Exótico
Attired with feather boas, headdresses, sequins or stockings, they defy a religious Latin culture that is ardently macho.
[3]: 57 Lucha libre (Hispanic freestyle wrestling) is a blend of art and sport that involves various fighting techniques such as judo, jujitsu, grappling and kickboxing.
[3]: 57 It is a world of masked luchadores (enmascarados), flying little people and flamboyant costuming, one filled with acrobatics and athleticism, all mixed with drama, pageantry and a physical comedy that is uniquely Latino origin.
Lucha libre is a performance that is open to multiple readings on axis of representation by two men.
Initially, the category of exóticos was formed as simply an act for entertainment; it did not reflect the life of any luchador.
[2]: 193–194 The physical strength that Barraza presents in the photograph as the la Dama del Silencio resists the "historical notions of the properly feminine body constituted as 'weak and pathological' and the culturally dominant codes of femininity that render women outside 'sports as cults of masculinity', especially in a Mexican cultural context where sports like lucha libre and physical strength are only celebrated for men; female bodies are culturally accepted if 'naturally' feminine, that is, if they do not threaten the dominant codes of the idealized Mexican, that is the mestizo and macho.
[2]: 193–194 As Balsamo (1996) explains, to be female and strong implicitly violates traditional codes of feminine identity".
Heather Levi has argued that lucha libre's theatricality challenges mainstream machismo in Mexico in the performance of certain wrestlers, like exóticos.
Barraza's wrestling photograph thus juxtaposes markers of her physical strength with those of femininity, codified through butterflies and the bright pink color of her suit.
In doing so, the photo creates what Anne Balsamo calls a 'gender hybrid' that invokes corporeal codes of femininity as well as of masculinity.
They create a gender hybrid in which the masculinity of a man is blended with the femininity of a woman but in an empowered form where they can compete with social norms and be accepted in an arena.
