Real Women Have Curves:

education is not the end

Real Women Have Curves (dir. Patricia Cardoso) is a poignant story of a young Chicana in Los Angeles finding her path despite being at odds with her parents’ standards of a perfect Mexican daughter. The film’s protagonist, Ana Garcia (played by America Ferrera), is first-generation Mexican-American. Her family is working class, and her mother has been performing domestic labor since the age of 13. Ana’s mother Carmen is the strongest oppositional force in the film; she and Ana are constantly in conflict. Carmen wants to pass on her domestic knowledge to her daughter and for Ana to lose weight so that she can “look beautiful” and ultimately become a good wife. Ana is academically high achieving, desires to find her own path outside of her family life, and feels liberated in loving her curvy body. While Ana’s journey to overcome issues of race, class, and gender is meant to be read as self-driven, I argue that the storytelling still relies heavily on male gatekeepers as a framework for the plot. Ana’s father is the breadwinner and family guardian (for better or for worse); Ana’s grandfather is the gatekeeper for Ana’s recreational fun; Ana’s white, upper-class boyfriend Jimmy is a not-so-subtle outsider and pathway for Ana’s sexual awakening; and Ana’s teacher / academic advisor Mr. Guzman is the primary force in Ana’s pathway to college. For the purposes of this piece I will be focusing solely on Ana’s relationship with Mr. Guzman. All of these male characters are in traditional positions of power (father, grandfather, teacher, etc) and act as foils to Ana’s mother. While Ana remains an autonomous figure refusing to relinquish her agency to her mother, the male figures in the film end up giving Ana permission to radically depart from her mother’s priorities. Their actions and influences on Ana directly carve out the narrative plot: Ana is freed from her mother’s old-fashioned, subordinating views and is able to go to college. I wonder: is Real Women Have Curves’ feminist messaging undermined by the fact that the men in traditional roles of power are the primary narrative actors?

Spectacle vs. Narrative

To take a closer look into the film, I will use the aid of film theorist Laura Mulvey’s essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Mulvey writes that “the heterosexual division of labor” pervades the narrative structuring of film, thus creating the split between the “spectacle” (woman) and the narrative (man). This binary genderization of labor roles within narrative film holds true for Real Women Have Curves — namely in the relationship between Mr. Guzman and Ana. While Mr. Guzman’s screen time may be minimal, he prominently projects paternal energy onto Ana. The viewer is introduced to Mr. Guzman within the first five minutes of the film. Ana has just informed him that she will not be going to college in the fall because her family cannot afford it (despite their past conversations about scholarships and grants), to which he replies: “You’re a smart woman, you have something to contribute to this world.” First I must address what Mr. Guzman means by “contribut[ing] something to this world.” A fellow Latine and presumably a college-educated man, Mr. Guzman insinuates that unless one graduates from college, they cannot be beneficial to society. First, this is of course not true and completely disregards the vast array of non-college educated laborers, including Mrs. Garcia who’s domestic labor is every bit as vital as Mr. Guzman’s teaching. Second, his language enforces an existing power structure that places Ana, a woman of color, in a subordinate and supportive position to society. Instead of asking Ana what it is that she wants and how the world can serve her, Mr. Guzman turns the responsibility onto Ana to serve a society that was never built to serve her in the first place.

In this encounter, Ana is presented as the spectacle: the gifted yet underappreciated Chicana whose family is denying her the opportunity to “contribute to” society and pursue an American traditionalist vision of young adulthood, professionalism, and upward mobility. Mr. Guzman embodies Latine upward mobility, as an educated educator who makes it his personal business to pull students up the same ladder he climbed. Mr. Guzman is also the narrative driver: he actively forces his ideals onto Ana, pushing her towards higher education without much consideration of the complex family dynamics in their Mexican-American immigrant home. While I dare not diminish the importance of the mentors that guide first generation students through the transition out of adolescence, Mr. Guzman and Ana’s relationship centers Mr. Guzman’s values rather than presenting an open dialogue that prioritizes Ana’s struggle to reconcile her complex identity and her desires.

Throughout the rest of the film, Mr. Guzman repeatedly encourages Ana to apply to Columbia University by arranging for appointments with her at the high school and visiting her house (uninvited) on two occasions. During the first house visit, Mr. Guzman interrupts Ana’s graduation celebration in order to try and convince Ana’s parents to let her apply to college: “Ana is an excellent student. I’d like to see her continue her education… go to college.” In this scene, Ana is incredibly passive, watching as her parents — mostly her father — and her teacher politely debate about her future. None of the adults present reference what Ana wants for herself, and she is left as a darty-eyed spectacle, clearly uncomfortable about her lack of agency. It is evident that Ana is left to navigate the oppositional pulls from Mr. Guzman and her parents alone, without the guidance or support of any adults. While on the one hand it is wonderful that someone outside of Ana’s family is so invested in her future, on the other hand, Mr. Guzman is incredibly invasive and behaving in a way that reeks of paternal saviorship. It is unfortunate that her only role model outside of her family can’t provide space for Ana to express her own vision for her future.

Domestic Labor Undervalued

In the scene that follows Mr. Guzman’s interruption to their graduation party, Ana’s mother tells her husband, “yo lo puedo educar. Yo le enseño a coser. Le enseño a criar a sus hijos. Atender a su marido. Esas cosas no le van a enseñar allá en el colegio” (“I can educate her. I’ll teach her how to sew. I’ll teach her how to raise her children. To take care of her husband. They can’t teach her these things in college.”) Mrs. Garcia, whose body is physically breaking down from her years of laboring, fights for her husband and Ana to see the value in the domestic work that she has been performing for decades. A radically feminist stance (that this film could have taken) values domestic labor by immigrant women rather than demonizing them and their labor as an obstacle in the way of a “proper” education, college, upward mobility, and assimilation into white American society. It almost achieves this in the final scene when Ana helps to liberate the other women factory workers from their bodily insecurities, and they prioritize their own embodied comfort and confidence over the omnipresent white, male-gaze that lays rest on all women. However, Ana’s college path (as the conclusion of the film) demonstrates how, in the desire for mobility from the confines of immigrant home life, domestic labor is still devalued and academic labor is overvalued. Mr. Guzman’s role as a foil to Mrs. Garcia reinforces the binary genderization of labor roles within narrative film where woman is “spectacle” and man is narrative. Moreover, Mr. Guzman’s obsession with Ana going to college demonstrates a sort of white male gaze that prefers exceptionalism and boot-strap ideology in minority women, and isn’t sensitive or curious to what Ana actually wants for herself. If college is something that Ana deeply desires, why doesn’t she ever proudly advocate for that as her vision for her future? At the same time, why was Ana’s mother the only antagonist to her college narrative? Could there have been a community-based plot where the non-men in the story provided space for one and other to find their own paths outside of societal or familial expectations?

So…

With all of this considered, I do think that some of the feminist messaging is diminished by the male narrative drivers. Ana was forced into an adversarial relationship with her mother — one of only two female role models — while she followed in Mr. Guzman’s footsteps to college. However, I still think that Ana’s self love and acceptance of her body, despite her mother’s beauty standards, are powerfully presented to the audience without much use of the male gaze.

In the end, Ana is presented with only two options: stay home to learn domesticity, or pursue college. I believe a truly radical solution to this binary would be for Ana to find her own path, separate from the pulls of the paternal and maternal forces in her life. Mr. Guzman’s character would not have been any more sympathetic if he had been anything but a cis-man, because it is never alright to be hyper-invasive and to vicariously project your values onto someone else, especially when you are in a position of power. But I can also imagine how a non-binary, woman, or trans person of color would have been more empathetic to the tensions that exist in Ana as a first-generation Chicana trying to carve her own path forward.