My grandmother at her "quinceañera".

My grandfather proposed to my grandmother through this letter. The first time I read it I thought it was really romantic until I started reading in between the lines. I underlined with red all the parts I thought needed to be deleted in order to understand the real proposal my grandfather was making. In this letter, he suggested to my grandmother to start taking more care of her house so when the time came she would be able to take care of him and their children.

"That the woman, whose main sexual gifts are self-denial, beauty, compassion, insight, and tenderness, must give and will give the husband obedience, pleasure, assistance, comfort, and counsel, always treating him with the veneration due to the person who supports and defends us, and with the delicacy of someone who does not want to exasperate the abrupt, irritable and hard part of her husband, (...)"

This epistle was systematically read during all the civil marriages in Mexico until the early 2000s.

"That the man, whose sexual gifts are mainly courage and strength, should and will give the woman protection, food, and direction, always treating her as the most delicate, sensitive and fine part of himself, and with magnanimity and generous benevolence, that the strong owes to the weak, essentially when the weak surrenders to him and when the weak has been entrusted by society."

This epistle was systematically read during all the civil marriages in Mexico until the early 2000s.

With this self-portrait, I decided to break with the repetitive pattern of submission and macho love.

"- Would you have liked to be a man?"
"- Of course! I wanted to be a man because I wanted to be free and independent. In my time people valued more men than women. Women always had to be under the guardianship of a man: her father, her brother, her husband..."

Interview with my grandmother.

"and yet I did the same to my daughters"