Aesthetics are cultural practices through which people and institutions reproduce or contest inequalities. The aesthetics (clothing, makeup, hairstyle, accessories, and nail designs) of urban girls of color signaling racial and class differences are often conflated as evidence of their alleged hypersexuality, lack of aspirations to become upwardly mobile, and criminality. This paper utilizes a discourse analysis of 78 “Hot Cheeto Girl” TikTok Videos as well as 53 interviews and ethnographic observations with college-going Latinas to examine how aesthetics reproduce or contest heteronormativity. I contend that “Hot Cheeto Girl,” “Chola,” and “Ghetto Girl,” narratives participants utilized to describe dominant portrayals of them, are discourses of heteronormativity since they frame particular aesthetics as visual markers of immoral sexuality. In addition, I describe how low-income Latinas engage in respectability politics, avoiding behaviors and styles of dress associated with the “Hot Cheeto Girl” to refute discourses of heteronormativity and gain access to mobility via college.
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