Woman standing with a truss

This type of clay figurine belongs to the late period of the Huasteca culture and yet it has significant similarities with those produced since the Preclassic, a millennium and a half before, and which are abundantly represented in the collections of the Museum. The same desire to underline the sensual forms of the young female personage, with a thin waist and strong thighs, is remarkable, also the similar way of shortening the limbs of the arms and legs and detailing a piercing gaze marked with a burin.

They differ, however, because of the size of a truss, the shape of the face and the hairstyle, as well as the type of paste and the surface treatment. As a renewed ode to fertility and sexuality, this little piece refers us to the prejudices that the Mexicas professed against their Huastecan contemporaries for their supposed lewdness and their way of displaying the body without modesty.

In this type of figurine, the truss, a clothing uncommon for women, is usually represented much thicker and in this case it evokes the protection that the ballplayers wore to protect their waist and lower belly. It should be noted that there is data that points to the participation of women in the ballgame of the Huasteca society of those times.