El Machismo Analysis

In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, the plot follows Oscar as he navigates through life. Initially, it is established that Oscar does not apply to the preconceived stereotypes of the woman-objectifying alpha male in the Latin American culture, el machismo. Oscar defies his culture; specifically in his view of love. Reinstated many times throughout the plot, the men Oscar surrounds himself with have one view of women, to merely hookup with them and to always hit on them. Oscar, although fascinated by sex and its pleasures, is desperately focused on finding romantic love. Oscar experiences many situations in which he realizes the true reality of love, relationships, and the complexity of people. On the contrary, the narrator,

Both are males conditioned by a society who defines masculinity in a word, el machismo. All the males in the book are just products of the society they live in. According to Merriam-Webster, machismo is a strong or exaggerated sense of manliness; an assumptive attitude that virility, courage, strength, and entitlement to dominate are attributes or concomitants of masculinity. This definition was quite politically correct and very concise. To understand what actual Latino teenagers/young adults perceive machismo as, I found this definition from urban dictionary: Having an unusually high or exaggerated sense of masculinity. Including an attitude that aggression, strength, sexual prowess, power and control is the measure of someone 's manliness. Also, a machismo man feels having these traits entitles him to respect and obedience from men and women around him. These definitions lead me to believe that boys are raised to feel entitled to objects, authority, woman, and money just because they are male. This is a huge flaw in how boys are raised. Rather than teaching boys to earn respect and to nurture their emotions, a whole culture is teaching the opposite. This affects Yunior because he believes he can be “in love” with Lola and still sleep with other women. He has been conditioned to feel entitlement over every woman he wants, which inevitably leads to him permanently losing Lola. According to machismo, in order for Oscar to