La Quinceañera Stereotypes

Archetypes are used to convey a story about a character without digressing from the main narrative. The use of archetypes can also be used to express complex ideas about a group, but when these archetypes are allowed to be used outside of their original context the become a stereotype. In quinceañeras, and in the Ballrooms of Detroit stereotypes are points of conflict where as traditionalists people confirm their membership in a group by perpetuating them, and as non-traditionalists they refuse to conform to stereotypes that have been placed on them by society.
There are those in the popular media who use archetypes to include minority groups into a narrative about the dominant culture. The argument being that they are being inclusive by
In the quinceañera traditionalists are men and women who are champions for the Roman Catholic Church. They perpetuate social and gender conformity through the use of stereotypes. The young women and men are dressed gender appropriate and preform gender appropriate rituals in ceremony. In Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in Detroit, Marlon Bailey tells us that traditionalist are the House Parents, derived from the social structure of a stereotypical Black or Latino family, who are charged with maintaining the House rules and the rules of ballroom performance. In the case of quinceañeras the traditionalists achieve a demarcation between what Davalos calls "insiders" and "outsiders" of the group while maintaining a sense of inclusivity among all its members; Mexican outsiders, although called Mexican or Chicano, are not Mexican enough. However in ballrooms, traditionalists use stereotypes to create competition categories that were started in 1940’s Harlem. Some examples of stereotypes that perpetuate traditional views in a quinceañera, regardless of cost, are the religious ceremony, the large fiesta where the girl debuts, the white dress signifying sexual purity. In ballroom culture gender stereotypes such as butch, and femme are the main criteria of all the categories in competitions and used
When a type becomes a part of the discourse it is no longer stereotype, inserted out of context as a stand-in for a type, the group in essence has muted its negative connotation and reverted it back into a new archetype. Because the archetype “fits” within its context we can begin to discuss how these symbols are used in self-identity rather than whether or not they should be used at all; as Davalos explains the study of group ethnologies and gender should not be a “code for behavior”, but a “process-oriented” record of the group. However, the difference between its misuse by society and its use by the group as a tool to assist in self-identity is that its misuse is more ubiquitous in popular media. This is exemplified in by Brian Herrera in Latin Numbers: Playing Latino in Twentieth-Century U.S. Popular Performance when he refers to Rita Moreno’s role as Googy Gomez, a parity of the Latina spitfire roles she had previously played, and the stereotypical characters in many of the plays in Teatro Campesino. Herrera reminds us that stereotypes never disappear because when they are not being misused by base cultures they are used by the group in question to show that they should not be