page_title: Exótico
section_title: Significance
hierarchical_section_title: Exótico / Significance
caption_attribution_description: 日本語: 2016.11.3大阪
context_page_description: In lucha libre, an exótico is a luchador fighting/performing in drag. The exótico’s movement vocabulary is campy, often silly, and seldom dignified. Exóticos are male wrestlers who appropriate feminine aspects in their wrestling personas or "gimmicks" – through feminine costumes, for example, ‘contesting the dramatic representation of machismo’ and successfully unmanning their opponents in the ring while also ‘rejecting the outward signs of manhood’. Though exoticos may not necessarily be gay, they often are, and their sexual ambiguity is undeniable. Attired with feather boas, headdresses, sequins or stockings, they defy a religious Latin culture that is ardently macho.
context_section_description: Heather Levi has argued that lucha libre’s theatricality challenges mainstream machismo in Mexico in the performance of certain wrestlers, like exóticos. Exoticos challenge the traditional norms of what a man should and should not do, and challenge that idea that a maricon can not defend himself. Foremost, they also allow women to empower themselves by bringing a female presence to the ring. Although there are audience members that do not take exoticos seriously, their act has really helped challenge traditional machismo and has been effective enough to even be considered a threat by "ideal" machismo.
  "Exóticos then contest the production of mexicanidad as they challenge the ideal mestizo-macho heterosexual) wrestler. As such, female wrestlers also challenge lucha libre’s traditional performances and, while women wrestlers only fight other women and cannot literally unman male opponents in the ring, they do so culturally, since female wrestlers transgress the codes of normative femininity inside and outside the ring."  Although women don’t actually fight with men in the ring, they are represented by exoticos since they are openly homosexual. This allows women to empower themselves even more and have a type of vision that gives them equal rights. The biggest reason why this is seen as a threat by traditional machismo is because once these women are empowered, they realize that they have the same rights as men do therefore disempowering machismo completely. The fact that exoticos can physically challenge a man in the ring and physically challenge male masculinity is what makes the role of exoticos so crucial to the transformation of social norms.
  The outfit of an exotico is known to be different regarding its style and colors. The outfit represents different aspects of their identity and their stance against machismo, while empowering women. "Her face is covered with a silver and bright pink butterfly mask. 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. The outfit that these men in drag sport help define their category of an exotico. 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.
caption: Yosuke♥Santa Maria, a Japanese exótico. Santa Maria adopted the persona when she (Santa Maria uses feminine pronouns) joined the Millennials, a group with a lucha libre style.
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