Mafalda

What about my role model? I think that everyone could have a person to admire and respect. It doesn't mean that you must do everything to look like him or to follow his example. It's only that you like his way of life, his state of mind and his way to react in each circumstance. You can think of what he would do in your place if you have a problem and it would help you to know how to solve it. This person could be well-known or not, real or imaginary, because the most important thing is for you to feel close to him and to share the same view on various subjects. That is for me what exactly is a role-model.

My role-model isn't a well-known person or a celebrity. She is just a little girl called Mafalda. But in order to speak about her, you must first learn a few things about her "father," the Argentinian drawer Quino. He was born in 1932 in Buenos Aires. He began to draw during his youth and he studied at the art school of his native city. After that he drew comic strips for newspapers. His pictures are very humorous and satirical because it's a way for him to denounce the dictatorship, the economic crisis and the corruption in Argentina. However, he is most known for his main character Mafalda who was created in 1963 for the newspaper "El Mundo." She immediately obtained a great success in Argentina and around the world. Quino kept drawing satiric and engaged comic strips for which he was awarded.

Let me tell you a bit more about Mafalda. She is about 6 years old and lives with her parents and her small brother in an Argentinian city. She has close friends like Susanita, Manolo or Felipe, like all children. Nevertheless, she is different from the others because she is a very curious girl and she always wants to understand what's happening in the world and in her country. That's why she asks her parents embarrassing questions about subjects like economy, policy or education. ”You will understand it later” would be the most frequent answer for this type of questions. She is always very pertinent and shows us all the things we don't want to see and to know about our lives, our reactions and actions. She makes us understand that we are sometimes double-faced and that we want to escape from the truth. But she is a little girl, too, and some comics are thoughtless.

A Mafalda strip (http://www2.informatik.uni-muenchen.de/mafalda.html)

"MAMA, vos que futuro le ves a ese movimiento por la liberacion de la muj... no, nada, olvidalo."

("Mom, what future do you see for that women's liberation moveme... no, nothing, forget it.")

I've chosen Mafalda because I want to keep some of her human qualities like her curiosity, her way to ask the right question at the right time and her critical spirit. I want to be like her, to be always interested by what's happening in the world, to denounce what I find absurd in our everyday life. I can say that her character is quite close to mine because I've always asked my parents a lot of questions about complicated subjects, even I was younger. I think that when you get old, you lose a part of your innocence and you resign yourself to your life, you stop asking questions and you stop trying to change things that are disliking and disturbing you and that's what I want to avoid. When I read Mafalda comic strips, I see how I should be: always curious and thinking critically.