Real Women Have Curves

Real Women Have Curves is a stage play by Josefina López and is set in a tiny sewing factory in East Los Angeles in September 1987. It is marked by the issues of gender politics and the Latina immigrant experience. The story is told from the point of view of Ana, the youngest employee at the factory. Ambitious and bright, Ana yearns to go to college, but does not have the money. The action follows the course of a week at the factory, as the women talk about their lives, loves and deepest desires while attempting to meet impossible production deadlines. Within that week at the factory, the woman face many challenges such as the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (called La Migra in Spanish slang), troubles with their husbands and other male characters mentioned in the play, judgement from other characters, as well as yearning for dreams that do not seem possible to fulfill. In the playwright's notes, López writes about how she grew up in Los Angeles herself. With the threat of la migra looming over her childhood, she once saw a meter maid in a corner store and immediately attempted to "act white" out of fear that the official looking person could deport her. After the 1987 Simpson-Rodino Amnesty Act, López was able to become a legal resident. She reflects on the undocumented people she knew who were afraid to register themselves for fear that the act was a trick. "They, like me, couldn't believe that after hiding and being persecuted for so long they were finally going to have the freedom to live and work in this country." She recounts that before she went to college she worked in a garment factory; those experiences inspired Real Women Have Curves. In 2002, the play was adapted into a film of the same name, directed by Patricia Cardoso and starring America Ferrera as Ana. Characters Ana: the young feminist and recent high school graduate. She is politically active and concerned; she is waiting on her financial aid to come through so she can attend college at her dream school, New York University. She sometimes sneaks away from her work to the bathroom where she has a hidden journal and pen that she writes her true feelings in. At the beginning of the play she is ashamed to be working at the factory, but by the end she realizes how much the women in the factory have taught her that her years of education could not.