Rating: 
Summary: Real Women Have Curves (Germ241F @ SUNY Binghamton)
Review: In the movie, Real Women Have Curves (Patricia Cardosa, 2002) Ana, who is the main character, is a first generation Mexican-American teenager in transition to becoming a woman. She lives in East Los Angeles, which is typically a Latino neighborhood. After graduating high school, Ana receives a full scholarship to Columbia University. Her mother, Carman feels strongly that Ana should stay at home and contribute to the family.
Carman's position on where Ana stands in life is very stereotypical of Latino mothers, with the background of strong family ties. Ana does not agree with her mother. By doing so, Ana avoids the panopticon (theorized by Jeremy Bentham). Her mother on the other hand promotes the panopticon in this film because Carman wants her daughter to be perfect and lose weight, just for the purpose of being viewed by society. Ana avoids it by loving her body the way it is, and does not want to change it for the reasons of her mother standards and stereotypes of what a woman should look like before she is married or for the reason of what society wants her to be. If Ana decides to lose weight it is for her own self and not for anyone else's pleasure. This shows how she is not a commodity, but that she has a lot of pride in her self.
Applying John Berger's theory of "surveyor/surveyed" to Real Women Have Curves, is embodied when Ana's mother wants her to be skinny and fulfill the ideal Barbie image of a young and sexy woman yet still remain a virgin for her husband's sake. Ana believes that a woman can think and be recognized for the mind she has, and not just her physical appearance. Her mother, the surveyor, is surveying her. At the same time Ana is also the surveyor because she is able to see everything around her because she doesn't fall along the lines of what her mother idealizes her to be, and thus the people around her are being surveyed.
Rating: 
Summary: ATTN Prof. Majer-O'Sickey
Review: I think that Real Women Have Curves does an excellent job of discussing Ana's identity in terms of her race, her social and economic class, and her gender. She could almost become just another victim of stereotyped Latinas, but she doesn't because she resists the stereotype (who takes the form of her mother). She decides that her gender and background are not going to tie her down. She breaks free (hurray!).
I found it interesting to examine how Ana views herself. We see Ana with just a bra on twice-with her boyfriend, and in the sweatshop. She is naturally shy in front of the boyfriend. Despite her strength of convictions elsewhere, she still falls victim to the "How do I look?" mentality. She only manages to overcome this in front of other women who have the same issues as her. It would have been nice to see her that confident in front of the guy.
Overall, I enjoyed this film and the way that Ana was depicted. There are a few small issues (example: the scene with Ms. Glass), but for the most part, the film remained believable.
Rating:
Summary: Grrrls and Cinema Movie Review
Review: Real Women Have Curves, directed by Patricia Cardosa, challenges the subservient role women have been born into. Ana, an intelligent 18-year-old Mexican-American girl living in Los Angeles, is encouraged by her teacher to apply to Columbia. Her mother, Carmen, however, insists that Ana stay home and work for her sister Estela making dresses. Carmen insists that Ana fall into tradition, arguing that she can teach Ana everything she needs to know: to sew, cook, and take care of her husband.The film illustrates Latina women of low-income families making dresses for $18 who are exploited by the women who wear dresses such as Ms. Glass, the vulture capitalist and Estela's boss, selling them for $600. Ana is an empowered individual and interrogates the white representational culture questioning why these women should be able to get away with such nonsense. Ana is realistic and knows one cannot be completely content with oneself as an overweight teenager. Later on when having sex with her boyfriend, however, she owns her sexuality and allows him to see all of her when she turns on the light. The light is on in the room and the audience is able to view her from the shoulders up. The audience cannot objectify her. Ana is only for her boyfriend and the people on set to see.
Rating:
Summary: We are all beautiful
Review: The film Real Women Have Curves, directed by Patricia Cardoso did a wonderful job of making young girls aware of the fact that we are all beautiful no matter what size you are. One does not have to be as unnatural as the image of the glorious Barbie in order to be attractive. It also helps to show that you can break out of race and socio-economic class. One can do anything that they put their mind to. Real Women Have Curves did not objectify a woman's body by giving into the norms of American cinema. Just by the title alone, the audience realizes they are not going to be seeing a movie that promotes women being a size 2 and appearing undernourished. The character Ana, played by America Ferrera, in the movie does not care about the way she looks and lets everyone know it, especially Carmen, her mother. Ana shows the viewer that fat is beautiful and that it's the strength on the inside that matters. Also, the director does not choose to allow the audience watch Ana and her boyfriend have sex for the first time. This aids in the idea that the movie isn't objectifying the women through allowing the audience to know and see all. This movie also illustrates the intersection of socio economic class and race. The idea that Estela, played by Ingrid Oliu, owns a small dress manufacturing company, similar to sweatshop. Each dress that Estela's company makes gets sold for a large percentage more than what Estela gets paid for that exact dress. Mrs. Glass is the woman Estela talks to in the major corporation that buys the dresses best shows this by the direct opposition of her and Estela. Both women are latina and the one woman has a high paying job while Estela works just to make ends meet. The corporate woman makes the comment along the lines that a woman like her is suppose to help a woman like Estela. Also by giving her these jobs she is doing Estela a favor. Ana goes against the intersection of her race, class and gender by going to college. Typically Ana would have to stay home and take care of her family. This film did a wonderful job of questioning the cultural and social norms of beauty, race and gender.
Rating:
Summary: Very Good Movie With Real Characters
Review: This movie begins with Ana (America Ferrera), a high school senior who is about to
graduate. All of her classmates are going to college and her teacher (George Lopez)
strongly encourages Ana to attend college also. However, her family has set
different goals for Ana's life. Her mother, Carmen (Lupe Ontiveros) feels that a
woman's role in life is to be beautiful (Carmen often criticizes Ana about her
weight), work hard, have children and take care of her husband. This is what Carmen
has done in here life and she expects Ana to do the same.
So Ana faces a dilemma many young women face: will she follow her desire to go to
college and a presumably bright future or will she stay home and help support her
family? I liked this movie for a couple of reasons: First of all, it was "real". It deals
with real issues that real people face (the decision of going to college, problems
with weight, conflicts with parents). Secondly, this film shows critiques
stereotypes about women. In my opinion, Carmen represents the stereotypical of what
a women should do in life (stay at home, raise the family, take care of the kids).
Ana represents what women have become: strong, educated, and independent. Also, the
film represents intersections of race, social & economic class, and gender.
Throughout the movie, we see a Latino family struggling to get above the
stereotypes. In the movie, we even see Ana and her sister Estella looked down upon
by another Hispanic-American woman, due to social class.
Rating:
Summary: Real Women Have Curves review for WOMN285 @ SUNY Binghamton
Review: In the film "Real Women Have Curves", Ana faces several stereotypes. She is an adolescent Latina who is trying to break free of the restraints put on her by her mother, her economic class, and her race.
Ana's mother, Carmen, wants Ana to be what is considered the stereotypical Latina woman. This woman is gracious, considerate, knows her place in the family, and performs her duties without questioning them. In a scene from the movie, Carmen is telling, Raul, Ana's father, that she would like to teach Ana how to cook and sew but Ana is not interested. Carmen cannot understand why Ana would not want to learn about what she will supposedly need in the future when she has a family.
Ana doesn't want to learn about domestic duties because she wants to continue her education in college. It is important for Ana to go to college in order to break out of the Latina teen image. She wants to move beyond her economic class and make something for herself outside of her family.
Carmen is constantly arguing with Ana about Ana's weight. Carmen, overweight herself, wants Ana to be beautiful, but more importantly to be married, and she thinks that unless Ana is skinny, no one will want her. Ana, who knows that she needs to lose weight, goes against her mother because she wants to lose weight for herself and not for anyone else. Ana is stuck between a few stereotypes when it comes to her weight. The first being that she is a girl, and girls, especially in America are supposed to be thin and pretty. The second being that according to her culture, she is supposed to marry young, and ideally the bride is supposed to be thin. Ana feels that in order for her to lose weight, she must find her own reason, not her culture's or her mother's reasons.
Ana and Jimmy's (her boyfriend relationship breaks stereotypical adolescent ideals of relationships. Ana is not afraid of her body, and before her and Jimmy do anything, she acts him to turn on a light to see her as she really is. Jimmy finds her attractive and doesn't care that she isn't the ideal skinny American girl.
Ana is being surveyed by her family, Jimmy, her co-workers, her teacher, and the world. According to John Bergers theory of "surveyor/surveyed", Ana is then the surveyed, but also a surveyor because she looks at the world around her. She disagrees with the way Estela's (her sister) boss treats her, and doesn't want to be classified as just a Latina teenager, she wants to be seen as Ana, a person with thoughts and feelings.
Rating: 
Summary: Great movie......
Review: This movie portrays the life a young, Latin-American female trying to cope with pressure of being the adhering to her mother's wishes and being herself. Ana (Ferrera) is a teenager in from southern California trying to go to college. However, her mother Carmen (Lupe Ontiveros) wishes for her to lose weight and get married like the typical Spanish girl of her age.
I think the movie hit on a lot of stereotypes toward Spanish-American females really well. It also showed that it is possible for someone to break these stereotypes and find themselves as their own human being. This is a must see movie.
Rating:
Summary: Good Movie
Review: The movie "Real Women Have Curves" is on its face a typical coming of age story. It tells of the story of Ana, a young Latina woman who is trying to get out of a set of economic circumstances that prohibit her from going to college and pursuing her dreams. She also is under the roof of her overbearing mother, Carmen, who is determined that Ana stay where she is, with the family, in the same town and help with the family, in the shop that her sister owns. Ana is faced with the choice of whether to go to college, and disappoint her family, or give up on her own dreams.
Throughout the entire movie, the theme of being watched comes up again and again. It is not just an individual who watches and individual, but also how we watch our own actions through the eyes of 'society'. Women especially act in certain ways, even in the absence of men or people who care about their action, as though they are doing it for themselves. A good example of this in the movie was one scene where Carmen refuses to take her cloths off in front of the other women where she works, even thought the day is extremely hot. In the movie, it is her daughter who can break away from the gaze of society, which is a specifically male gaze, but not her. Ana, who is often told that she is fat, seems to do her best to escape this male gaze and live the life she wants to, on her own terms. It is a problem in her relationship with her mother that she can do this, and yet her mother cannot.
The other theme that played a big role was that of ethic and racial identity. Ana is Latina, and she goes through a metamorphosis with this identity. In the beginning of the movie she did not speak Spanish in front of her (all white) high-school friends, and would only meet her boyfriend outside of a store, but never at her home. By the end of the movie, however, she seems much more secure in her own skin. However, the racial identities in this movie were, over all, pretty polarized between the sweat shop contractor Mrs. Glass and the subcontractor, Ana's sister Estela, even the names that the characters are given play along racial lines, even though Mrs. Glass herself is a Latina woman. Along with these characters, Carmen, Ana's mother, this movie seemed to work off of archetypes of Latina women. Mrs. Glass is the only woman who is not overweight, and seemed to be the 'perfect' Latina woman, one who is ruthless in business (no doubt a skill she learned on the streets), who speaks with no accent, and who can escape the assumption that she is Latina, unless he chooses to open her mouth and speak Spanish. In contrast, Estela looks dumpy, is basically good hearted, and is the only thing that stands in the way of the dress shops eventual demise. It is almost enough to make the view think for a moment that where Estela and her employees work, isn't so bad, and with such a nice boss, it could be worse. Carmen plays an excellent stereotypical Latina mother, one who is overbearing, prays constantly for Ana's eventual marriage, and who is committed with a one tract mind to keeping her family together. This commitment, however, does not come out of a sense that her family needs to survive culturally, or ethnically, in the face of assimilation, instead it comes out of her own fears and insecurities.
Overall, this movie was great, the acting was superb, and the issues that it dealt with went to the heart of much of what young women experience, no matter their ethnic heritage, and yet in most cases escaped making Ana's experience a white one.
Rating:
Summary: EXTRA CREDIT!!!!!!!!! Final examination Germ241F
Review: Real Women Have Curves is a realistic movie about a Mexican family trying to maintain a steady life. It is directed by Patricia Cardoso. The main character, Ana, played by America Ferrera, has to throw away her dreams about going to college to help the family's business alive. The mother, Carmen, played by Patricia Cardoso tries to impose her life on young Anna's. She believes Ana's goals should include working for the family, not going to college, learning how to cook and taking care of her future husband. Her mom brings her down by making her feel ugly because she is a large girl. Ana has to work for the family dress making company because her sister needs help and the factory is low on workers. Ana is caught between American feminism and family tradition. At the end, Ana realizes what's important to her and goes off following her dreams.
Rating:
Summary: Ana's comfort in her own skin
Review: My love for this film stems from my identification with Ana. She is witty, sharp, inconsistent and unapologetic in her ability to feel comfortable with herself, even if society says that she shouldn't. Ana knows that there is nothing wrong with her body, yet she struggles throughout the film to keep close to this belief as characters like her mother criticize her. One of my favorite scenes in this film is when Ana is with her boyfriend, Jimmy, and she flips on the lights for Jimmy to see her naked. Normally, the surveyor/surveyed relationship in films is that of a nude woman displayed for the purposes of a man's scrutiny and aesthetic pleasure, as John Berger talks about in his book Ways of Seeing. However, this scene defies the tradition for two reasons. One, Ana is totally conscious of her naked body and has the power to present herself to Jimmy how and when she wants. Secondly, the audience is not invited to be a surveyor of Ana's body along with Jimmy. The shot excludes the audience from viewing Ana's nakedness, which distances us from the film and reminds us that the director will not objectify the girl's body.
Ana is also a character whose identity as a Mexican-American is a theme that surfaces throughout the film. The background music is a constant reminder of Ana's Mexican roots. Although it is stereotypical of the film to place Ana in a low-income, blue-collar, very religious family, the film is conscious of its own stereotypes. All the stereotypes intersect to create Ana's situation and build her character. If one placed Ana in a white, upper-class family, the film would be completely altered.
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