Celebrating Debutantes and Quinceañeras: Coming of Age in American Ethnic Communities

Chapter 4. Pagdadalaga/Blossoming: Becoming the Debutante

• Ch a pter 4 Pagdadalaga/Blossoming: Becoming the Debutante T he camera lingers on Olivia Hernandez for a second as the emcee, Willis, announces that her parents, Ramiro and Adele, are about to present her to the captive audience sitting inside the expansive ballroom of the Palacio del Rey, the century-old hotel where every South Cove Union of Filipino Americans (SCUFA) debutante has been “introduced to society” since 1978. Olivia’s hair is in a chignon that cascades into a bouquet of brown ringlets, adorned with shimmering combs. The skirt of her white gown billows around her; its poufy cap sleeves form small clouds at her shoulders. Her satin-gloved right wrist is cradled in her father’s arm, her left in her mother’s. Her face looks porcelain-smooth, punctuated only by the bold plum of her lips and by big, dark eyes that betray a hint of nervousness and self-consciousness. With a small tilt of her chin, she, Ramiro, and Adele step into the center of the spotlight to parade slowly around the ballroom floor. Willis announces Ramiro and Adele’s birthplaces and occupations , when and where Olivia was born, how long their family has lived in Del Sol, Olivia’s college plans, and her aspiration to become an optometrist. After Olivia’s parents deposit her onstage, to be seated with her nine fellow debutantes, Willis booms, “We have come together on this special occasion to acknowledge all ten of tonight’s beautiful debutantes taking their first gracious step from childhood into their lives as young women.” As we watch this scene together, eight years after that “special occasion,” Adele visibly beams with pride and wistfulness. When Olivia asks her, amused, “Why are 62 Chapter 4 you still emotional?” Adele responds, “It’s special to me, to watch when you became really a dalaga.” In spite of the infinite ways Filipino debuts and Mexican quinceañeras have been reworked and configured in the United States, they all share a prominent common thread: the understanding that these events commemorate a girl’s passage de niña a mujer (from girl to woman). This chapter explores how quinces and debuts try to accomplish and memorialize this transformation. And it underscores how these efforts reveal the construction of distinctly Mexican and Filipino versions of womanhood, especially in response to how these groups feel and live their racial identities in the United States. Social scientists have long understood gender and race as identities that are continually produced through individuals’ and institutions’ ordinary and extraordinary activities. Summing up a considerable body of literature, Joshua Gamson and Laura Grindstaff write, “Gender is neither a fixed nor essential property of the self but an outcome of ongoing performances in various interactional and institutional contexts” (2010: 252). Michael Omi and Howard Winant similarly assert that racial categories are neither natural nor predetermined; rather, they are “formed” through “racial projects,” which “simultaneously interpret . . . , represent . . . , or expla[in] racial dynamics, and [attempt] to reorganize and redistribute resources along particular racial lines” (1994: 56). Female writers of color have advanced both gender and race studies by criticizing investigations of gender that neglect race, as well as investigations of race that overlook gender (e.g., Anzaldúa 1999; P. Collins 1990; Espiritu 2001; Moraga and Anzaldúa 1981). They call our attention to the fact that in addition to being socially constructed, race, gender, and class are mutually constituted. Building on the work of all these scholars, this chapter examines quinces and debuts as ethnicized gender projects, especially to show how the immigrant families in my study construct their daughters’ gender identities to help them make moral claims to recover some of “the power denied to them by racism” (Espiritu 2003: 158). I point out how immigrant parents distinguish the women they want their daughters to become as specifically Mexicana or Filipina and hold up la Virgen de Guadalupe and Maria Clara de los Santos, respectively, as feminine ideals. Then I describe how choosing, preparing, and executing a quince or debut contributes to the gendering of Mexican and Filipino American young women into señoritas and dalaga. I argue that this enables working-class immigrants to dispute perceptions of ethnic inferiority and makes it possible for middle- and upper-class immigrants to make their ethnicity visible in positive ways. And I show that while such work Pagdadal aga/Blossoming 63 relies on critiques of (white) “American...