I was delighted to see this article, since I hadn’t heard anything about it since the eighth grade. My Spanish teacher that year was big on videos, and at the end of the year we watched one called “Sweet Fifteen.” It was about a Mexican-American girl and all the troubles she has to deal with as her fifteenth birthday approached. She’s fairly happy until she falls in love with an older boy her father doesn’t approve of. Of course, she rebels by spending as much time as possible with the boy, and her parents respond by forbidding her a quinceañera party. When she finds out that her parents are illegal immigrants and in danger of being deported, she enlists the help of the older boyfriend to secure amnesty for them. In the end, she succeeds in getting green cards for her parents, thereby impressing her parents with her maturity and earning the right to have a quinceañera, complete with boyfriend.

My fifteenth birthday was coming up, and I campaigned for months to rent that movie and see it again before my birthday. My parents always nodded and said they’d try to find it, but I don’t think we ever even went into the video rental for it.

I find the different spins that are placed on quinceañeras rather interesting in itself. For parents, the major aspect seems to be religious. There’s a big church ceremony, and it’s seen a time for affirming one’s faith and assuming new responsibility as a member of the church. For the girls, I suspect the focus is the party. It’s all the parts of a wedding the typical American woman enjoys fussing about, minus the groom. There’s a church service with candles and readings and a fluffy white dress, then photos and a reception with tinted punch and dancing and a band and fourteen attendants wearing matching dresses. But for both, it’s a very tangible mark of a change in the girl’s life. She is expected to behave more like an adult now, to act responsibly and to have more independence.

The quinceañera is also an acknowledgement of a girl’s sexual maturation. It was originally a sort of Aztec coming-out party, an announcement that she was now available for marriage. For many girls, regardless of race, fifteen is an age where dating is now allowed. It not only resembles a wedding almost exactly: it’s intended as a precursor to a wedding. In modern culture, a wedding is still a long time from a fifteenth birthday, but it’s the time when that possibility begins to enter the picture.

I like the concept of a quinceañera. I never wanted to have one myself, but I think it must be a very positive experience for most families. There is, of course, the possibility of problems like getting angry relatives to enter the same room and paying for such a lavish celebration, but I think the positives overcome that. It brings an entire family together, it allows everyone to acknowledge the girl’s coming of age, it’s a celebration of Hispanic culture, and it allows the girl a bit of time in the spotlight. ¡Qué buena idea!