Abstract
Months and months of anticipation, dance rehearsals, hairstyle trials, dress shopping, and consultations with caterers, photographers, and videographers characterize preparation for a special day in the lives of many girls. We generally associate these efforts with brides, yet many Mexican American and Filipino American families go to such lengths for a special coming-of-age celebration marking the transition to womanhood. At 15, Mexican girls are traditionally celebrated with a quinceañera, while Filipino girls experience a debut around their 18th birthdays. In Evelyn Ibatan Rodriguez’s intriguing and well-written study of these rituals, readers are granted a look inside not only debutante balls and quinceañera parties but also Mexican and Filipino immigrant cultures.
Rodriguez’s book is based on extensive ethnographic research. In addition to attending a number of parties, she observed preparations, interviewed girls who had or were having debuts and quinceañeras, as well as family members, party participants, and industry professionals. She demonstrates the importance of these rituals as declarations of status, rights, and recognition that counter stereotypes about immigrant groups. Rodriguez also shows how these events reinforce and strengthen both ethnic identity and social networks in Mexican and Filipino communities. The book is aimed at an academic audience and would be an excellent resource in a race, class, and gender course or a course about immigration or race relations.
Celebrating Debutantes provides a convincing argument about how different migration patterns, rates of assimilation, and socioeconomic statuses result in coming-of-age celebrations taking on divergent meanings for Mexican and Filipino families. Rodriguez deftly weaves Mexican and Filipino histories, experiences of and motivations for migration to America, and shows how Mexican immigrants often use quinceañeras as a way of showing social status in their ability to host elaborate events for their daughters, contrary to stereotypes about their working-class identity or fiscal irresponsibility. For Filipino immigrants, tasteful celebrations allow families a chance to demonstrate how they fit into American culture.
For those interested in gender and gender stratification, this book is particularly compelling in its examination of a ritual that celebrates girls as individuals, not part of a couple (like weddings), and with no parallel gala for boys (like bar/bat mitzvahs; although she does note one gay teenage boy intended to have a debut). The amount of time and money devoted to planning are indicative of the importance girls are granted in their families. Yet, in both cultures, these festivities emphasize traditional roles of girls and women as “keepers of the family”: innocent and sexually restrained, as described in chapter four. By celebrating chaste and responsible young woman, these parties afford Mexican and Filipino immigrants an opportunity to show moral superiority over native-born American girls who are perceived as sexually promiscuous and indulged by permissive parenting. Rodriguez might have provided a more nuanced discussion of the significance of gender and the recognition girls receive. Do girls feel empowered by these events at the time they are happening? How do parents justify or feel about spending this amount of money on daughters but not sons? And what does the absence of these rituals for boys say about differences in transitions to manhood and womanhood? Rodriguez does, however, give attention to the lasting impact of debuts and quinceañeras, suggesting that the memory of the event and retrospective appreciation of girls’ special status on that day can produce “emotional operating capital” which influences girls’ senses of self later in life.
For all the data that Rodriguez collected, this book is surprisingly underdeveloped in its inclusion of ethnographic detail and richness. In the second chapter, where Rodriguez provides an overview of what happens at debuts and quinceañeras, she relies on summaries from two films—one that features a debut and the other a quinceañera—rather than using description from her own observations. Throughout the book, I would have liked to hear more from the girls themselves and read more firsthand descriptions of both debutante balls and quinceañeras. Few extended quotes from girls or stories of particular parties are included. Photographs would have also enhanced the book. I also wondered how these events compare to the weddings, bridal or baby showers of women from these two ethnic groups or sweet sixteen parties common among other ethnic groups. The similarities to wedding preparation and excess is remarkable, so more discussion of how debuts and quinceañeras differ from them and how they are seen in relation to those events would have improved this book’s contribution to our understanding of ritual, culture, gender, and status transition. At the same time, these events merit investigation in their own right and perhaps Rodriguez purposefully chose not to make such comparisons as a way of emphasizing the significance of these parties in girls’ lives and of Mexican and Filipino cultures.