This Week In Sexist History: Sexy Cuban Girls “No Understand” Edition!

Newspaper stories from the good old days say the darndest things. So every week on the Sexist, let’s take a ride on journalism’s way-back machine, to a time when Hispanic redheads qualified as news, boys didn’t count, and sexy Caribbean ladies landed in the pages of the New York Times for being adorably ignorant, not for attempting to ruin the United States Supreme Court and shit like that.

This Week in Sexist History:

Good Ol’ Day: July 7, 1900

Dateline: Boston, MA

Subject: Turn-of-the-century Cuban exchange students take Harvard by storm. The New York Times reports on Crimsons charmed by the girls’ exotic beauty, helpless pleas of “no understand,” and severely limited “powers of locomotion” (boys don’t count).

Hey, looks like these Cuban girls are having a great time reveling in the relatively progressive social landscape of 1900 Boston. This cannot stand:

Thank goodness for American girls. If they don’t take away the freedoms of their foreign-exchange sisters, who will?

I understand that these Cuban women have come to America to study English. But until they do, they will remain charmingly distraught, adorably helpless, and delectably worthy of mockery.

Take note, admirers—all it takes is a few American steps to render these exotic beauties utterly helpless.

Ha! I knew those Cuban girls weren’t sneaking out of their dorm rooms to “walk alone with men” on innocent “evening strolls.” These sexy señoritas can’t even fucking walk. Also, one is a redhead, The End:

Tags: 1900, boston, cambridge, english as a second language, foreign-exchange students, harvard, New York Times, sexist history