Lily Percy, host: Hello, fellow movie fans. I’m Lily Percy, and I’ll be your guide this week as I talk with Virgie Tovar about the movie that changed her — Real Women Have Curves. If you haven’t seen it, don’t worry. We’re gonna give you all of the details you need to follow along.

[music: Luto by Aterciopelados]

When I was in 11th grade, my favorite English teacher, Mrs. Kjos, changed my life forever. We were working on a scholarship application after class one day. She wanted to get me into this very exclusive writing program at Columbia University for the summer, and I was trying to explain to her that this was such a foreign thing to me, not just because of the money — which would be a definite issue, hence the scholarship — but because my parents would never agree to it. To them, the idea of me going away for a whole summer to be with a bunch of strangers —Americans — was something that they wouldn’t even consider.

And it was then that Mrs. Kjos turned to me and said, “You are always going to be walking between two worlds. You’re always going to be an immigrant, and you’re always going to be an American, and you have to make a decision about what that means for you.” And when I think about the movie Real Women Have Curves, when I think of Ana and her own struggle walking between two worlds, as a Mexican-American living in L.A., trying to please her family and herself, I can’t help but think of that classroom with Mrs. Kjos.

[excerpt: Real Women Have Curves]

Real Women Have Curves tells the story of Ana, played by America Ferrera in her first starring role — it’s kind of hard to believe, because she’s been with us for so long, that this was her first movie — and Ana’s reality as a Mexican-American, living in her immigrant household and also navigating a very American high school experience.

When I first saw America Ferrera as Ana, I was a junior in college, and my mind was blown away by what I was seeing on screen. This is what people mean, when they say that representation matters. I had never seen another Latina who looked like me, who wasn’t skinny, had an immigrant family, was struggling to reconcile these two worlds within herself and within her family, but who also wanted a way out.

[excerpt: Real Women Have Curves]

The movie really revolves around Ana and her mother Carmen, played by Lupe Onteveiros. Their relationship is a tense one. We see them fight, we see them struggle, but all throughout it we also see this raging love that is at the center of that relationship. And that’s one of the reasons why it’s so hard to watch the two of them on screen — you know that they want to communicate with each other, you know that they want the best for each other, but they are missing each other completely.

[excerpt: Real Women Have Curves]

The relationship between Ana and Carmen is one that writer and activist Virgie Tovar is very familiar with. Virgie is one of my heroes, truly. She has led me in understanding my body and my sexuality in an entirely new, different way as a Latina woman. And her work includes the book The Self Love Revolution, she’s a podcast host with the Rebel Eaters Club, and more than anything, what I appreciate about Virgie is her transparency about the grief and the struggle that comes with taking care of yourself even if it means going against what your family wants.

So I’m curious if, just for a couple of seconds, you would just travel back in time with me to the first time that you saw Real Women Have Curves. And just think about who you were with, where you were, what you were feeling — all those memories that come to mind.

Virgie Tovar: It’s very vivid. I remember I was in college. I was at UC Berkeley, and one of the cool things about downtown Berkeley is that it has several independent movie theaters, all within pretty much walking distance of one another. And it was playing at the movie theater that is right on the edge of the bottom of the campus. And I remember I was in a class — it was called FemSex, or Female Sexuality, for short — and it was my introduction to feminism. And it really changed my life. In the midst of learning about vaginas and patriarchy and desire and masturbation, the movie Real Women Have Curves came out, and we as a group, as a class, walked together to the theater. We took up this whole row in the theater. And we watched this movie, and then I remember afterwards processing and talking about how inspired we were and how amazed we were. So it’s very vivid in my mind, that experience.

Percy: Yeah, it’s incredible. I was in Miami — we’re the same age, so I was also in college. I was in Miami, having a very different college experience [laughs] than you were — let’s just say, more repressed; definitely more Catholic; [laughs] more conservative, as you can imagine. And so, at the time, none of the things that we’re talking about that you were really discovering in your feminism class were at all on my radar. All I remember focusing on back then, in 2002 when the movie came out, was the body issue, the fact that I was watching someone on screen, in Ana, played by America Ferrera — I was watching someone on screen who looked more like me than anyone I had ever seen. I’m just curious about what you noticed in that first viewing, versus what you started to notice just as you started to get older and come into your own.

Tovar: I think, similarly, one of the biggest take-homes for me at that time was around Ana being desirable, and I think, specifically, the love story in the movie, which, even at that time, even though my antiracist — or my awareness of race was not very high yet, or I didn’t have the language to talk about it, but I remember noticing that it was an interracial love story and what that meant. That hit me at that time.

I think, as someone who had literally come up — I grew up in a really diverse, immigrant community; it was mostly Latin American and Asian families, living in the community I grew up in. And all I got, ever, was criticism and rejection from those boys. And then when I started actually — I experienced sexual debut; I started having sex, I found acceptance in white men. And what a weird mind trip that is. So I think I saw myself in Ana in that element, in that way. And then I think, also, I was really struck by her mother and her relationship to her mother.

In some ways I think, at that first viewing, I don’t know that I was in a place where I could entirely understand or was capable of relating to Ana, if that makes any sense.

Percy: It does, completely.

Tovar: I saw her as powerful, and I saw the story as really powerful, but I don’t know if I was quite ready to be like, “Oh, Ana’s fat; I am fat; this is a huge deal, because this is a role model moment.” I don’t know if I was in a — I was still really deep in diet culture at that time, and really deep in body shame, and so I don’t know that I could have had that experience. You know what I mean?

Percy: Yeah, I do. And actually, it’s funny you say that; not being able to really have seen that at the time. I feel like it wasn’t until I went through therapy in my mid 20s that I started to see

Ana and her mother, Carmen, in such a different way, is the toxicity of the relationship. One of the things that wasn’t clear to me, when I first watched this movie — because I honestly thought, this is just what being Latin American is. That’s just the kind of relationship that a mother and daughter has. And it wasn’t until I went to therapy, and I was like, Ohh, no. This is actually not good. [laughs] This is actually pretty toxic.

I’m curious about when you started to see some of the things that you just named, but also the toxicity of their relationship, because now, as a 38-year-old woman, having recently re-watched the movie, what I see in Carmen, in the mother — I see her shame and her jealousy, and just the self-hatred that she has that prevents her from seeing her daughter just really as she is, and not only that, but in celebrating her daughter, right?

Tovar: Absolutely. And I think, honestly, one of the things that I learned that — and this was later in my life as an adult — yes, there’s overt toxicity in their dynamic, but there’s actually gender socialization tension as well. So, for example, one of the things that Carmen did/does is she uses her health, or the threat of her impending death or illness, as a control mechanism. And I grew up with that, for sure.

Percy: Same.

Tovar: Thankfully, I had other Mexican friends who were in a similar trajectory of the immigrant experience, and they were like, “You need to read this. You need to read this.” And one of the first books that was recommended to me was The Labyrinth of Solitude, by Octavio Paz. But it’s essentially a comparison of American and Mexican culture, written from the perspective of a Mexican person.

And one of the things that I learned through that book and through my own exploration was, I was socialized into — like Ana, I was living in a Mexican home, but I was being socialized into an American psyche, into an American aesthetic. And my grandmother, who raised me, wasn’t. So she was taught to do gender completely differently than I was. In Mexico, as in a lot of Latin America, as in a lot of places where there are brown people, part of gender, part of how you modulate, how you create control in a society where you maybe don’t have a lot of control, is that you use suffering and the threat of death as a way to keep people in line, whether it’s your partner, your husband, or your kids. And so, essentially, what we’re seeing in the film is both toxicity and just two different gender performances that are oppositional and that create tension.

And — girl, I’m getting chills just talking about it — I know that feeling. And I know the unreconcilable nature of that feeling. We can work through our toxicity. We can repair each other. We can learn how to talk to each other differently. But we cannot fundamentally change our cultural gender software. And so there’s a lot of pain. And I think you kind of see it — for me, that final scene where Ana is in New York, and she has got her choker on — I think that, for me, when I think about that image, it’s that moment of just being like, I can find a place where I feel more comfortable, but there is no place for me where I feel completely whole. And I’m not getting that from my family, and I’m not getting that from the culture, and I’m sort of — I’m like a walker between these two worlds. And so you get the sense, in the final scene, that she has found herself and that she’s confident, and you can feel that. But I think, for me, there’s a tension there. There’s not a perfect reconciliation.

Percy: And that scene, the other thing that struck me, watching it again this weekend, getting ready to talk to you — which may just be because this has been on my mind a lot, this year — which is the fact that she is walking in Times Square, and she’s got a smile on her face, and she’s free — but she’s alone. And the thing that struck me about that is something I’ve talked about a lot with my therapist this year, which is, there are consequences to the decisions that I’ve made within my family, to be an independent woman, which means that I’m rejected, and I’m also isolated from them. So there are consequences to what Ana has done, just in being part of this American culture.

Tovar: Absolutely. And I think on some level this is the journey of women, period, but it’s certainly the story for immigrant women, women of color. And I literally am in the weeds — I am creating, with a collaborator, a course on grief; the grief that we experience when we do body-positive work or anti-diet work, or we leave diet culture. Really, it’s the loss of full citizenship. We live in a culture where, if you’re a person of color, you’re never gonna be a full citizen. And I think that, similarly, when you’re talking about coming from an immigrant family, to refuse to be in line — it’s a refusal to be in line, to be disciplined, to be the right kind of person; it’s like a rebellion on both ends. You’re not walking from your family into a culture that’s ready to embrace you with open arms, either.

Percy: [laughs] Exactly — that’s not happening, either.

[music: Chica Difícil by Aterciopelados]

I hope you’re enjoying my conversation with Virgie Tovar about Real Women Have Curves. I was first introduced to Virgie and her work through her wonderful podcast, Rebel Eaters Club, from Transmitter Media. This body-positive and food-positive show is about breaking up with diet culture. Virgie talks to amazing “rebel eaters” who will change the way you think about food and your body. Their second season just launched and features great conversations with guests like Francis Lam from The Splendid Table, as well as fascinating stories about why we eat what we eat. Listen now, in your favorite podcast app or at rebeleatersclub.com.

One of the things that struck me — again, when I saw this movie, 20 years old, there’s no way in hell I would’ve been able to go and get condoms on my own like Ana does in this movie. I think I would’ve thought my hand would catch fire if I touched a condom; I’m pretty sure all these things were running through my brain. But she goes and buys condoms on her own. There’s that beautiful scene when they’re about to have sex, where he turns off the light, Jimmy turns off the light, and she says, “No, leave the lights on,” and then she gets up and stands in front of the mirror, naked.

Tovar: Yes!

Percy: And then she says, “See? This is what I look like.” Oh my God. It blew my mind. So I’m just curious, because you’re such a sex-positive person, and you’ve really taught me so much about sex positivity. And I’m curious how this movie strikes you in that way.

Tovar: I think that it is really powerful. It was really powerful. I think that that possibility of being worshipped — which, I think, as a fat person at that time, that was really mind-boggling.

Percy: I’ve never seen that since, in a movie.

Tovar: Yes, totally. So the sex scene was really, really powerful, and I think it really created an opening in my mind and a yearning for the possibility of it — even though I think, at that time, I did not think that that scenario was possible. I think that just the portrayal of it opened up my mind to the desiring of it — and the desiring of it in a body that is fat. Because, I think, for a lot of fat girls like me, you grow up and you think, “You’re gonna get that when you lose weight. You’re gonna get that when you’re finally thin and you get your ‘eating problems’ under control.” And the possibility that Ana’s in this fat body and experiencing this thing that, really, women have been socialized, only very slender women get, was a huge deal.

And then I think, again, the thing that stood out beyond that really was the race dynamic of, it’s like she’s getting so much criticism from her mom inside of her house, and this white dude steps in as almost a savior or a salve to that. And I remember having feelings about that, even then.

Percy: I think that’s one of the reasons why [laughs] it made me so happy, when he’s like, “So we’re gonna keep in touch,” and she’s like, “Nah.” [laughs]

Tovar: Totally!

Percy: ’Cause I’m like, That’s right. She knew what she wanted. She wanted to have this experience with him, and she has really nothing else here. There’s nothing else here for her.

Tovar: I love that, too. Frankly, I want to believe that I would’ve made the same decision as Ana, but if Jimmy had been there, would I have? I don’t know.

[excerpt: Real Women Have Curves]

Percy: Well, I think part of what you just named is that Ana is really aspirational. [laughs] I don’t know if we, as Latin American women, are there yet, but she is aspirational. And I think, especially at that age when we watched that movie, in our early 20s, it was the promise of what could be.

Tovar: Absolutely.

Percy: I love how Roger Ebert wrote this, in his review of the movie: “Ana knows that he will not be the last boy she dates. She’s mature enough to understand herself and the stormy weathers of teenage love. When they have sex, there’s a sense in which they are giving each other the gift of a sweet initiation.” I love that.

Tovar: I think that’s really beautiful. And I think, to your point around your hand catching on fire, my first sexual experience was so fraught. I was so ashamed. I was so terrified. Technically, we had sex for several hours, but only because I would just completely descend into sobbing tears, every single — there’d be one thrust, and then I would just fall apart. I’d want it, and then I’d be terrified about what it meant that I wanted it, and then we’d have to process, and then we’d try again. [laughs] It was just, like, a six-hour affair. It was nothing like —

Percy: That sounds exhausting. [laughs]

Tovar: It was pretty intense and weird.

Percy: [laughs] I hear you. I hear you. And for me, watching her navigate that and just really ask for what she wants, and desire in the way that she does in the movie — again, it gave me the confidence to be able to — not at the age of 20, but in my 30s be able to say, particularly to my mother, around sex, a version — not as directly as Ana says it in the movie, but a version of that line that she gives her mother: that there’s more to me than what’s between my legs.

That line — oh my God. It was such a — I have so many LatinX girlfriends who, we talk about this and the reality. It was even a trope in Jane The Virgin, where it was like, “your flower,” [laughs] and how you have to really “protect your flower” and all this bullshit.

[excerpt: Real Women Have Curves]

And that’s one of the things that, watching this movie now, 18 years after that first time, I’m a grown-ass woman, I’ve created really necessary boundaries within my own family, but there’s such sadness within me in watching my mother play that role, the role that we’ve been talking about, because of her generation and because of the cultural expectations around being a woman, and just knowing that there’s so much there that she will never be able to change.

And that really has only come with age, that I can have that compassion. I think for a long time I had a lot of resentment and anger toward her about it. And now I see that it’s just not possible for her. And it won’t be. It just won’t be possible for her, even though it is possible for me. And I’m just curious, when you think about the trajectory of your life alongside this movie, how the two of you — how you and Real Women Have Curves have grown together; what you’ve continued to learn as you’ve gotten older.

Tovar: Talking about relationship to mothers, one of the things that I really keep in mind is that the gender expression, the understanding of gender I have, are timebound and place-bound, too. She looks at my expression of gender, and she feels the same judgment that I might feel about hers. She feels like I’m confused and out of touch; I feel like she’s confused and out of touch.

My grandmother taught me this saying, which is, “The devil doesn’t know because he’s the devil, he knows because he’s old.” And it’s a Mexican saying.

Percy: I was gonna say, I’ve never heard that one. [laughs]

Tovar: And so she has wisdom, even with the stuff that is so new that came out of the women’s rights movement, women’s liberation, second wave feminism. She doesn’t know that world, but she understands systems in a way that are only really intellectual, for me, at this point, because those systems she grew up with, they’re the same systems I inherited. And we’re not living in a world free of misogyny, we’re not living in a world free of sexism, we’re not living in a world where women aren’t still expected to deny themselves in order to access the privileges that society should be giving to all of us, and so she lived with that boot overtly on her throat. And for me, I had to read books to even see that boot.

But anyway, in terms of the trajectory and growing, I think — I do feel like Ana could’ve been you or me. I think I see the complexity of all of it, where you, full-steam-ahead, you jump in — she’s at Columbia, she’s doing her thing — and then you have this rude awakening that, as much as you don’t relate to maybe where you grew up, you have similar points of tension with the people who are now in your social circle and in your professional circle, whatever.

And then I think what’s hard is, there’s a lot of things that are hard about growing up in that trajectory, and one of the hardest things is how much freedom there is, and you can pick and choose. It’s like you’ve got these two worlds. They’re both robust, they both have upsides, and they both have downsides; you get the freedom to be like, “I choose this from here, and I choose this from here.” And then I think part of the maturity process is really carving out your own femininity, your own meaning-making.

And I think one of the hardest things for me has been parsing out — and I could see Ana on this trajectory, too, where she comes to a point where she forgives her mother. And honestly, it’s her leaving that gives her the space to be gracious. And so, I think, similarly as we mature and we grow, it’s really difficult to look back. When you get your sense of Latinidad from your family, and your family is toxic, and it’s abusive, it’s really difficult to go back, and you have to go back to the ground zero, the shambles. And you’ve got to go through everything — I think of the images coming to mind: it’s like that house that has fallen apart after an earthquake, and you’ve gotta go through, and you gotta get rid of the stuff — the asbestos, gotta put that over there; the wood chunks from my house…

Percy: [laughs] Pick through the rubble.

Tovar: ..over there. And then this picture that means a lot to me, I’m keeping that. And then more asbestos, more weird-ass brick and shit — I don’t know, whatever your house is made of — putting that in a box, gonna go away; putting that in the trash. And then that moment where you’re like, “Oh, that diary that I wrote when I was a kid. And oh, that meal, that dish that I remember.” And I think what’s hard is, it’s never not gonna be painful.

And I think that is truly the source of tension for people of color who are really walking between worlds and have one foot in one world, one foot in — because pretty much, if we’re that person, it’s because our family hurt us, most likely. It’s not just that the allure of white culture was just so irresistible. Normally, we’re going there because we feel really hurt by where we came from. And a lot of us dealt with that through achieving our fucking asses off, and that landed us in white world. And so our journey is really that.
For example, on Ana’s trajectory, I could see there being a period in college where she’s not even — she knows she’s Latin, she knows where she comes from, but she’s trying to assimilate. She’s trying to jump in and be fully in that thing. And I think then you realize that doesn’t work either; and then there’s the grief. There’s just living with that grief and navigating that grief and bumping into that grief, every day for the rest of your life.

And just recognizing — one of the things that I grew up with all the time that my family taught me was, life is hard. Life is hard. Life is hard. And I was like, No, it’s not. You’re making it hard because you won’t go to therapy, because you won’t work, because you won’t leave this racist-ass church, because you won’t take me to the right school, because you won’t — and I was like, there’s a million reasons why life is hard. All of them have to do with the choices that you’ve made and that resentment and that rage. And then, at 38, just coming into the realization that, Oh, shit, I made totally different decisions than they did, and I am left with the reality that life is hard. There is no escaping.

And I think when you really talk about the difference between Mexican culture and white culture — and I think that really what Carmen was saying is, “Life is not fair. Life is brutal. Don’t even go out there, because the world is a terrifying place. You need to stay here and to the known quantity, because the world is scarier than you can even imagine.” And Ana’s like, “Nothing could be worse than being here with you” — which, girl, I can relate to that.

And then you go out into the world, but then you land in that awareness that Carmen has, and then what do you do with that knowledge? Are you gonna pass it on and create a toxic relationship with the people who you love, with your potential children, or not? And so I think that that’s the full circle, to me, and how I relate to that story and how I see it — part two or part three or part seven of Real Women Have Curves — maybe playing out.

Percy: Yeah. There’s a line that Ana’s sister — Estella, I think, is her name — says to her: “You know, you’re just like Mom” — Amá, I think they call her. That line really stood out to me, watching it this time around. And I think it has so much to do with what you just said: they’re not that different. They made different choices, but they both are still swimming in the same water. [laughs]

Tovar: Yes. Absolutely, because one of the biggest things that I learned growing up and was socialized into as an American child was that life is happy, life is good, and that everyone else in the world — certainly, in Mexico, but most other places in the world — [laughs] are like, Life is not easy. Life is hard.

Percy: And in fact, that’s why we celebrate so hard. [laughs] It’s why we party so hard, in Latin America…

Tovar: Totally.

Percy: …because we’re like, life is hard and full of horrible things, so let’s just take this moment to eat good food and drink and celebrate.

Tovar: Yes!

[excerpt: Real Women Have Curves]

Percy: The most famous scene from the movie — the movie, whenever it gets talked about, it’s always the scene when they’re in the textile factory, and Ana gets really hot, because it’s boiling hot in there, but they can’t turn on the fans because the fans get dust particles into the dresses and everything. So she takes off her shirt, and then all the other women start to undress. And they’re comparing the stretch marks and the rollitos, the little body rolls, and stomach, and all those things. And I think folks — particularly American folks, white American folks, I think they write about that scene so much because they’re talking about the realities of the world, their bodies, and they’re also celebrating, at the same time. There’s music, and Ana starts dancing. There’s so much represented there around the bittersweet of our cultures. [laughs] I think it’s one of the reasons why that scene continues to be written about and talked about.

[excerpt: Real Women Have Curves]

Tovar: Probably that scene, as a fat person, had more impact than even the sex scene, because it was literally like, Ana’s body had a need. Then she took care of it. And I was just like, fat people are allowed to do that? That moment where you’re like, I’m hot, and that means I gotta take some clothes off — as a fat person, that is a very intense moment. All of us have been really hot and sweating, and then this sense that you gotta keep your body covered up; you gotta wear black at any cost, no matter what. And I think that that scene was so much about just being like, I have a body. It has a need. I’m actually gonna address that need.

And you think about that time — nowadays, you have social media, we have a body positivity and we have a fat liberation movement; we have all this stuff that really creates that kind of portrayal of fat people in less clothes. At that time, that was not a thing. There wasn’t Instagram or anything like that. There were no fat women who had ever been on the cover of Vogue or Cosmopolitan. Fat shaming was not even a concept that was understood. And so to really understand that film as really way ahead of its time and visionary, especially in this culture.

Percy: Yeah, God, that’s so true.

I was reflecting on just how important this movie was, when it came out, and how it continues to be so important. It’s the first movie of its kind that was directed by a white Colombian woman, Latin American cast, various countries represented — America Ferrera is Honduran; it launched her career. I think I underplay the impact that this movie had on me, watching it at the age that I watched it, and even today, the impact that it has on me. And I’m just really curious to know what your answer to this would be, which is, what do you think 38-year-old Ana would be up to? [laughs] What do you think she’s doing?

Tovar: Girl, 38-year-old Ana has been through therapy. She reads self-help books. She’s married to a white man but has feelings about it. She’s accepted that  — I think she came to the moment where her ancestors were like, This is not a battle you’re gonna win, girl, and it’s OK. [laughs] And she’s like, All right, I’m just gonna let myself have this. I’m gonna stop dedicating my life to decolonizing everything, and I’m gonna dedicate it to the three things I actually feel like I can decolonize. And she is — I don’t know. Is she a badass entrepreneur? Probably. She’s definitely a disrupter, whatever she’s doing. I feel like if I met Ana, Ana would be a friend. Ana would be somebody who, if she were in a room, I would spot her. And if she lived in San Francisco, we’d be members of the same Arts and Letters women’s organization or whatever. [laughs]

Percy: [laughs] I love it. I think we’ve given Patricia Cardoso, the director, plenty of fodder for a sequel. I’m just saying.

Tovar: I agree.

Percy: You wrote the script right there. America Ferrera. Why not?

Tovar: Ahh! We wrote the script. [laughs] Yes.

[music: Minha Galera by Manu Chao]

Percy: Virgie Tovar is an author, activist, and one of the nation’s leading experts and lecturers on weight-based discrimination and body image. She holds a master’s degree in sexuality studies, with a focus on the intersections of body size, race, and gender. And she’s also the host of Rebel Eaters Club — a podcast about breaking up with diet culture, one corn dog at a time. It’s one of my favorite podcasts, and their second season is out now.

HBO Films, Newmarket Films, and LaVoo Productions produced Real Women Have Curves, and the clips you heard in this episode are credited entirely to them. Jellybean Records released the movie’s soundtrack, and it features fantastic songs from Lila Downs, Manu Chao, and Colombia’s own Aterciopelados.

[music: Minha Galera by Manu Chao]

Next time on This Movie Changed Me, we’ll be talking about the David Cronenberg horror classic, The Fly. You’ve got a week to watch it before our next conversation, and fair warning: it is gross. Like, look-away-from-the-screen gross. But underneath the ick factor is a whole lot of surprising depth. And Jeff Goldblum.

The team behind This Movie Changed Me is: Gautam Srikishan, Chris Heagle, Eddie Gonzalez, Lilian Vo, Christiane Wartell, Tony Liu, and Kristin Lin.

This podcast is produced by On Being Studios, which is located on Dakota Land. And we also produce other podcasts you might enjoy, like On Being with Krista Tippett,  Poetry Unbound, and Becoming Wise — find those wherever you like to listen, or visit us at onbeing.org to find out more.

I’m Lily Percy, and I just want to say thank you, America Ferrera, for creating a character in Ana that gave so many of us Latinas a future to aspire to.

[music: Minha Galera by Manu Chao]