Gender Roles In The Film '

This movie is about a teenage girl named Jess, short form for Jesminder, who grew up in England. She was always passionate in football since a young age, and David Beckham has always been her number one inspiration. Her number one dream is to become a well-known football player one day. Jess befriends a British girl named Jules. Both of them share the love of football in common, and they both have mothers who disapproves of them playing football. Jules invites Jess to join an all-girls football club. But the only thing stopping Jess is that she’s born into a traditional, Indian family. They think that her obsession with this sport is insane. And they refuse to let her join the football club which results in her going behind their backs by pretending …show more content…
The roles of a woman in the Bhamra family is an important core for them. One example is cooking. Mrs.Bhamra is an excellent example of an ideal Indian women who can cook for her family. Throughout the movie you can see how she is always preparing, and serving food for her family. To continue her culture, she attempts to teach Jess how to cook because she feels it is important that the woman of the house has to have the knowledge of cooking. She wants Jess to know how to prepare meals for her family in the future. As she sees cooking as something that will ensure a good marriage for her. However, Jess shows no interest at all in learning how to cook. She knows that her mother wants her to portray the ideal feminine role and control her future. Jess prefers to be playing football in the park than be in the kitchen cooking. This just shows how she is acting outside her culture and wants to break down the walls of gender roles. By doing this she is also shaming her family’s reputation within the Indian community. Her parents are very unhappy about her wanting to play football. In the movie Jess’ mum says “Who would want a daughter that can run around playing football all day but can’t cook?” They hold a firm belief that society should run a certain way. One gender does one thing and the other gender doing another thing. They feel women should not be involved in sports but rather be interested in other stuff. In this case, …show more content…
Social roles is shown when in one scene Jess’ mum says to her “what family would want a daughter-in-law who can run around kicking footballs all day but can’t make round chapatti’s?” This shows that Jess will one day play a role as a wife, and if she can’t cook for her husband, how is she going to be a good wife. Her mother is telling her that no one would want to marry a girl who plays football because in the Indian culture it is considered absurd. Acceptance was shown towards then end of the movie when Jess really wanted to play at the the league championship but she had to attend her sister’s wedding on the same day. But then her dad finally realized how badly she wanted to play football and so he took her to the football game. After seeing how well she could play, he gave her his permission to further her dream as a football player. Hence, accepting the sport as part of her life. Soon after, her mum also come’s to terms with it. The final scene of the movie is when Jess and her family is at the airport together with Jules and her family. Jess and Jules finally got the permission to attend Santa clara university in California on a scholarship. Both their mums have agreed to let them attend the