Many of the women at El Cereso have received similar notoriety. Eunice Ramírez, 19, is the most famous. She was arrested last November for luring men into places where they could be kidnapped, and immediately photos from her Facebook page appeared nationwide, mostly showing her in a bikini.

American border patrol agents say that they have also been catching more attractive teenagers in short skirts with drugs taped to their inner thighs.

The result, here at least, is a female prison population both gang-connected and perfume-scented. Most of the 160 women here at El Cereso — one of several prisons with women a few walls apart from male inmates — are between 18 and 26. At least a third are still awaiting trial, most are charged with drug possession or trafficking, and daily life in their shared cells looks almost juvenile. Ms. Núñez’s walls feature a poster of Disney princesses; others are decorated with heart stickers.

This is nonetheless a dangerous place. Guards separate the women, as they do the men, by gang affiliation. Conflicts are common. “Every day,” said Ms. Núñez, her neck full of bruises, “there is at least one fight.” Or worse — a week after our visit, 17 inmates, including one woman, were killed in what the authorities described as a series of gang executions with automatic rifles smuggled into the complex.

It only highlighted the wide gap between the sexy myth of feminized crime, as portrayed on the Web and in telenovelas, and the more complex reality. Ms. Ramírez in particular fails to live up to her sensational billing. In person, she is painfully shy, speaking with a heavy lisp, barely above a whisper. When we met, she was busy with her visiting 2-year-old daughter, who had her mother’s onyx eyes, and a face severely scarred by burns sustained when arsonists burned down the family’s house after Ms. Ramírez’s arrest.

Some of the women here say they turned to crime to make money to meet their children’s needs. Other mothers, maintaining their innocence, say they are racked with guilt for being forced to abandon their families. Ms. Núñez, who arrived here three months pregnant, said her biggest regret was ever becoming friends with the group involved in the kidnapping. Although several in the group, men and women, are also inmates at El Cereso, she said: “We never talk. I have no one.”

Indeed, above all else, the women seem to feel lonely and misunderstood. Karla Solorio, 26, serving time for a drug conviction, said that she often cried at night thinking of her 7-year-old son.

“I’m just a reject,” she said, dabbing at her eyes to avoid ruining her makeup. “I’m not someone who works. I’m not someone with a family. I’m just a prisoner.”