Oscar Wao Gender

In “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”, Junot Diaz portrays adulthood as a period of time during which a person must deal with the realities of a harsh situation. Beli Cabral and her daughter Lola de Leon are both faced with challenging situations that arise due to their alignment with gender stereotypes. The concept of adulthood emerges through the novel as a time when the outcomes of complex situations are the direct results of one’s ability to problem-solve, with the ‘adult’ often learning lessons through poor decision-making. Early adulthood is observed through the novel as Beli and Lola both react poorly to being used by men as a sexual objects: Because Beli sexually objectifies herself in the pursuit of love and blames her partners

From age eight to age twelve, Lola is pictured as a quiet young girl who obediently follows her mother’s orders, however when Lola turns twelve she begins to reject traditional gender roles, refusing to remain passive and timid, specifically around men, as she finds herself being able to “look boys straight in the face when they stared” at her. At the same time, Lola begins to reject traditional beauty standards as “[She] cut[s] her hair short –flipping out her mother yet again– partially I think because when she’d been little her family had let it grow down past her ass, a source of pride, something I’m sure her attacker noticed and admired” (25). Lola does not want to be seen as an accessible and sexual object. She realizes that the traditional beauty standards of long, silky hair which her mother raised her to fit into from childhood are actually what sexual predators target: a young, sexually appealing girl who is too young to be able to fight back. Lola rejects these beauty standards in spite of her mother and cuts her hair short, defying the values of her mother as well as proactively eliminating herself from the target pool for sexual predators. Once Beli is sick, Lola finds the opportunity to escape her family life when her boyfriend asks her to move in with him. Looking back on the situation, she recounts, “It was the stupidest thing I ever did. I was miserable. And so bored. But of course I wouldn’t admit it. I had to run away, so I was happy! happy!”. By moving in with her boyfriend, Lola is actively able to escape her current reality; however she does not anticipate what his home life may be and does not look forward to any particular aspect of living with him, looking forward only to living without the presence of her mother. Although she finds herself miserable and