Quinceaera Style

Winner of the Emily Toth Award for Best Single Work in Women's Studies, Popular Culture Association Co-winner of the Elli Kongas Maranda Prize, Women's Section of the American Folklore Society (AFS) A dynamic study of social negotiation and consumerism in the coming-of-age quinceaera celebration and the impact of normalizing spectacles of luxury. Quinceaera celebrations, which recognize a girls transition to young womanhood at age fifteen, are practiced in Latinx communities throughout the Americas. But in the consumer-driven United States, the ritual has evolved from a largely religious ceremony to an elaborate party where social status takes center stage. Examining the many facets of this contemporary debut experience, Quinceaera Style reports on ethnographic fieldwork in California, Texas, the Midwest, and Mexico City to reveal a complex, compelling story. Along the way, we meet a self-identified transwoman who uses the quinceaera as an intellectual space in her activist performance art. We explore the economic empowerment of women who own barrio boutiques specializing in the quinceaeras many accessories and made-in-China gowns. And, of course, we meet teens themselves, including a vlogger whose quince-planning tips have made her an online sensation. Disrupting assumptions, such as the belief that Latino communities in the United States cant desire upward mobility without abandoning ethnoracial cultural legacies, Quinceaera Style also underscores the performative nature of class and the process of constructing a self in the public, digital sphere.