In the movie “Real women have curves”, Ana deal with coming of age with in her family structure. Ana is the youngest of the women and is dealing with issues that deal with her desire to go to college, her body image, her self-esteem, and gender role with in her family. Ana is a young Mexican American woman that has plans to become something in her life, but her mother is very mean with comments she tells Ana in regard to her plus size and her desire to explore the world through education. Ana goes to a high school that’s outside the comfort zone of her mother. Ana attends Beverly Hills high school and is able to get a better education than her home area schools would have been able to provide her. While going to school Ana gets to see the differences in the education system and the opportunities that come with being a good student.

The reason this movie deal with the bending of gender roles is because the mother is the one that want to bring down Ana and her older sister that owns a garment shop in downtown Los Angeles. Ana’s mother believes that her daughters need to lose weight and be seen, but not heard. She thinks that a women’s place is in the home to take care and provide emotional and spiritual support for the family.  Now I feel that the reason Ana’s mother is like this because she is confined to her local surroundings of East Los Angeles. She has never gone outside her boundaries in the entire movie. She is never seen exploring Los Angeles or anything else. She is in the house or the shop helping her daughter.

While the father is out and about Los Angeles doing his routes in the gardening job he has. Ana’s father and cousins are very supportive of Ana going to school; I think this is where the gender role reverses due to the males of the family traveling outside East Los Angeles, and seeing what a good education can provide Ana. This is different than anything we read this semester because it always seemed like the fathers where the ones that want to hold back the children in order for them to help the family with able bodies to work. But Ana’s father is different because he encourages Ana to explore the world and go to school. But the grandfather in this movie is a man that wants his granddaughter to become better.

So in order to have Ana’s mother become more open minded I feel she need to get out of her safe zone or bubble and travel outside the boundaries of East Los Angeles to get a better prospective of her outside environment.