romper uno de los tópicos que más he
escuchado a lo largo de los años sobre nosotras: españolas,
mujeres calientes. A pesar de lo que se diga de nosotras en
el extranjero, todavía hay muchas (para mí, demasiadas)
mujeres españolas que viven su sexualidad como si fuera
un tabú, influidas por la educación recibida por sus madres.
Por otra parte y desde mi mentalidad abierta ¿por qué se
relaciona caliente con fácil? En más de una ocasión he tenido
que pararle los pies a alguno que ha pensado que por ser
española me bajaría la falda de forma inmediata.
Es difícil describir a todo un sector femenino cuando
se forma parte de él, por ello os dejo que juzguéis por
vosotros mismos: divertidas, aburridas, celosas, fumadoras,
compradoras compulsivas, maternales, quejicas. Todo eso es
lo que encontrareis ahí fuera y mucho más. ¡Mucha suerte!

24 may 09 www.europeanvibe.com www.europeanvibe.com may 09 25