Real Women Have Curves Essay

768 Words2 Pages

In the film, “Real Women Have Curves,” directed by Patricia Cardoso, it shows the audience the connections between one’s gender, class, culture, and education can enable one to reach their American Dream. The film follows a Mexican-American girl, Ana’s, journey on to liberate herself from her mother’s superficial thoughts on how traditional women should not go to college, yet they have to stay home and take care of their husbands. Ana wants to go to college to further her knowledge, but is stopped when her mother does not bless her. Eventually, as she tries to accept her body and her life, she decides to apply and go to a college in New York, where the movie ends with Ana walking in Times Square. There are many aspects that can stop or make …show more content…

Latinas are very diverse- their income and their religious traditions. “Yet, the gap between Latino families (13.6 percent) and white families (34 percent) earning $80,000 or more is substantial, as is the home ownership rate, which for whites is 74 percent and for Latinos is only 44 percent…” (Lui, 139). This meant that even if Latinos work harder than white families, they still would not be able to surpass how much the white families made. This related back to “Real Women Have Curves,” because the reason why the mother did not want Ana to go to college is because first, she wants her to marry and live a comfortable life as a wife, and second, they might not be able to support Ana in college, hence of their low income. Her mother desperately wanted Ana to work at the sweat shop is because Latinos take great pride in …show more content…

To test her hypothesis out, Lareau set up an experiment which included eighty-eight different families and seeing how afterschool activities impacted them when they were kids. She mentioned that after wrapping up her novel, she went back to check on the subjects and see if anything differed from the conclusions that she drew before, and it was accurate. Even if Ana had potential to get a better job to support her family, Lareau concluded that if a member was in the working class, they would not have sources and financial support as the middle class. She also stated that most of them only get by, by finding jobs that does not require a degree. The term “American Dream” is when someone finds themselves liberated or freed after a hard work filled with success. Ana found her American Dream when she finally felt freed of her family’s responsibilities and fled to New York to go get her college degree. Ana faced obstacles to achieve her success. One of them was how her mother keeps telling her to lose weight. Ana spitefully remarks that her weight does not define who she really is. Ana finally let everything go when she and her co-workers at the sweatshop took all their clothes off and they found their true

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