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Crystal Hernandez

Professor Batty

English 28

14 December 2017

How the Garcia Girls Suppressed Their Sexuality

As a woman living in the United States, a country that is supposed to be advanced and

modern, I have seen and experienced first hand the way women are forced to suppress their

sexualities. The double standards women experience everyday are a great example. As a man if

you are sleeping around with many women, other men begin to idolize you but if a woman were

to do the same and sleep around with multiple men she would be branded a hoe or a slut or

any other derogatory word. The link between culture and suppression of sexuality as a woman is

huge and is illustrated in great detail in How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia

Alvarez. Culture greatly affects ones understanding of sexuality and the three main ideas we are

focusing on will be Male Control Theory, Female Control theory, and we will challenge the

common belief that women have a milder sex drive. Alvarezs novel follows four sisters: Carla,

Sandi, Yolanda and Sofia; as they grow up as immigrants in the United States. The novel greatly

focuses on the girls becoming women and how the individual experiences of their childhoods

impact their adult lives.

Although many women experience the need to suppress their sexuality, there is no one

factor in society that causes the suppression, rather it is the culture you live in that plays a large

factor in the norms of your society. In the journal Cultural Suppression of Female Sexuality by

Roy F. Baumeister he goes over a few theories of suppression. The first being The Male Control

Theory which states the political goals of men have depended on preventing women from
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having sexual pleasure...mens motives for doing so could encompass the jealous desire to

prevent their mates from having sex with other men (which could be related to paternity

uncertainty and property rights) (Baumeister, 170). Alvarez illustrates a great example when

Sofias father ,Carlos, finds love letters in her drawer asking if she had gotten her period he

reacts by yelling angrily Has he deflowered you?...Have you gone behind the palm trees?Are

you dragging my good name through the dirt...are you a whore?(Alvarez,30). In this passage

you can clearly see how her own father puts her down and calls her a whore only because he

doesnt agree with what she is doing. He also believes that her deflowering has some

significance or some bad connotation to his personal name, he is using this to shame and control

her into having her believe that what she is doing is wrong.

The second control theory from the journal Cultural Suppression of Female Sexuality is

The Female Control Theory. This theory states the women,rather than the men cooperate to

stifle female sexuality...widespread suppression of female sexuality reduces the risk that each

woman will lose her male lover to another woman(Baumeister,171). In Baumeisters theory

women make sure other women arent freely giving out sex, because if they are then the men

wont stay and deal with women who have standards like dating or marriage before having sex.

Hanan Parvez offers a similar outlook, in his article he stated if men can easily get access to

female sexuality through prostitution or vicariously through pornography, the value of what his

female partner has to offer decreases(Parvez,4). This idea is seen in a lot of cultures including

the Mexican culture, growing up as a mexican-american I was conflicted in which identity to

follow, the american carefree liberal identity? Or the chaste Mexican dont hold hands before

marriage identity? And just to make matters worse there was also the over sexualized hot and

spicy Mexican woman in the media. Alvarez brings to light the way mexican women are
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oversexualized in the scene where the family goes out to eat with the Fannings and there is a

floor show in which Sandi describes the dancers as a teasing beatwith sultry struts, and foot

stomps.These were not the dainty and chaste twirls and curtseys of the ballerinas...these women

looked, well -Sandi knew no other way to put it -they looked as if they they wanted to take their

clothes off in front of the men(Alvarez,185). In this passage Sofia is still fairly young and

already seems to grasp the idea of sexuality and understands that it is wrong for the dancers to

want to take their clothes off in front of the men. I believe this was one of the main

experiences in Sandis life that started to make her so open and proud of her sexual desires and

feelings.

Baumeister also brings up the idea that females have a milder sex drive it was not

necessary to suppress female sexuality, because women by their nature have less sexual desire

than men. (Baumeister,173). This statement is generalized and should not be taken as fact

simply because over hundreds of years women have been called derogatory names for showing

the same interest in sex as men. There are more repercussions for a woman having casual sex,

than a man. A woman risks her family disowning her, being branded a whore, or even being

killed in extreme situations. Alvarez shows how sexual Sofia is on her vacation she went to

Colombia because her current boyfriend was going, and since she couldnt spend an overnight

with him in New York, she had to travel thousands of miles to sleep with him...they broke up.

She met a tourist on the street[she] had not been without a boyfriend for more than a few days

of her adult life(Alvarez,29). Here you can see Sofia doesnt really care about the implications

or negative connotations that come with being a sexually active woman. She is more of the type

of woman who goes with the flow of the situation and lets things happen naturally without taking

what other people might think into consideration.

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The idea of female sexual suppression is not new and has been blamed on biology, on the

male gender as a whole, and even on the very same women whose sexualities are repressed.

Regardless of any specific demographic that they choose to blame I believe it is society and

culture who lets the suppression happen because we are afraid to change the status quo, and on a

larger scale we are afraid what will happen if women are no longer shamed for something that

men get away with regularly. Alvarez used so many examples of sexual suppression because it is

still relevant and millions of women suffer through it on a daily basis, and it is what lets us truly

feel connected to the characters in the book. Overall, I believe society and culture will eventually

change and let women express themselves sexually, if they wish, but it has to be talked about and

brought into the spotlight for everyone to understand why hiding a vital part of yourself is a

terrible thing, for you and for your relationships.

Works Cited

Alvarez, Julia. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. Algonquin Books, 2013.

Baumeister, Roy F., and Jean M. Twenge. Cultural Suppression of Female Sexuality .

Review of General Psychology , vol. 6, pp. 166203., doi:10.1037//1089-2680.6.2.166.

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Firestone, Lisa. Are We Still Condemning Women for Their Sexuality? HuffPost,

HuffPost, 28 May 2012, m.huffpost.com/us/entry/1382892.