On Sept. 24, the Elizabethtown College Office of Diversity, Equity and Belonging along with the High Library sponsored a showing of the movie “Real Women Have Curves” in the Gibble Auditorium. Senior and Mosaic Unbound intern Lauren Robitaille served as the host for the evening. The movie was played in honor of National Hispanic Heritage month, which spans from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15.
“We wanted to focus on a movie that is centered around Hispanic and Latinix stories,” Robitaille said. “I thought that the messages in the story were really good, and especially relevant to today, even though it was made in 2002.”
Before the movie began, Robitaille stood in front of the audience to address the somewhat controversial title of the movie. “Real Women Have Curves” was released in 2002, when fashion and beauty standards were very different and centered around being as thin as possible. However, society today is more inclusive and less focused on physical attributes.
“I just wanted to make sure that in terms of ‘real women’ people understood that there is no such thing as a real woman,” Robitaille said. “You’re a woman if you’re a woman. There’s no standard or size or whatever, curves or no curves. Femininity and womanhood isn’t subjective to anything.”
The movie features Ana Garcia, played by America Ferrara, who is a Mexican-American 18 year old who recently graduated from a high school in Beverly Hills, Calif. Her English teacher Mr. Guzman believes that Ana is very smart and could go to college on a scholarship, but Ana is torn between going and staying home, as her mother wants her to work in the family’s run-down dress factory. Ultimately, Ana does go to work in the factory over the summer, but keeps her aspirations of one day going to college.
The main conflict of the movie exists between Ana and her mother, Carmen. Carmen has many plans and ideations for Ana, but Ana disagrees with them. Carmen believes Ana is fat and should lose weight, but she also believes this of herself and projects it onto Ana. Carmen wants Ana to stay home, work in the factory and later on get married and start a family, but Ana wants more in life. Ana wants to go to college, and doesn’t want to work in the dead-end factory.
As the theme of the movie is body positivity, one of Ana’s main struggles in the movie is her weight, and her mother constantly nagging her about it. She insists that Ana must be a certain weight so that she can get a husband and start a family. However, Ana believes that she is more than just her weight, and throughout the movie she learns to accept and love herself. She even encourages the other women in the factory that they are beautiful too, despite their flaws, in one of the most powerful scenes in the movie.
This movie also provides commentary on the socio-economic status of families who immigrated to the United States in search of a better life, and this is reflected strongly in Ana’s interactions with her mother. Carmen throughout the movie has many visions for Ana’s life that are very old-fashioned, such as her staying home and working in the family factory, as well as her preserving her virginity and maintaining a particular appearance in order to attract a man and start a family. But Ana knows that if she goes to college she can build a better life for her and her family, and learns to create her own definitions of beauty that outweigh her mother’s.
As previously stated, this movie was played as part of National Hispanic Heritage Month. And while the title of the movie may be outdated, a lot of the themes are still relevant to today.
“I think the balance between being able to celebrate something and being able to critique it is really important.” Robitaille said. “That especially comes across with the main character, Ana, and her mother. I think it’s really important that the movie showed that they learned from each other and that they could learn from each other.”
There were times Ana was rebellious and disrespectful towards her mother, but at other times Ana stood up to Carmen and her old-fashioned beliefs. “The fact that the characters can learn and grow around each other contributes to the sense of celebration but also allows us to critique whatever societal pressures or norms you’re facing,” she said.
