Women Without Class Like Them

In the book Women without class by Julie Betties, she seems to be bent on that class can be studied observation as it pertains to girls growing up under diverse pretenses. As we look at the main interest in her effort to teach us ways to understand the process of class diversity. She explores how important race and gender-mixed together can affect the effort to make a formation such thing as class identity. Betties choose to study an American school called Waretown where her targeted group mostly contained girls/ women that she would talk to as she continues her research in which she interviews all these different classes of young women.

In her findings, she notices that the young girls are divided into different cliques/ upbringings, as it involves girls and their social hierarchy of high school in Central Valley, California.

It focuses on girls of different social classes and ethnicity such as whites and Mexican-American females. Women without Class also touches on gender and ethnicity in order to form social class identities that goes on in our school system around the world today.

Get quality help now

Bella Hamilton

Verified writer

5 (234)

“ Very organized ,I enjoyed and Loved every bit of our professional interaction ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

When discussing class Betties points out that some of the young women's downfalls are sometimes influenced by the fact that one has to be divided up into all these different class or cliques because of their diverse backgrounds. When thinking of how Mexican Americans are supposed to look you think of how on might feel that if you are high class you should look this way, and if you’re low class you should look that way.

This is the social norms of our society today. Some may feel that wearing tight-fitting clothes along with the dark shoes is how Mexican Americans are serotyped as it is perceived in our American culture. Mexican American girls are looked upon as being cheap-looking, pointing out that they are from a low-class family. Bettie also points out that the young women identify their experiences in high school on their class differences such as the working class and Middle class. The author talks about her observation on the girls at Waretown High in California Central Valley were solely based on class. Some of the girls would clique up and hang with each other that was either from your neighborhood or by your status. The girls at Waretown High were made up off half Mexican American and the other half were white. As I continued to read the book that as she continued to do her research as she talked to the girls about their lives, culture, school life, family, and their friendship with other girls. She then divided some of the girls into classes such as smokers, Cholas, hicks, and preps. Betties begin to describe what preps were they were mostly white students from a middle-class family and what then she explained what Hicks were white students who came from families that did a lot of farming.

She also touches on what Skaters were, as its white girls who did not consider themselves to be labeled as anything but wanted to be distinctively known as themselves but came from families that were hard working. In today’s society I feel that this stigma is still upon us as it pertains to how low class and high-class cultures are perceived. The author Julie Bettie book just approved my theory of how America is bent on diverse cultures. Me being of African descent one thing that I came from a poverty community and not the suburban community that I did. This book also touches home as to what I went through growing up in Oakland California. There were girls that were labeled high class when I was growing up also came from the upper hills in Oakland. And then there were the girls that came from the lower trenches of Oakland called lower Fruitvale where there’s crime and murders. If feel that this book is right on point as it pertains to the authors feminist theories of social diversity.