Glee aired its episode “Mash Off.”In the episode, Santana Lopez, a mean Latina girl played by Afro-Latina and Puerto Rican actor Naya Rivera, is outed as a lesbian in a local political ad and immediately cries out, “I haven’t even told my parents yet.” And at that moment, I froze.
As a Latina, a closeted trans woman, and a lesbian, I was seeing my biggest fear happen to the one character I most related to on all of television.When her character is at her lowest and most vulnerable in the episode, Santana, alongside Mercedes Jones (Amber Riley), puts on the best performance in the history of Glee — an absolutely devastating mashup of “Rumor Has It” and “Someone Like You.”Throughout the entire song, Rivera’s face is on the brink of sometimes.