Real Women Have Curves

These days, with Hollywood studios cranking out sub-par movies starring "actors" like Paris Hilton, the real gems can be hard to find. Stage-play-turned-film, "Real Women Have Curves" is a movie that made me sit up and take notice.

Starring America Ferrera and released in 2002, "Real Women Have Curves" follows the Garcia family, with Ana (America) as the daughter trying to find her identity between the pressures of her Mexican family and her American surroundings.

While Ana has to contend with a job she hates in order to help support her family, and a strong (unsupported) desire to further her education, the heart of the story lies in her relationship with her hormonal mother, who seems to live for nothing except to break her daughter's heart. Ana's mother constantly tells her (and other people!) that she's fat, she will never get married if she doesn't lose weight, that she could be beautiful if only she were skinny, and so forth. It is hard to watch, as even when Ana juts her chin defiantly at her mother's words, it is obvious they hurt her underneath.

At the crux of this issue is Jimmy, a non-Mexican boy who thinks Ana is beautiful, and encourages Ana to view her body as sexy and powerful. He encourages her to feel proud of her body, and to embrace it rather than feel embarrassed about it, as her mother thinks she should.

I loved this movie for its humour, but I loved it more for its purpose. Everywhere we look, women are confronted with images of the perfect body. Women like Keira Knightley are held up to be perfection, the ideal, despite the fact that very few women in the world would be able to be that thin without developing an eating disorder. Magazines, television shows and movies tell all of us that in order to be beautiful, sexy and powerful, we need to shed a few pounds and fit into smaller jeans. In order to be attractive and desired, we should starve ourselves until we look "right." Nevermind how many of those images are airbrushed, or how many of those actresses or models are probably on the verge of a heartattack from anorexia or bulemia; all that matters is the outward appearance.

Ana's mother says horrible things to her daughter in this film; but really, she says things to Ana that most of us say to ourselves. We spend more time breaking ourselves down than building ourselves up. We spend more time comparing ourselves to other people instead of loving ourselves for who we are and what we can be. It's so easy to point out what we hate about ourselves, but it's so hard to point out what we love. Most of us fall short of that so-called "perfection" - but who decided what "perfect" means anyway? When did we stop focusing on being a healthy weight and start focusing on hurting ourselves, inside and out, to live up to other people's expectations?

To quote from the movie: "Like my grandmother used to say, "There's no better dressing than meat on the bones.""