La Quinceanera Essay

Before examining how rituals have an important role in establishing gender in many world cultures, one must understand how gender is being define. Many believed gender could be biologically determined by their sex, such as their chromosomes but what they failed to view is how other factors define their gender. While the biology of sex is helpful in determining one’s gender, gender is the interrelationship between an individual’s sex, how one identifies their internal sense of self as male, female, both or neither, as well as one’s outward expressions, how one presents and behaves related to that identification. After defining gender, one can say that gender is the result of culture, culture constructs the appropriate expressions that further

This celebration is usually notable for Catholic girls who have turned 15 years’ old and symbolizes when a girl becomes a woman. This celebration sort of resembles a wedding especially in the amount of time planning it and the expenses that go in to make the celebration possible. I’m very familiar with this celebration and attended a couple of them myself. This celebration definitely establishes the idea of being feminine and being a female in this culture. In the article La Quinceanera: Making Gender and Ethnic Identities by Karen Mary Davalos, she describes the events that occur in this celebration and relates them back to how these events construct a female gender identity. Its start with the quinceanera and her family attending church to receive the priest blessing in the girls’ coming of age. Davalos describes the interaction that occurs between the priest and the family “Church officials emphasize the role the quinceanera plays in bringing people to the church and in teaching gender roles and cultural traditions. Through the quinceanera, Catholic priests provide instruction to parents on how to educate their daughters about gender roles, "female" behavior, and sexuality.” (Davalos, 8). In the church, priest encourages the women to be submissive as well as remain pure until

In this coming of age ceremony people from the Navajo tribe would celebrate a girls’ first period. Usually when a girl gets her period for the first time she is embarrassed and feels anxiety but in this tribe, this event is one to celebrate and rejoice. As Markstorm and Iborra stated in Adolescent Identity Formation and Rites of Passage: The Navajo Kinaalda ´ Ceremony for Girls “The purposes of Kinaalda ´ go far beyond the obvious sexual maturational and reproductive linkages. This ceremony is regarded as the most important personality-shaping event in a woman’s life, and it is believed to set her life course” (Markstorm and Iborra, 408). This ceremony sets the female identity and it also socializes the female into her adult roles. Some of the purposes for this Kinaalda are to celebrate her change in status from child to adult, to instruct her on the proper roles of Navajo women in the established social order, to give her good posture and physical beauty and to ensure her reproductive capability. The ceremony also has changes for the female identity such as becoming the ultimate mother, associated with the Earth and becoming good and giving. As you can see most of the purposes for this coming of age ceremony constructs and reinforces what it means to be female by following the female gender stereotypes. The Kinaalda reinforces the stereotype