All girls should get a period in their lifetime, but some cannot wait a lifetime. All girls are scared that blood is coming out of their bodies, but when you do get it, you have become a young women. Anita sees changes in her body and is called a senorita, but doesn't see it in her. She cannot be a senorita, or called one until the moment comes.” In fact, I am not a senorita yet, as I have not gotten my period yet. But odd things are happening to my body” (Alvarez 59) The older Anita gets the closer she is to becoming a senorita. Periods are important to the life of a young girl and they are not an adult without them. As a developing young girl, Anita is not ready to take on the role of an adult without her …show more content…
Anita woke up from a night of rest. She looked under the covers to see blood. In a burst of panic, she woke up her older sister, Lucinda. After getting cleaned up and the cover taken off, Anita says, “I feel more like a baby in wet diapers. And now I don’t want to be a senorita now that I know what El Jefe does to Senoritas” (Alvarez 73). Anita got her period during the night! While the chaos of the situation occurred Anita began to realize that being a senorita isn't all that it had seemed. Instead, she feels like a baby in wet diapers. Also, El Jefe, the ruler of the Dominican Republic, likes young girls, more specifically, young, pretty senoritas. Wanting to stay with her family and away from El Jefe, Anita doesn't tell anyone except for Chucha and Lucinda. Her parents and friends will not know that she had gotten her period. Or at least until El Jefe is out of office.
Throughout the book Before We Were Free by Julia Alvarez, the main character Anita shows physical growth in many ways. At first growing taller, refusing that she is a senorita without getting her period, and lastly, getting her period and realizing it isn't as it seemed. “Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself” Berenice