By Fernie Ruano Jr.
There are millions of wives in this country on their way home right now to resume playing the role of Gloria Delgado-Pritchett, the sassy Hispanic wife married to rich and grouchy Jay on ABC’s hit comedy Modern Family, and played convincingly by Colombian actress Sofia Vergara.
Her heavy accent be darned, Gloria, as is customary with most Hispanic women no matter where they’re from, marinates her words and actions with enough passion to fire up a Bandeja paisa for 8 and have enough left over for each guest to take home.
She talks and does big.
She talks and does big.
Kind-hearted and spirited, Delgado-Pritchett hardly passes up a chance to say and do as she feels, and do as she says. She is hot, funny and self-deprecating, too.
And anybody who doesn’t know her, or hasn’t made the slightest of efforts to meet her, would probably think - at first-glance anyway - Gloria Delgado-Pritchett is just another overly-sexualized, gold-digging Latina, which is exactly why Modern Family has become a primetime stable while debunking one of the oldest stereotypes in American history: “the clueless Latina.”
All Delgado-Pritchett has done for five years now is laugh in the face of those stereotypes from reminding her husband in the very first episode how proud she is about the small village she’s from although he's convinced it's a place where only "murders go down" to injecting her doughy-son Manny with cultural pride by showing up at his school to give him a traditional poncho and wooden flute to curling up hair with the force of a hurricane.
Let’s be real: Most Latinas are blessed with long hair, big-expressive eyes and curves just about everywhere but their feet. But the manner in which the show is written spits in the face of said stereotypes and lets the audience in on the over-the-top dry-humor. Kind of like, “The joke is on us.”and Vergara strings it along beautifully. And laughing – very loud.
At a reported $325K per MF episode, Vergara, the top-earning actress on television at $37 million as of this past June according to Forbes, is quite savvy out of character, too; the 42-year-old from Baranquilla has endorsement deals with Diet Pepsi, Cover Girl, Head & Shoulders and AT&T, and a 12-year contract with K-Mart.
Vergara caused a stir at this year’s Emmys and in social media circles by twirling in a pedestal in a white dress while some chairman of the TV academy blabbered on with another boring speech. Most of her critics viewed it as sexist and another black eye for Latina women everywhere because she was portraying a ‘literal object’.
And Sofia Vergara just laughed hard - as she so beautifully does every Wednesday night on your television screen.
Do you want to know more about this 305-reeking, beach-bumming, Cuban food-obsessed dude? Well, then.. You can connect with Fernie @wordbyfernie (Twitter) and Fernie Ruano (Facebook) and visit http://www.latinbeatsvibe.blogspot.com . Who knows? If he really likes you, he might even give you his email.
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