Excerpt... Ana explains that guilt around sex is deeply ingrained, especially for women who’ve been taught to view their bodies as shameful or something to be hidden. "It’s sinful to even think about your body, and even things such as basic, as your genitalia, which is just another body part, your arm or your vagina or what have you." She says that stories passed down generationally keep women from questioning those narratives. That’s where her work helping women identify these damaging beliefs, and gently challenging them, begins. 100LatinaBirthdays.com
Excerpt...
Ana explains that guilt around sex is deeply ingrained, especially for women who’ve been taught to view their bodies as shameful or something to be hidden. "It’s sinful to even think about your body, and even things such as basic, as your genitalia, which is just another body part, your arm or your vagina or what have you." She says that stories passed down generationally keep women from questioning those narratives. That’s where her work helping women identify these damaging beliefs, and gently challenging them, begins.
100LatinaBirthdays.com
100 Latina Birthdays is an original production of LWC Studios. It is made possible by grants from Healthy Communities Foundation, Kellogg Foundation, and the Chicago Foundation for Women, the Community Memorial Foundation, and Visiting Nurses Association. Mujeres Latinas en Acción is the series’ fiscal sponsor.
I’m in Cicero, a middle class Chicago neighborhood famously linked to gangster Al Capone, who made it his home base in the 1920’s. Neighbors light up grills and embrace the evening as the neighborhood comes alive.
On her patio steps, Tamara Jimenez reflects on how her upbringing, marked by traditional Mexican values and a pervasive purity culture, shaped the way she understood her sexuality. To protect her privacy, we’ve changed her name.
Tamara Jimenez: You’re a girl, and you know, you can't put yourself out there like that. You have to ask for permission to date.
Tamara Jimenez: Shaming sexuality or placing guilt, you better not do this, you better not do that, don’t let nobody touch you, or touch yourself or put anything in.
Born in Tiripetío, Michoacán, México, and brought to the United States at two years old, Tamara says she absorbed messages of modesty and guilt from early on.
Tamara Jimenez: All of that, it starts setting up your mindset to being scared of getting to know your body.
The messaging was not just at home.
Tamara Jimenez: Why is it that everybody talks about sex like it’s taboo, like no esta bien, but yet everybody does it? I didn’t understand that. And, if you know, in the Mexican media, television novelas, that’s all we see. It’s people making out, being all passionate and tense, and making love, and in the bedroom, and the sabana… They don’t show the act but they show the before and after. And we grew up with this being normal in our homes, seeing the novelas, el amor apasionado and all that. To me, I was like, wait so how is this so normalized? Even the weather girls are sexualized.
Tamara is 47. When she was 23, she reconnected with her first boyfriend from her teenage years.
Tamara Jimenez: Throughout the years, we became friends secretly because I wasn't allowed to see him. He's a married man.
But Tamara says she fell in love.
Tamara Jimenez: Wherever I went I was very careful of building a good reputation. To me, because I was raised Catholic, as long as he wasn’t married through the church it made it okay. I justified it, I could still have no commitment to him and I could still live my single life, but then I have a go-person to fill in those sexual needs per say, that as an adult woman I was starting to have.
After two decades of this secret relationship, Tamara began to wonder if it was meeting her needs, or leaving her feeling unfulfilled.
Tamara Jimenez: I was living in a false pretense of a possible future that he said we would have one day. He would always say, ‘I don’t know when, but I know we will end up together.’
It wasn’t until going to therapy that she realized she wanted more in a partner. She also wanted more… sexually.
Tamara Jimenez: By the nature of the relationship, of him being married and us seeing each other 2 to 3 times a month, and very limited time, it didn’t give a lot of room for sex exploration or sexual nourishment in our relationship. And it became a habit. It became a pattern of ‘This is it.’ It obviously was never enough, but I thought that that’s all that sex was, because that’s all I’d known, that’s what I was used to.
At 45, Tamara met a new partner who sparked what she calls her "sexual awakening.”
Tamara Jimenez: See, I always heard that women fake orgasms. And I didn’t know that I was faking because I didn’t know that I was having an orgasm or not having an orgasm. I didn’t have communication with my previous partner about sex at all. It was just you were together and that's it. Missionary style, and then we thought it was good. That was, I was good with that.
And with this current partner he made me feel so comfortable, he’s so confident, he’s very experienced so he started teaching me. And it made me feel comfortable to be able to communicate. And I think by him starting to get to know me he started realizing that I was not as experienced. He thought that being a single woman at age 45, that maybe I had had experience but then as we get to know each other and date more he started realizing, wait, no she hasn’t experienced squirting, creaming. And then I also didn’t know that there were different kinds of orgasms. I didn’t know there was vaginal, clitoral orgasm, that there was, or oral. I didn’t know about different positions. I didn’t know that if you and your partner agree to have anal sex it’s not bad.
Work published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, shows that U.S. Latinas are exposed to more open ideas about premarital sex and women, which increases the likelihood of them practicing unsafe sexual behaviors.
The findings suggest that Latinas with less say in their relationships are more likely to have unprotected sex with their partners.
Research published in the journal Women, Gender, and Families of Color, reveals that from ages 40 to 60, Latinas often experience loss, health issues, disappointment, and grief. It’s also when they challenge and question what their culture has taught them about their sexuality. Beliefs that the research confirms can impact their physical and mental health.
Tamara Jimenez: I would feel heard and seen by him taking the time out of his life to be with me. And that made me stay in that relationship for as long as I did. And also not knowing what I know now, which is well why wouldn’t he want to stay with me, or make me believe that one day we were gonna end up, if I’m young, successful, beautiful, strong and independent. He knows I’m not gonna go and mess around with anybody else, so it’s convenient for him.
Today, Tamara embraces her self-discoveries and her sexuality, fully understanding her body.
Tamara Jimenez: How did my life end up here? I never envisioned myself being full blown feminine, but you know what, that’s the breakthrough that I had.
Forty miles southwest of Chicago, in a quiet town called Plainfield, Ana Lopez helps women to rewrite their stories, to step into their pleasure, and to fully embrace their sexuality. Ana is a sexologist and self-proclaimed smut consultant.
Ana Lopez: I work with Latinas to help them enjoy sex sin verguenza. And as a smut consultant, I work with authors to write sex scenes to help them, uhm, prevent them from perpetuating sex negative narratives, so really to write sex scenes that are sexy.
Through her work, Ana guides Latinas through the journey of sexual self-discovery, and liberation from cultural shame.
She believes the conservative messaging in Catholicism creates a complicated relationship with sex. One that resurfaces as women experience hormonal changes, like perimenopause and menopause.
Ana Lopez: We’ve spent our teens, 20’s, and 30’s learning about our bodies, doing what we could because we didn’t have that knowledge, seeking out that knowledge. Now all of a sudden things are changing and it’s like we’re starting all over again…
Ana explains that guilt around sex is deeply ingrained, especially for women who’ve been taught to view their bodies as shameful or something to be hidden.
Ana Lopez: It’s sinful to even think about your body, and even things such as basic, as your genitalia, which is just another body part, your arm or your vagina or what have you.
She says that stories passed down generationally keep women from questioning those narratives. That’s where her work helping women identify these damaging beliefs, and gently challenging them, begins.
Ana Lopez: To recognize, ‘Oh, yeah, I actually don’t know anything about my body, or I know very little about my body, or my parents taught me wrong and not on purpose.’ But, like, I just actually wasn’t taught that. Bringing it back to you, because we are taught to go outside of ourselves. We need a partner to experience pleasure, we need someone else to tell us what to do, a second opinion. And it’s really about bringing it back to them.
Ana says that awareness is liberating.
Ana Lopez: I always say that the same pleasure that I get from eating tacos is the same pleasure that I get from having sex. Now, it’s a different type of pleasure, yes. But it’s pleasure none the same, it’s pleasure, either way you flip it.
Data from the Pew Research Center indicates that over two-thirds of Latinas in the U.S. feel pressure to maintain their appearance, whether through dressing nicely, wearing makeup, or getting their hair and nails done.
The pressure does not stop there.
More than half believe there is an expectation that Latinas marry and have children. Over half feel there’s a social insistence to always present themselves as “pleasant and agreeable.” These societal expectations often impact how many Latinas make decisions, especially at significant moments.
Ana Lopez: It’s really just about testing the waters to see like, ‘Oh what is it that I actually want? It goes back to that “Oh, what is it that I want vs what does everybody expect me to want?’
For some Latinas Ana supports, addressing these pressures happens during middle age.
When – she says– they’re breaking free from social norms, and exploring new physical and sexual facets of themselves.
Ana Lopez: I think that’s around the age where they’re just like, I’m gonna do what I want. Their parents are either older, maybe not knowing what’s going on, or they’re more distanced from their parents, maybe they have passed away already, maybe they’ve gotten out of a really toxic relationship, whether it was abusive or not. Their kids are out of the house so there's kind of freedom that they have because there’s less people around them.
Ana Lopez: And so the “lo que diran” well, it’s like, ‘Well, who cares? No one’s around me anyway.” Or not that no one’s around me but less people are around me and less often. And at that point the lo que diran goes away. is really about what the older people are gonna think, and now you’re the older person, so, it’s like well who cares because no one’s gonna say anything anyway.
Fernanda Mora: Fui con el que me está arreglando el pelo. Me dice Fer, se te está cayendo el pelo. Ahora ya vas a quedar pelona. Y le digo ay Javi, ando en la chingada menopausia! Oh, sí, yo lo veo de lo más normal.
VO #3 (Michelle) (I went to the hair salon, and the guy who does my hair told me, 'Fer, your hair is falling out. Now you're going to go bald.' And I said, 'Oh Javi, I'm going through the damn menopause.' Oh, yes, I see it as completely normal.)
It's a sunny spring morning in Chicago's Latino hub La Villita. Once a month, nine Latinas in their late forties and fifties gather at Enlace Chicago, a community organization. Some have done so for almost a decade, creating a safe space rooted in strength and shared experiences.
NAT - background chatter.
Sahida Martinez: Compre las hamburguesas… entonces quieren que ya las traigamos para acá? para que mientras platicamos, las demás estén comiendo.
(I brought burgers. Do you want me to bring them in? That way while we talk, everyone can start eating.)
Over plant-based burgers and laughter, they discuss something deeply personal… menopause.
Leticia Avendaño: Mi esposo se me quería acercar. Y yo ay, no, cómo se te ocurre ahora si no estás viendo que lo que menos quiero es eso porque y aquí el bigotazo.
(My husband was trying to get close to me. And I was like, I mean, how could you think of that, if you see that the last thing I want is that, because of this mustache.
One of the women, Leticia Avendaño, is describing the tiny hairs above her upper lip, and the excessive sweating on her face during hot flashes.
Both are typical symptoms of hormonal changes at menopause.
An international study (SWAN) concluded that Latinas in the U.S tend to reach menopause at about age 49. That’s slightly younger than the national average of 51 for non-Hispanic White women.
For some Latinas, these years, marked by “the change,” come with unexpected challenges.
Fernanda Mora: Entonces yo creo que hay que uno tener fuerza, porque me da más miedo, muchachas, que me digan hubieras venido con tiempo. Y a eso sí, no me lo iba a perdonar.
(I believe that you have to be strong, because what scares me more, is if they tell me, 'If You had come earlier.' I wouldn't forgive myself for that.)
Blanca Hernandez: Yo soy bien tranquila, pero sí, también. De nada me alteraba y les gritaba a mis hijos. Y ellos y ellos vieron ma, despacio, Mama, y yo, ¿Por qué me gritas? Y a mi esposo también, a todos.
(I'm very calm, but yes, nothing usually upsets me. But I would yell at my children. And they were like ‘Ma, why? Why do you yell at me?’ And at my husband, too, at everyone.)
I walk into a Wicker Park apartment complex, where Dr. Alexandra Paget Blanc, comes out to greet me with a warm smile and invites me into her cozy home. Sitting nearby is Zoe, her 3-year-old beagle, keeping her company during our conversation. Dr. Paget Blanc is a specialist in menopause and its connections to sleep and memory.
Dr. Paget Blanc: Brain functions do change during menopause, so when women say that they feel forgetful, or they have brain fog. These are reports that just come over again from just self-reported things so not objectively measured but women complaining about that. And when we measure that in lab, when people have measured that in lab we have found that it 's true.
Studies from The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, say that the activity of brain regions important for memory can fluctuate depending on estrogen levels. Research shows that women often experience difficulties with verbal memory or finding the right words.
Dr. Paget Blanc: Oftentimes it’s going to be measured by things like a list learning task, so we read them a list of words and ask them to recall that, and this is reliably connected to feelings of forgetfulness and memories.
One of the key players in these cognitive changes is estrogen.Changes in estrogen and progesterone levels can cause muscle pain and joint stiffness. Additionally, the Journal Maturitas says mood problems, stress, and sleep issues can make pain feel worse.
Dr. Paget Blanc: But the reality is estrogen also has a lot of activity in the brain, it has a lot of receptors in the brain, and so even though it’s a hormone it also directly impacts your brain function.
Sleep disturbances are also common during menopause. According to Dr. Paget Blanc’s research, these issues tend to affect midlife Latinas more than white women.
Dr. Paget Blanc: When you wake up at night, oftentimes we see is the thing that’s gonna keep you up once you wake up is being in your own head, like thinking about all of the things that either are going wrong or things that you worried about, or things that you have to do, and kind of being in that loop a little bit and being unable to shut down a little bit that little voice inside you that keeps saying I have to wake up, I have to do this, I have to do this, I have to make sure the kids are okay, I have to make sure I take care of my mom, you know, all of those things.
As stated by Dr. Paget Blanc, cultural expectations and family roles can make it even harder for women to stop overthinking.
Dr. Paget Blanc: In the family, I know in Latin families, it’s more common to have to take care of not only your own children but by the time women reach mid life, oftentimes they’re also taking care of their parents, and they’re usually the main caretaker. And so that could also be another factor bringing into rumination at night.
For the 9 women gathered at La Villita, acceptance has required intention. Gabriela Avendaño opened up about her most recent birthday.
Gabriela Avendaño: Primera vez que lo pude decir delante de todas ustedes, y me sentí liberada. ¿Por qué voy a esconder mi edad? Si yo ahorita me siento de lo más… Este Mayo voy a cumplir, el 1 de mayo, que es el jueves, voy a cumplir 49 años. Pero si ahorita me preguntan cómo me siento, pues yo me siento como de 30. Así me siento. Y ahorita es la primera vez que lo dije y hasta me sentí rara y no me sentí feo.
(The first time I was able to say it in front of all of you, and I felt liberated. Why should I hide my age? This Thursday, I will be 49 years old. But if you ask me how I feel right now, well, I feel like I’m 30. That's how I feel. And right now is the first time that I said it, and I even felt a little weird, but it didn't feel bad.)
However, the path to these conversations has not always been easy. Julia Cordova, who is 73 and the mother of three of the women who frequent the group, joined by chance.
Julia Cordova: Pues, el que más me molestaba, fue mi esposo, porque él no comprendía que era una enfermedad.
(The one who bothered me the most was my husband, because he didn't understand that it was an illness.)
She says he left her during menopause, claiming she didn’t satisfy him sexually.
Julia Cordova: Él se fue con otra señora. ¿Por cuánto tiempo se fue? Como dos o tres años, tuvo un hijo con otra muchacha.
(He left with another woman. How long was he gone? He was gone for about two or three years, I think. He had a child with a younger woman. But then he came back.)
Findings published in BMC Women’s Health show that even though Latinas make up nearly 20% of midlife women in the United States, they often have a hard time accessing healthcare. Many middle age Latinas encounter obstacles like financial hardship, lack of health coverage, loneliness and discrimination. These issues can contribute to more severe menopause symptoms and worse health results.
Sahida Martinez moved to Chicago from Mexico 26 years ago. When she first arrived, she faced the common challenge many immigrants experience…navigating an unfamiliar healthcare system.
She thought accessing birth control would be straightforward, as it was in Mexico. Instead, she had to wait six months for her first doctor’s appointment. A delay that, just two months after arriving, led to a pregnancy and then a miscarriage.
Sahida Martinez: Recien dejado mi pais, no estar con mi familia, no estar con mi mama, estar enfrentando esta situacion de un aborto. Como? cuando? cuando me embarace? porque no supe? porque nadie me dijo?
(I had just left my country, separated from my family, far from my mother, facing an abortion. How? when? When did I get pregnant? Why didn’t I know? Why didn’t anyone tell me?)
That experience inspired Sahida to become a community health promoter, or promotora. She now helps other immigrant women access care through Enlace, a nonprofit in Chicago that offers resources for Latinos.
SAHIDA MARTINEZ: Como personas inmigrantes, o muchas personas sin documentos, no tenemos acceso a todos los beneficios que el estado tiene, o no tenemos una aseguranza. Entonces nos da miedo como ir al doctor, y que me va a decir, me va a pedir?
(As immigrants or as undocumented people, we don't have access to all the benefits that the state offers, or we don't have insurance. So we're afraid to go to the doctor. We wonder, What will they say, or ask for?)
Work published in The Journal of Social Service shows that immigrant women often face multiple challenges when trying to access healthcare. On a personal level, they may struggle with issues like their legal status, lack of transportation, no health insurance, limited financial resources, and a lack of trustworthy health information.
Barriers include discrimination, miscommunication with healthcare providers, complex procedures, and a lack of culturally sensitive care.
To cope with these obstacles, many immigrant women depend on support from their families and communities.
In La Villita, a group of women create spaces that allow equal access, regardless of immigrant or financial status. Promotoras are trusted individuals, mostly women, who Latino residents confide in. That relationship allows them to spread much-needed information – and often life-saving health guidance.
SAHIDA: Les damos los números de teléfono para que ellas llamen y hagan una cita, ya sea por primera vez o para que den seguimiento. Les damos las direcciones de esas clínicas. Les decimos los nombres de esas clínicas, y en qué la pueden ayudar.
(We give them the phone numbers so they can call and make an appointment, whether it's for the first time or for a follow-up. We provide the clinic addresses. We tell them the clinic names and how they can help them.)
Because promotoras are members of the community themselves, they have a unique understanding of what truly works for their people. Building trust and breaking down barriers to health.
Among the women who gather at Enlace, menopause isn’t just a physical change; it’s a chapter marked by resilience. Leading these conversations, Sahida makes sure they understand that strength also comes from not facing these moments alone.
Born and raised in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago, Dr. Juanita Mora is proud to be first-generation Mexican-American, and a doctor. An allergist and immunologist, Dr. Mora explains menopause isn’t just about hot flashes and mood swings.
Juanita Mora: Anytime our bodies undergo hormone changes as women, lung function is affected.
Juanita Mora: While when women can’t breathe, guess what, they’re not sleeping very well, and they are not gonna have as much of a sexual drive either. Right? Because of the fact that if you can’t breathe then your quality of life is affected in all aspects. Including sexual dysfunction.
Dr. Mora highlights a broader concern, particularly for Latinas who often live in areas severely impacted by environmental pollution.
Juanita Mora: The Latina community, speaking as a whole, three times more likely than a white woman who’s postmenopausal or even menopausal to live in an area where it’s failing in three grades. So it’s failing in ozone contamination, short particle pollution, as well as long term particle pollution as well, too.
A blog published by The American Lung Association states that air pollution in predominantly Latino zip codes is 14% higher than predominantly white areas.
Juanita Mora: So all this breathing in, it has health implications. Health implications is for example particle pollution and ozone hits the lungs, goes out into the bloodstream and it sets off a cascade of inflammation that can put Latina women at higher risk for strokes when it goes to the brain, heart attacks when it goes to the heart, if women are pregnant it can cause premature births and even early deaths. And it has been related as well with earlier and more lengthened Alzheimer's disease.
She emphasizes that awareness and proactive steps are essential.
Juanita Mora: Be aware of the contamination in your area. You can go to lung.org state of the air, they can put their zip code in and they can exactly see what are the grades for ozone, or short or long term particle pollution.
Juanita Mora: We have to think of lung health and we also have to think of basic sexual dysfunction at the same time, because if you think about it, if you can’t breathe, nothing else matters.
CREDITS
100 Latina Birthdays is an original production of LWC Studios. It is made possible by grants from Healthy Communities Foundation, Kellogg Foundation, and the Chicago Foundation for Women, the Community Memorial Foundation, and Visiting Nurses Association. Mujeres Latinas en Acción is the series’ fiscal sponsor.
Juleyka Lantigua is the series creator, executive producer, and editor. This episode was reported by me, Carmen Marquez. Mixing and sound design by Kojin Tashiro. Fendell Fulton fact checked it. Kori Doran is our marketing associate. Cover Art by Reyna Noriega.
For more information, resources, episode transcripts, and Spanish translations, visit 100latinabirthdays.com. That's one, zero, zero Latina birthdays dot com. Follow us on Instagram, X, and Facebook at 100 Latina Birthdays.
100 Latina Birthdays is an open source podcast. We encourage you to use our episodes and supporting materials in your classrooms, organizations, and anywhere they can compliment your work, and make an impact. You may rebroadcast parts of, or entire episodes, without permission. Just please drop us a line so we can keep track.
Thank you for listening.