Contra tu Madre: Sol Diaz’s Comics and Chilean Gender Norms

This thesis interrogates how three comic books by Sol Diaz each engage with the historic wave of feminist protest currently sweeping across Chile. Diaz firmly places her works within the contemporary national debate, confronting themes of conformity, heteronormativity, race, class, and women’s rights. Each of the three works addressed in this paper uses distinct visual language to critique entrenched gender roles. The first book, Bicharracas, centers on three girls marginalized because their bodies transgress traditional aesthetic beauty standards. This work, composed of single-page comic strips, uses humor and caricature to demonstrate the social consequences imposed on non-conformist female bodies. The second work, Como ser una mujer elegante? is a series of aphoristic cartoons about the classist ideal of elegance. Eventually, Diaz introduces “wildness” as a more freeing alternative construction of femininity. La historia ilustrada de un embarazo follows a young, urban couple as they navigate gendered expectations and medical realities of pregnancy. This work of graphic medicine aims to educate the public about obstetric violence. It takes a firm political stance and ultimately proposes a progressive vision for Chilean family structures. Using interdisciplinary methods, including historical research, translation, interviews, feminist theory, and visual analysis, this paper shows how Diaz’s works each critique traditional constructions of femininity in Chile, making them a site of the current social debate regarding the role of women. As the first study of Chilean feminist comics, this thesis fills holes in existing scholarship. Additionally, this paper is important precisely because the radical new wave of feminism that these comics engage with is contemporary. Chileans are currently placing their bodies on the line and in the streets to dismantle oppressive, traditional gender norms and end sexist violence against women.