About: This article explores the sexualisation and fetishisation of young Latin American women on social media, based on peer research by the Young Women’s Advisory Board of the Latin American Women’s Rights Service (LAWRS) in London. It traces how these stereotypes connect to histories of racism and colonialism and shows their impact on young women’s everyday lives. It also sets out what platforms, policymakers and women’s specialist services can do to address them.
By the WAVE Office
As more of our lives move online, violence against women and girls moves with them. This violence grows out of inequalities and stereotypes that already exist offline, and the spread of misogynistic and anti-feminist narratives online continues to fuel it. Harassment, hate speech, sexualised abuse and stalking now also unfold on the platforms we use every day.
For young racialised and migrant women, sexism and racism often shape this abuse at the same time. Against this backdrop, the episode “Beyond the Screen: Sexualisation and Online Abuse Against Young Latina Women” of the WAVE podcast looks at one specific form of technology-facilitated violence: the sexualisation and fetishisation of young Latin American women online. The episode brings together Júlia Dantas, Malena Campillay and Amélie Romano Gonzalez from the Young Women’s Advisory Board of the Latin American Women’s Rights Service (LAWRS) in London, and Melissa Munz, Young Women’s Project Coordinator at LAWRS.
Research rooted in lived experience
LAWRS is a by and for feminist organisation that offers Latin American women in the UK culturally and linguistically specific services, from advice and counselling to a dedicated service for survivors of violence. Women’s specialist services like LAWRS play a vital role in tackling gender-based violence against women, as the WAVE Country Report 2025 shows.
The Young Women’s Advisory Board brings together first- and second-generation Latin American women aged 18 to 24, who lead advocacy, training and an annual peer research project. This year, the board chose to focus on racial fetishisation and online abuse because of how closely it connects to their own lives. Focus groups with board members brought up shared concerns around sexualisation, body image, social media and racialised stereotypes. These shaped the research question: how does the fetishisation of the “Latina image” on TikTok and Instagram affect the identities of young Latin American women aged 18 to 25 in London?
A stereotype with colonial roots
The researchers analysed comedy sketches, POV videos, podcasts, memes and comment sections across TikTok and Instagram. Malena Campillay describes a consistent “Latina image” that combines a narrow physical ideal with contradictory traits: sexually available and “fiery”, yet submissive.
As Malena explains, these ideas do not exist in a vacuum. They go back to the colonial period in Latin America, when colonisers dehumanised Indigenous and Black women and treated them as existing for the sexual satisfaction of European men. Hollywood carried these representations forward from the 1930s, portraying Latin American women as “foreign and exotic”, and the music industry reinforced them in the 1990s. Today, both Latin American and non-Latin American creators profit from the same stereotypes online. “The way in which we were and continue to be represented in the media is one-dimensional, without the many complexities of all the countries we belong to and the many cultures we come from,” says Malena.
Why intersectional research matters
The survey findings show how widespread this experience is: almost 92% of respondents felt they had been fetishised because of their Latin American identity. As Júlia Dantas explains, the impact reaches into many areas of life. In romantic relationships, young women face expectations of being “feisty” yet submissive, and in education and employment they often feel others do not take them seriously. More than half of respondents said the content they see online makes them feel worse about their bodies. When asked for three words to describe how fetishising content made them feel, respondents most often chose insecure, uncomfortable and frustrated.
Melissa Munz stresses that this harm does not stay on the screen. “Although it happens online, the impacts, the implications, the consequences of this type of abuse go offline,” she says. Being treated as an object leaves deep marks on young women’s identities at a decisive stage of their lives. It can affect their self-esteem, body image and mental health, make it harder to set healthy boundaries in relationships, and limit their sense of safety in public spaces. Race, class, gender identity, immigration status and intergenerational trauma can deepen these impacts, which is why Melissa calls for an intersectional understanding of online abuse. Malena points out how little research looks at online abuse at the intersection of gender and ethnicity, even as racialised and migrant women become increasingly targeted online. “Not every woman and girl experiences the same abuse online,” she says, as racism and xenophobia intertwine with misogyny.
From individual safeguards to structural change
Amélie Romano Gonzalez shares steps young women can take to protect themselves: blocking creators and accounts that post fetishising content or sexualised comments, filtering keywords on TikTok, reporting harmful content and raising awareness. “Although this content does circulate on social media, it does not define us,” she says.
Responsibility, however, cannot rest on young women alone. The board’s recommendations call on social media platforms to use AI tools safely and responsibly to detect and filter fetishising content, review posts that many users flag or block, offer optional content filters and warnings, and introduce third-party ethical filtering systems. They also call for the UK Online Safety Act 2023 to explicitly recognise intersectional harms such as racialised and gendered fetishisation, for Ofcom to commission research on online abuse against marginalised communities, and for a national awareness campaign that shifts responsibility away from victims and onto wider society. Women’s specialist services and community leaders also play a role in understanding these harms and offering tailored support.
As Melissa concludes, the Young Women’s Advisory Board shows that Latin American women are active citizens of British society, of Europe and of the world, and far more than a stereotype. Their research focuses on one community, yet its findings matter for all women and girls.
Listen to the episode and read the full report to hear directly from the young researchers driving this change.
References
- Latin American Women’s Rights Service. (2026). Voices of young Latinas: Peer research on online abuse and the impact of fetishisation. https://lawrs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/YWAB-Peer-research-report-2025.pdf
- Women Against Violence Europe. (2025). WAVE country report 2025: The status and value of women’s specialist services in tackling gender-based violence against women. https://wave-network.org/wave-country-report-2025/
About the speakers: Júlia Dantas, Malena Campillay and Amélie Romano Gonzalez are members of the Young Women’s Advisory Board at the Latin American Women’s Rights Service (LAWRS), a group of first- and second-generation Latin American women aged 18 to 24 who lead advocacy, training and peer research. Melissa Munz is Young Women’s Project Coordinator at LAWRS.
Cover image by the Young Women’s Advisory Board of the Latin American Women’s Rights Service
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or opinion/position of Women Against Violence Europe (WAVE).
