Real Women Have Curves

I have been looking for this movie since America Ferrera became well-known because of Ugly Betty. I’ve heard good things about the movie and since I love America and Betty, I’ve wanted to watch Real Women Have Curves.

So I was at Kildonan Place yesterday browsing books and DVDs at Coles, HMV and Zellers. They had some items that are on sale. I was actually surprised to see some titles that are already in the bargain bins, like A Paper Life: Tatum O’Neal and She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan. It doesn’t seem so long ago when these two women were guests on Oprah promoting their books. I guess the books are not doing well, sales wise, anymore. Well anyway, I found a copy of Real Women Have Curves in one of the bargain bins at Zellers. $2.99 only. I guess as much as the movie has been critically acclaimed, it didn’t do well in sales either. Well, I wanted to watch it so I took it home. After paying for it, of course.

I enjoy watching America in any of her movies without the Ugly Betty getup. I mean without the frizzy hair and bangs, the bushy eyebrows, the red-rimmed eyeglasses and the blue orthodontic braces. I love looking at America’s face without all that stuff. I think she’s pretty and I love watching her face as she expresses the feelings that her character needs to emote.

In Real Women Have Curves, she plays Ana, an 18-year old Mexican-American, who just finished high school. She wants to go to college and her English teacher, Mr. Guzman (George Lopez) encourages her to apply for a scholarship at Columbia University. But her mother (Lupe Ontiveros) wants her to stay at home and help out at her sister’s sewing factory. Ana is always clashing with her old-fashioned mother who always criticizes her for being fat. But she likes the way she looks and as a young woman, she already realizes that “real women take chances, have flaws, and embrace life...”

In one of the scenes, Ana said to her mother, “Mama, I do want to lose weight but part of me doesn’t, because my weight says to everybody, ‘Fuck you!’ How dare anyone tell me what I should look like or how I should be, when there’s so much more to me than just my weight?” Very well said. Women shouldn’t be defined by the way they look, by their size, culture or race. We should be defined by what we can do and contribute to society.

I know that I may sound like I’m contradicting myself when I have just written a post on how I lost weight. But I did lose the weight on my own accord and not because somebody told me to do so. I lost weight because I wanted to become healthier and feel better about myself.

Here’s a clip of my favourite part in the movie.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard

No Spoilers (Yey!)

The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a cute small book which contains a collection of five short stories originally written and illustrated by J.K. Rowling, author and creator of the Harry Potter series. The standard edition that you see above is based on the handmade version which Rowling had handwritten and illustrated herself.

The stories in The Tales of Beedle the Bard were supposed to be written for wizarding children. So in the Muggle (non-wizard) world, they are the equivalent of our fairy tales or Aesop fables and each story sends out a moral lesson.

The title page includes a transcript that says: Translated from the original runes by Hermione Granger. Harry Potter readers and followers will remember The Tales of Beedle the Bard appearing in the seventh and final book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The book is bequeathed by Professor Albus Dumbledore to Hermione Granger. It is in one of the stories in the book, The Tale of the Three Brothers, that we are introduced to the Hallows: the Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone, and the Invisibility Cloak, all three play important roles in the final novel of the series.

But whether you are a Harry Potter follower or not, you’ll enjoy reading the five stories just as much as you’ve enjoyed reading your fairy tales when you were growing up. Just take a look at these titles:

The Wizard and the Hopping Pot

The Fountain of Fair Fortune

The Warlock’s Hairy Heart

Babbitty Rabbitty and Her Cackling Stump

The Tale of the Three Brothers

My favourite is The Fountain of Fair Fortune. There are three witches who are trying to get to the Fountain of Fair Fortune, one is seriously ill, one is very poor and one is heartbroken for being left by her beloved. Only one of them may bathe in the fountain to have his or her problem solved but along the way they are joined by a knight. Although this particular story has a happy ending, there are a couple that have darker themes. But not dark enough to give children nightmares. If your child/ren can get through the deaths in The Three Little Pigs (the version where the Big Bad Wolf eats the first little pig and the second little pig), then they’ll be fine.

Each story, by the way, has lengthy commentaries from Professor Dumbledore, historical, very informational and includes some of his personal accounts. J.K. Rowling also added footnotes for the sake of Muggle readers.

For those who are clueless like I was, as to what a bard is, here are the definitions from dictionary.com:

bard   

–noun
1. (formerly) a person who composed and recited epic or heroic poems, often while playing the harp, lyre, or the like.
2. one of an ancient Celtic order of composers and reciters of poetry.
3. any poet.
4. the bard, William Shakespeare.

If you are in Winnipeg, you might want to get your own copy right now at Superstore where it is one of their top ten best sellers and is now selling at 40% off. That’s only $8.70 Cdn. You can actually easily get a couple of copies, one for yourself and one for the kids.