Dirty Girls Social Club-Rebecca

The character that I plan to focus on is Rebecca. I found Rebecca to be an interesting character from the beginning when she was first introduced by Lauren. From Laruen’s eyes, Rebecca is very “perfect” and stuck up. It is easy to sense that there is going to be tension in this friendship. From Lauren’s introduction however, it is easy to see that there are many areas in Rebecca’s life in which she is both privileged and oppressed.

                First off, I would say that Rebecca is privileged because of her religious status. Rebecca is a Catholic and Catholics are very dominant in the American society. Later in the novel, we can see how her upbringing as a Catholic, impacts various aspects of her life. First off, she spends a majority of her free time doing volunteer activities such as reading to the blind and helping raise money for runaway youth funds and battered women’s shelters (Valdes-Rodriguez 18). Although these are all very good contributions, I can imagine it is stressful always trying to do so much. In addition to that, Rebecca recognizes that she did not marry her husband Brad out of love, but for his resources. She wants out of the marriage, but her religion is highly against divorce, and she fears rejection from her parents. She later falls in love with another man that is able to help her defy her religion and break off the marriage. She realizes that happiness is more important than how other people look at her.

                Another area of Rebecca’s life where she shows she has privilege is her socioeconomic status. Although she has faced struggles in her career being a Latina woman, she was able to climb to the top with her very successful magazine, Ella, which is aimed at Latina women. Her husband is also a very beneficial accessory to her socioeconomic status. “He is a non-Latino white guy from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, who has been working on the same doctoral thesis for the past eight years at Cambridge University in England” (18). He benefits her because he is white and has a high socioeconomic status himself. He is also rich because of his parents which is another major reason Rebecca is with him.

                Although being a Latina female can be very challenging for Rebecca, she is also very privileged by her looks. She is very thin, which is valued by most Americans, and she presents herself in a very professional manor. The novel explains to us that she never wears anything too revealing and has a lot of respect for her body. Lastly, she is part of the dominant age group at 28 years old. She has not begun facing discrimination because she is “too old”.

                It is easy to see how the many aspects in Rebecca’s life intersect to make her the person she is. Intersectionality focuses on “an intersectional approach requires us to consider them as overlapping, and that without that perspective, we can’t fully understand how multiple identities overlap to shape women’s experiences on the individual and institutional level” (Launius and Hassel 118). For example, Rebecca is both a woman and a Latina. If she was just a white woman, it would be much easier for her to be successful because being white is the dominant race. Despite this challenge, she is still able to become extremely successful with her magazine. As I mentioned earlier as well, it was very beneficial for Rebecca to have a white husband. This also helped with the fact that she was so successful, and people valued her. The tables were slightly changed when she broke off the marriage with Brad and went after a man with darker skin than her. Her parents frowned upon the decision and she wasn’t sure how it was going to impact her career. Despite these concerns, Rebecca was able to find her happiness.

                Looking at how love impacts the character, it is easy to see that finding love was able to fix many of Rebecca’s problems. It was obvious how unhappy she was with Brad, and she felt as though she had extremely high standards to meet in order to make both his parents, and her own parents proud. His family already discriminated against her because of her race. She was also able to break out of her comfort zone and explore her sexuality. This is very evident in the scene where she breaks out the fancy lingerie. Lastly, she is also able to come clean with Lauren about how she is jealous of her life. In the end, finally being able to “really love” someone helps Rebecca get back on track with her life. Although love solves many of her problems, it does not always mean that this is realistic. A lot of the times in real life, love can be a source of the problem. We can also see this is Sara’s situation. Her love for Roberto is so strong that she convinces herself to stay in an abusive relationship and see the positives. Thus, love can be both rewarding and non-rewarding in reality. Everyone’s situation is different. 

Blog 6: Dirty Girls Social Club: Rebecca

I think that there are many ways that Rebecca is privileged as well as oppressed. She may own her own magazine, which is a privilege, but she has to keep her image sparkling so that people overlook her race. She has a husband, which could be seen as both a privilege and an oppression because he may be white, but his family doesn’t approve of her simply because of her race. Her race is mostly what she sees as her oppressions, and yet she has found a way to work around those obstacles in her life. Mostly. She is seen by most people as a friendly and nice person though she hides a bitterness of problems under the surface. She feels like she can’t date the man she’s attracted to because her mother said she would, “break her heart,” if she ever dated a black man (Valdes-Rodriguez 59). So even though Andre is a well-bred man, because of his color Rebecca’s mother won’t support her. Her mother doesn’t want to give up what she thinks is the “perfect marriage” to Brad that Rebecca has. Even when she tells her mother, “’Brad only married me because he thought is would upset his parents,’” her mother insists that she wasn’t trying hard enough (Valdes-Rodriguez 243). This kind of mentality is a cultural struggle for women, that divorce is somehow our fault and that we should have tried harder to keep our “good men” when sometimes people get married for silly reasons in the first place, and it was nothing that we did.  Her mother’s thoughts are centered in old religious ways of thinking, and say Rebecca’s going to hell for her divorce. Becca just wants to be happy, and I see no problem with that. She shouldn’t let her mother oppress her in her choices. This whole novel is a treasure trove of intersectional struggles and triumphs, seen in all of the characters. Andre talks about how Americans see race, “To you, we’re all ‘black’. It’s dehumanizing, actually,” which is the harsh reality of the way that American’s see race (Valdes-Rodriguez 250). We see this throughout the novel with the ladies as well, and their different backgrounds, but all considered Latina. I would say that she overcomes her struggles in her love life and ends up happy in the end. It may be a little unrealistic, but I suppose that it could happen to someone. She seems to enjoy herself when it comes to living for herself. This is a good thing, and can inspire women to find love in their lives that will love them for who they are and not for what they aren’t.

Popular Romance and The Dirty Girls Social Club

Elizabeth
She experiences privilege thanks to the help of her mom. Her mom did not want her to live in Colombia because women aren’t treated fairly. On page 66 of the book,

“Women are not thought to be sexual in Colombia. Sexual women are bad in Colombia. In the popular lore, I mean. And even when they are called whores, everyone knows they are getting paid and do not enjoy it. Women are mothers in Colombia, and cooks. They are virgins or whores and there is nothing else, nothing in between, nothing.”

Her mother felt that in America, women are treated as human beings and she wanted her daughter, Elizabeth to be able to freely express herself and not be hated.

She experiences oppression from the public once the news about her being lesbian gets out. The public wants her to quit her job, the producer who begged her to join the team cuts off contact, her coworkers who says they support her doesn’t seem like it. An example would be, Lorraine, the coffee lady who was always so sweet to Elizabeth but now, acts differently, disapproves of Elizabeth’s sexuality and whispered disgusting. She was afraid of losing important people and things in her life if she revealed her sexuality. On page 66, she’s thinking in her head this, “And I want that job. So much. A national news anchor. Me. This is why I cannot emerge…and stand up and cry my description: lesbian! It would kill my mother, maybe kill my career, and I might lose the sucias, my anchor in this city for a decade.”. She was especially afraid of losing Sara who did not like gay people. She also experiences oppression in terms of dating. On page 32, Lauren says that most Latinos “want a light skin girl” and that they’d rather date “butt-ugly illiterate white girl”.

When thinking about intersectionality, Elizabeth’s gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity plays a huge role in her life. From the quotes above, we can already see how these factor identities affect her life.

Love does conquer all the struggles that Elizabeth faces. Her and Selwyn are still together after the whole scandal. Selwyn was willing to move with Elizabeth. They move to Colombia so that Elizabeth can write what she wants but they come back due to the “jailing or killing gays and lesbians” (299). Even after all of her struggles, she doesn’t give up on Selwyn and their love.

Intersectionality

I have a fascination with how people work. I love talking to people and getting to know how their thought process works. That's why I'm so drawn to psychology and it's my intended major. I have two things that will make it slightly harder to get my career job though. One is that I am a woman, the second I am African american. These two things can make it hard if not impossible to get the dream job I want without incredible hard work. My dream is to work in a hospital which is even more competitive which mean I have to work even harder to be able to compete in the field. 

Although I have to work really hard to get the job I want, I will be able to get into the field. Since I am a woman and African american I will be more likely to get scholarships for school. Schools will be more likely to accept me since they want a "diverse" campus. So, even though my gender and ethnicity can be hindrances they can have some good points too. 

Intersectionality

One of my favorite things to do is write. So I am going to get my associates in writing here, then go on to get my bachelors and masters and become an English professor, maybe an author one day (a girl can dream right?).

I guess a question that I take into consideration is how does my gender affect my career choice? Or does it even effect my career choice at all? Will I do well as a professor because I am a woman?

The majority of teacher in my life have been females, like myself, and when I narrow it down to the ones who taught me English, they have also all been females. I wonder if females do better in this field because it is a job that we as a society consider "feminine". I am also white, and will be well educated when the time comes for me to start my career as a teacher, thus putting me ahead of someone who was not as well educated.

Maybe being a female will put me ahead of a male who wants to go into the same field because we do not see that as the "norm", but I do not think that our sex should have anything to do with how well we succeed in our career choices.

Intersectionality

An area of interest to me has always been the study of science. I am majoring in wildlife ecology and have had an internship with the Lakeshore Water Institute & Department of Natural Resources. Essentially I just can't get enough of science, but a question comes to mind. Have I been working hard for what I've done, or have I been getting unknowingly backed by the system?  This is where my own intersectionality comes into play, with intersectionality being defined as, "multiple social categories (eg., race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status) intersect at the micro level of individual experience to reflect multiple interlocking systems of privilege and oppression at the macro, social-structural level” (TC 114). I will look at the key social categories listed by the book and observe whether I have been helped or hurt by certain things.

Firstly, I am a white male. I think this has proved to contain an amount of privilege for me because of the way our educational system is set up. Even though I've loved science since I was young, science has historically been a male dominated field, and only now are many people looking to extend STEM fields to women and more people of color. I think with that comes socio-economic status. I come from a middle class family and so that has made paying for my education slightly more challenging to me. While it has been slightly more difficult than if I came from an elite and affluent household, I have still had it much better than many in America and other countries who don't even have the luxury of school either based on funds of inaccessibility. I am at an advantage in terms of physical ableness, as I am able to do the many physically demanding tasks being a field researcher can call for without much thought, although I think my anxiety puts me at a minor disadvantage for an obvious reason. Although I do firmly believe I have worked hard to get where I am right now, I think that I have not worked nearly as hard as someone else might have to if they come from a drastically different background who wished to do the same things as me. I think this serves as an important reminder that no matter where somebody is in life, you should always try to be respectful because they may have gone through many different struggles to get where they are now, and that can vary widely on the micro level, and trends can be seen at the macro level.  

Intersectionality

Being a parent consumes me. I don’t think there is such a thing as unconditional love until you put a human life and all their needs before yours-when you become second in your own life. I have felt degraded at times when my age, educational level, employment, and financial stability has been misunderstood by others. I often feel the need to clarify my accomplishments as a parent, and as an adult to be taken seriously.

When applying for other jobs I felt that it needed to be known that I worked my way up to lead positions, supervising status, running a bar and restaurant with my own office even. But because I left my managing position and worked for family video two years ago to focus more on my college education, the employees and management there treated me like an uneducated young mom with a limited future. Telling people that I lived in a full house, was in a committed 8-year relationship with the father of my child, and pursuing a college education did bring some benefits because in return my socioeconomic class was perceived as more than just a young mom. My conversations would be different with others who seen me as an adult, with a foundational home, stable income, strong family dynamic, and pursuing higher education. Rather being bossed around and left disconnected from the other employees, I began to be treated more fairly, and as an employee with equal opportunity.

I have had so many comments for simply being with the father of my child. I despised the question but was often asked, is he the father of your daughter? The surprised actions made me mad, because it was automatically assumed I was a single parent with a boyfriend, rather the possibility of two adults raising their child. I don’t want to be looked at as a young mom relying on government assistance to get by. Therefore, I swipe my debit bank card with pride when I buy a cart full of groceries. To many misconceptions are made when people implicitly or explicitly create identities for someone with little knowledge at all about the person. I hear the phrase, “a picture is worth a thousand words”, and immediately justify that it may take ten thousand to fully understand the interrelationships that make up a person’s identity.

I come from a low working-class family, been forced into adulthood at an early age to help manage raising my sister, and help my mom through her bad habits. So, my past has had an enormous impact on who I am today. The independence and seeking a more privileged perception and opportunities is all a part of where I come from. I want to be a successful hardworking mother, nothing less. I am not a product of my circumstances, I am a product of my decisions.