Speedos, Satanic Pacts, and Thalia's Triple Crown: The Telenovelas That Raised Me.

My telenovela education began with disembodied voices floating through my great aunt Vitalina's radio in early 80s Trujillo before I even knew what I was absorbing, those intoxicating storylines about masked heroes were already rewiring my brain.

Fast forward to first grade in the States and there I was, planted in front of babysitters Ana's TV, watching Venezuela's Mayra Alejandra navigate trauma, motherhood, and eventually love in Leonela. That 64-episode wonder hit different progressive yet conservative, featuring a full-figured leading lady and a hairy, speedo-clad Pedro Luis who oozed sex appeal in the most beautifully natural, un-gym-bunny way imaginable. And the title song makes me catch feelings all day long. So beautiful.

Then came El Maleficio, serving supernatural horror realness with satanic pacts and widows in peril, proving that telenovelas could be more than just romance they could be genuinely creepy thought-starters about good, evil, and what happens when you make deals with the wrong entities. The hair. The makeup. The shoulder pads. OH MY!

But let's be real: the 90s belonged to Thalia, the undisputed queen who delivered not one, not two, but three iconic Marías to my impressionable soul.

María la del Barrio gave us meme worthy villainy (Soraya Montenegro forever), Marimar transformed a beach girl with her dog Pulgoso into the sophisticated Bella Aldama, and Rosalinda (insert mey yelling "Gurl!" loudly and passionately here) oh, Rosalinda had me rewatching all episodes twenty times because Fernando Carrillo was all kinds of fine as that tortured pianist.

I forgot to mention... I believe Thalia was in her mid twenties or so playing a 15 year old. OVER THE TOP!

These shows were delicious escapism with their rags-to-riches fantasies and catchy soundtracks, exported to 180 countries and watched by billions. Yet watching them now, I can't unsee the glaring whiteness of it all, the token Black characters relegated to campesino roles, and my own ignorance about Black Mexicans existing until embarrassingly recently. It's wild how these shows sparked my earliest debates about racism, classism, and misogyny while simultaneously entertaining the hell out of me.

Honorable mention goes to La Doña, because Aracely Arámbula's Altagracia was the badass, revenge-driven antiheroine I didn't know I needed even if the show couldn't resist trapping her in the same tired "woman needs man" narrative that plagues the genre. That's ultimately why I've drifted away from telenovelas: the storylines haven't evolved, and watching heroines remain perpetually beholden to some dude gets exhausting when you're trying to exist in 2025.

But those formative years? Those radio dramas, ill-fitting speedos, supernatural scares, and Thalia's entire filmography served as both entertainment and education—teaching me about storytelling, social hierarchies, and exactly how much melodrama one human heart can handle. They were problematic, they were excessive, they were absolutely everything, and honestly? I wouldn't trade those memories for anything.