When Girls Turn Into Women:
Colombia's culture does not usually celebrate Sweet Sixteen, instead Colombian girls celebrate when they turn fifteen. The fifteenth birthday has been a long standing tradition due to the fact that all Colombian girls celebrate their fifteenth year in creatively different ways including trips, dinners, but they mostly prefer to celebrate their fifteenth year in a big party planned by them.
This tradition was established a long time ago, coming from the Aztecs and Mayas ( tribes from decades ago, that were from Mexico). This tribes believed that the girls age in which they turned to women was when they turned fifteen. When this happened, their family and people from their tribe did some special rituals to celebrate their
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special day. The origin of this tradition has been then from this Mexican tribes but as time passed Europeans re transformed this tradition, adding new traditions, such as that girls had to go to church, dance Vals( a type of dance) and also wear coloured dresses when they turned fifteen. Since then, this special day for girls has arrived to Colombia and has meant a lot for girls, just as to me.
Im now seventeen but when I was going to turn fifteen I planned and did a party, which turn out to be a disaster. About a month before my birthday I was organizing everything, but it wasn't easy, thinking about the design of the dress was pretty difficult and also planning the whole party was terrific and very stressing. I remember how stressed I was, I eat my nails and my hands sweat because of the stress I had by then, but as days passed I was getting excited waiting for the day to arrive.
When finally the day of the party arrived, I remember that at the beginning everything was well organized, I looked amazing wearing a pink lighter dress, and also the decoration was extraordinarios, with pink chairs, pink lights and different flavors of cocktails which were my passion by then. At the beginning of the party I danced and I was having a great time with my friends, but at 12 pm had drunk a lot and by that time those cocktails accumulated in my stomach made me get drunk as I had never done it in my life. I remember I through up and instantaneously I fall asleep not being consistent at all about
anything. When I woke up by the next day I didn't know what had happened the night before and I was embarrassed with my parents and friends for damaging the whole party which was turning out to be great. Since that day I regret not drinking in a managed way, and not enjoying the party as I had always dreamed it.
The Quinceañera is a celebration in Latin America that is very comparable to our Sweet 16 celebration, also know as the fiesta de quince años. The origination of the word comes from the feminine term of fifteen-year-old in Spanish. The overall celebration marks the transition from childhood to becoming a young woman. In earlier times this celebration was meant to be a teaching point for young women to learn how to cook, weave, and the art of becoming a mother. Depending on the family specifically, some can carry a religious tone, and some can be more traditional and casual.
The Latinos make up close to 16 percent of the total American population, thus becoming the 2nd largest ethnic community. Just like many other migrant populations, the Latinos seek to keep in touch with their Hispanic traditions and cultures. As Alvarez puts it, children born in the US are thus taught certain cultural events and values so as to maintain their lineage. The most common one as discussed by Alvarez in her book is the quinceañera. This refers to a girl’s celebration as she reaches fifteen. This day of celebration is supposed to mark a girl’s transition from being a child to an adult woman. Among other traditional symbols, these parties are huge and include choreographed dances and ball gowns.
Envision stepping into the room, seeing your guess smile and talk quietly, the atmosphere of the room glowing, and feeling the warmth grow inside your chest as you know you planned a successful Quinceanera. The day a girl of the hispanic culture turns 15, is the day her fantasies come to life; and she becomes a women. Quinceaneras carry lots of quarks, small details, and ideas; but with these simple steps it can be perfected.
In "Where the girls are: Growing Up Female With the Mass Media," Susan Douglas analyses the effects of mass media on women of the nineteen fifties, and more importantly on the teenage girls of the baby boom era. Douglas explains why women have been torn in conflicting directions and are still struggling today to identify themselves and their roles. Douglas recounts and dissects the ambiguous messages imprinted on the feminine psyche via the media. Douglas maintains that feminism is a direct result of the realization that mass media is a deliberate and calculated aggression against women. While the media seemingly begins to acknowledge the power of women, it purposely sets out to redefine women and the qualities by which they should define themselves. The contradictory messages received by women leave women not only in a love/hate relationship with the media, but also in a love/hate relationship with themselves.
There is a lot of history behind how Quinceañeras came about just like there is for several other cultural inspired events. The Mayans and the Aztecs first celebrated this event. What happened was that on a girl’s fifteenth birthday they were looked upon as a woman and ready to marry and have children. After her fifteenth birthday she would learn how to cook, clean and care for a house and children. If a woman did not end up marrying after her celebration then she would become a nun or stay home and take care of her parents. Women were looked highly upon and were valued and respected for their ability to bear children. Today, however, the celebration is more symbolic of adulthood and gaining responsibilities and opportunities to date and learn more about their culture and religion.
The information acquired over the semester, whether through text or visual media, vividly brought the importance of knowing how one’s gender is identified and developed.
Being in the top ten ranking for academics in my school gave me the opportunity to interview for California Girls State. Out of the five girls who were given an interview, I was the only one chosen to attend and represent my city of Gonzales. My plethora amount of well rounded participation in several clubs, programs, and volunteer work impressed all the interviewers which made me the most qualified delegate of my school. However, at California Girls State, the top girls representing their school or city from all over California attended. No girl there was better than the other because on paper we were all president of clubs, all had a mass amount of volunteer work, and all had high GPAs. The intense competition of running for office at California Girls State was more than
My fifteenth birthday was celebrated like any other, as was my sixteenth. They were both filled with joy, as I realized that even with the weight of culture on my shoulders, it was who I spent my coming of age with, not where I was or what it signified. I was surrounded by friends and family that love and care for me; who know that age is just a number. It’s my character that defines my maturity, and they looked at me no lesser than if my birthdays had been filled with frills and ceremony. In fact, they may think better of
Lutchmee and Dilloo: A Story of West Indian Life by Edward Jenkins was the first attempt to influence public opinion against the indenture servitude system by making the victims into characters that the reader could empathize with. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys explores the one-dimensional character, Bertha Mason of Bronte’s Jane Eyre. In her version Rhys attempts to develop Antoinette into an individual and portray her not as the Madwoman from the attic, but as a victim of the external forces of a patriarchal society. Both texts plead for the humanity of their female protagonist, with the intent of having the reader see them as full human beings. Where in one text the writer successfully portrays the protagonist as a human being deserving of sympathy, the other has aspects of form and literary elements that threaten and ultimately fails to provide the objective stated by the writer himself.
Another popular coming of age celebration is that of Hispanic origin: the Quinceañera. In this tradition, celebrated at the age of fifteen, a girl begins by renewing her baptismal vows in a special Mass and solidifies
Common rituals in Hispanic communities are the celebration of birthdays and the breaking of the piñata. The celebration of the girls’ 15 years, which is believed to be the age at which girls become women, with a big party, dance, food, etc. The Day of the Dead (celebrated in November) is a day to remember friends and family members that have passed away. That day people make a big party as well. Hispanics usually celebrate Christmas’ Eve and New Year’s Eve with lots of food, friends and family. The Three Kings (Los Reyes Magos) is in January (similar to Santa Claus), and they are supposed to bring toys to the
In the story The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the role of the female characters Daisy, Jordan and Myrtle find themselves in conflict with society’s expectations of them. However, they each negotiate the conflict and resolve it. By examining Daisy, Jordan and Myrtle’s roles, one can contemplate how they went about resolving the issue.
This is an ancient festivity that has been much transformed through the years, but which was intended in prehispanic Mexico to celebrate children and the dead. Hence, the best way to describe this Mexican holiday is to say that it is a time when Mexican families remember their dead, and the continuity of life.
A secret agent. A professional football player. A fire fighter. These would have been my responses when asked that inevitable question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Family, Media and Peers are said to have influenced my views concerning the role I am to play society. All of these factors had one thing in common. They all were influencing me to behave according to my gender. Everything from the clothes I wore to the toys I played with contributed to this. Even now as a young adult my dreams and aspirations are built around the gender roles that were placed on me.
This analysis will examine focal points in the movie, The Day I Became a Woman, written by Mohsen Makhmalbaf. The movie is three separate stories of females in separate stages of life. Part one is a young girl transitioning into womanhood. The second part is a married woman defying her husband’s wishes for happiness. The third and final story is of a rich old widow, celebrating the end of her life. The lives of these women do not appear to intertwine, but their fates are parallel as women in Iranian society.