Güera de verdad

Pam, soldier shirking duties, Alissa, me

I consider myself a card-carrying whitey around these parts. A tan for me is more of an aspiration not to glow. Unlike the bronzed beauties strutting the streets, gold lame makes me look vaguely nauseated and the beach is... let's just say I blend into the sand nicely. However, I'm nothing compared to my statuesque friend Pam, who visited us this weekend.

Red-headed and speckled with freckles, she stood out in Mexico as one would imagine someone of Norwegian extraction would. Men channeled junior high English class, yelling "hi" and "hello" as we walked down the street. On the metro, fellow passengers held their glances just a little bit longer than normal. Waiters hovered, and found ways to chat us up. For us, her brown-haired friends, it was a little bit thrilling.

The real coup of the weekend came when we showed up at the Palacio Nacional to see Diego Rivera's famous murals. The Palacio was closed, with no less than 15 soldiers guarding the front gate. What started as a simple "De donde son?" directed at our flame-haired friend ended up with a photo session with our hand-picked hunk of a soldado. (We liked his gold collar thing.) He hammed it up as his friends giggled in the background... and they didn't let us wheedle our way in after hours.

Maybe the power of red hair has its limits? Maybe we just didn't try hard enough...