Aida Rodriguez: Being Called "Too Much" Fueled My Passion For Stand-Up Comedy

Soy Demasiado, a special issue for Juntos, celebrates Latinas who are reclaiming what it means to be "too much." Read the stories here.

My father is not at all surprised that I am an entertainer. "You were one of those dancing babies," he used to tell me after we reconnected in 2021, after 30-plus years being apart.

When I was about seven years old, my family had a party. It was one of those celebrations where everyone was in the zone and on the same vibration, jamming to the classics. "Patacón Pisao" by Johnny Ventura was blasting while we all danced there together in communion. I was feeling it as those rhythms hit my body from the top of my head to the soles of my feet, making a special stop at my hips. It was the first time that I remember breaking out of my shell to rise up to the beat of the drums. I jumped into the heartbeat of the song, feeling the pulse of my ancestors move through me.

My spontaneous movement shocked my uncle and provoked a reaction that was somewhere between fear and anger. He immediately paused his own gyrations to point out my little dance break to my mother. It was as if I had stopped the party — she was determined to nip this in the bud. In my family's eyes, I was doing "too much," being "too much." My mother instinctively snapped, and, right on beat, yelled at me, "Óyeme, no seas picua," a slang term that means "don't be fast." My dance moves were sexualized, judged, and immediately curbed.

There's no doubt in my mind that their reactions were rooted in fear. That somewhere deep down inside, they believed they were protecting me from any potential predators who would be enticed by my innocent moves. What they didn't realize is that they put that responsibility on seven-year-old me. I remember recoiling in shame, losing the taste for something I loved so much. No one took into account the endless hours I spent in front of my mirror, where I practiced secretly to impress the very tribe that would shut me down. They just saw a girl who was out of line. I don't remember dancing again without thinking about my every movement, making sure it was tame enough to shield me from vicious judgment.

As I got older and my personality began to evolve, I remember this constant urge to come out of my shell again and be loud. Similar to the feeling I got out of dancing, I wanted to express myself. When I was 13, I sat with my mother, grandmother, and a family friend in our living room. My mom was reminiscing about an old-school novella she loved, "Leonela," a story of a woman who falls in love with her rapist during his trial. I naturally blurted out, "Craziness," because I couldn't believe that this was her go-to love story. My grandmother immediately shot me down with her favorite idiom, "Los ninos hablan cuando la gallinas mean," or "Children talk when hens piss." Because chickens and hens don't have a bladder, the saying essentially means children should be seen, not heard. She couldn't allow me to go unchecked in front of the company.

The more I spoke out, the more I heard this. What I can say with certainty is that this never applied to my brothers. The idea of being talkative, gossipy, and too precocious was always attributed to being a girl. By the time I was a teenager, I felt like I would never earn the right to speak, let alone share my point of view. I was shushed by the most important women in my life, my role models. Why were they doing this to me? I was too young to understand that this was the very conditioning that they themselves had undergone. They were operating in my best interest, protecting me in their own odd way.

I began to live a double life, being the good girl at home, quiet and subdued. And everywhere else, I was just myself, making others laugh and jumping out of cars to dance freely on the freeway. My secret desire to become a comedian was something I buried deep down. I was told that being funny, talkative, and opinionated registers as obnoxious, boisterous, and downright unattractive to men. I didn't want to rock the boat — I wanted to jump off it. I couldn't exist in my own skin without being made to feel like I was disruptive and unappealing.

My dreams of being an entertainer were being squashed daily with patriarchal judgment and cultural limitations. I was told things like, "No one wants to marry a woman that acts like that" and "You are going to be a decent woman, so tone it down, dial it back." It didn't help that I was constantly being reminded that God was watching, which was terrifying. At 17, I left home with no plans of ever returning. The idea that being my true self was a disappointment to those I loved became too much to carry. I decided that I was going to live one life, and I knew that in order to do that, I was going to have to be far away.

Building a life away from home came with its own challenges. As I tried to live my most authentic life, I was still following some of the rules that had been set back home. I had internalized the misogyny and now was inflicting it on myself. I eventually got married and bowed down to the distant whispers of my family to become an honest woman after having my first child out of wedlock. My husband was also very patriarchal and sexist. It turned out I was attracted to the very thing I ran away from. It took time to unpack the self-inflicted misogyny. Life lessons, therapy, and motherhood all helped me begin to find my way. I found myself on that dance floor once again being told to tone it down, and honestly, I just really wanted to dance.

I got a divorce and ran away again, this time with two children in tow. I relocated to Los Angeles to finally pursue my dreams of being a star. Now I was a single mother in my 20s, and I was starting again and committed to breaking through the chains that had been holding me back my entire life. At this point, I had worked as a model, bank teller, and travel agent, all while parenting my two small children. It wasn't until some years later that I decided to pursue a career as a stand-up comedian. I was in my 30s, had lived my life, and was ready to talk about it. Ironically, I decided to use my voice in one of the most male-dominated disciplines in the entertainment industry. I had been in love with comedy for as long as I can remember, and now I was finally going to create it. I came out of the gate swinging, telling jokes about colorism, sexism, family dynamics, and motherhood.

One night after I got off stage at the Hollywood Improv, a male veteran comedian asked to speak with me. He was one of the few Latinos who had reached certain heights: comedy specials, national touring, and television credits. "Aida, you seem angry on stage, you need to fall back," he said to me. There I was, right back on the dance floor; I was being too much. "You need to smile more — your frown is uninviting," he continued with his unsolicited advice. For a moment, I froze. I thought about falling in line and just taking the note. It was what I was rigged for. I had been programmed to take it in and make the adjustments.

I can rewind my thoughts and remember all of the things said to keep me in line. "Stop making that flirty face, you are going to give off the wrong impression." "Go put on longer pants." "Stop talking to that boy outside by yourself, people are going to start talking." "I will beat the whore out of you." The list goes on and on, from instructions to rules to physical threats, all to keep me in line. I was just a girl trying to be free, living my life and responding to the world that was calling me. That night, while I was, once again, being coached, I decided to just walk away, I didn't have to respond or defend myself. I knew that I was finally in control.

Comedy is filled with sexism. Women have to overcome it daily, and I wasn't going to change it that day. I felt power in knowing that what I was saying was reaching people, and whether some of them liked it or not, they were listening. I was giving a voice to a pain that has existed since the beginning of time: women being told to be less, and to shrink because being too much made some men uncomfortable. At that moment, I was able to meet myself in one of the most freeing experiences of my life. I had moved past what had tried to hold me back and broken through what was trying to block me from forging ahead.

For years I lived with a bad girl complex, believing that my worth would drop every time I did something a good girl was not supposed to do. I had racked up a list: premarital sex, having a baby, getting a divorce; wearing a crop top, red lipstick, and wingtip eyeliner; and everything else on the very long list of things that kept growing. I had put the conviction behind me, and I wasn't going back.

Now I was facing a new set of rules, and I had to choose whether to follow them. Don't curse too much on stage, never talk about sex, write jokes that men can relate to, don't be bitchy, always smile, and on and on. I rejected anything that attached itself to putting and keeping me in my place. Men who were bothered by my essence tried to silence me and coach me into obscurity, but the more adversity I faced, the louder, bolder, and better I became.

I decided to listen to myself! Comedy became my healer, my gospel, and my testimony. I knew that when women in my audience saw me, they also saw themselves and who they really are. Remembering that seven-year-old girl and how she felt, I danced again, freeing myself to sway my hips as much as I wanted.

Aida Rodriguez is a comedian, writer, actor, and author — a favorite of critics and fans alike. Rodriguez's comedy special "Fighting Words" is streaming on Max, and she was a standout on the Tiffany Haddish-produced hit Netflix series "They Ready." She is a guest writer for BuzzFeed and Oprah Daily, as well as a regular commentator on "The Young Turks." She is also the host and creator of the podcast series"Say What You Mean."