Essay 2

The character that I believe stayed most true to themselves and their culture is Olive from Little Miss Sunshine. She worked hard to be successful in her beauty pageant, no matter what other people around her would say. When she was first told she would be able to compete in in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant everyone was happy for her and she was even more excited to be in it. Once they were on the road to get to the pageant her family starts to fall apart. At one point she is told not to eat ice cream because her family tells her that she will not win the pageant if she eats the ice cream. At first she does not eat the ice cream but then realizes that she does not care what other people think. As her families dreams start to fall apart they all start to live dreams through Olive. They put pressure on her to win and worry about how she looks and her chances to win.

Even though Olive hears the things that her family worries about and still keeps her confidence. She still has a huge desire to win. Once she gets to the pageant and starts to compete she sees all the other girls with fake hair, fake teeth etc. But she still sticks with her personalty. She shows worry about the other girls but still has confidence. When she gets on stage there are a lot of people who wonder why she is there and her family starts to believe that she is not going to win. They ask her if she wants to leave and not compete but she stays and tries to get everyone to open up to her being different from the other girls.

In Olive's final performance she gets on stage and dedicate her dance to her grandpa who had died and helped her come up with the dance. When she starts dancing it is a raunchy dance that offends all the parents in the crowd and the judges. When the head judge tells her to stop she keeps going and her family joins in on her dance. They finally come around to embrace Olive's personalty and realize she is perfect just the way she is. Throughout the whole movie Olive is true to who she is and never lets anyone tell her otherwise.

There was not a total strain on her losing her culture. Part of her keeping her culture was her not changing herself to conform to the look of the other girls in the pageant. But overall there was not a threat to her culture.

I adore Olive and how she was able to be herself throughout all of her adventure. Even with all the outside pressuring her to change she stayed true to herself.