Sabrina Pineda

Holly Batty
English 101
May 7, 2018​S

Rosa’s Bumpy Ride

The character Rosa from “Still Water Saints” Reveals how important it should be to live

a wise life and love yourself without depending on a guy, Although, Rosa does the complete

opposite and fails to do so, we learn from her mistake to be more independent in life.

Rosa’s character called my attention because she is dealing with her own

personal demon and that is self love. Self love is very important because people

will love ​you the way you love yourself. Doing the opp​osite of loving yourself may cause

depression. It’s common that depression leads to a lot, such as suicidal thoughts,

cutting​, cause of obesity/anorexia, and, lack of being social. According to Samantha Hanly from

“Facts About Insecurity in Teens ”, states “4 out of 10 depressed people commit suicide.. The

sensitivity was calculated to be 22.7%, specificity was 89.2%, positive predictive value 17.8%,

and negative predictive value 91.8% and had similar accuracy in the validation dataset.. people

are happier in a relationship when they already had built a relationship with their own self”. I

think this speaks for what I believe in because it is very important to treat yourself highly so that
others treat you fairly the way you deserve. From my personal experience, building a self love

relationship with myself before building a relationship with a someone else has made my

relationship less toxic and made me a lot happier.

From this case we learn that her low self confidence makes her settle for less and this can

happen to anyone. Rosa gets with the first man who decides to give her attention, that leads to a

toxic man name Miguel, who just got out of jail. As Miguel points out on page 27 to Rosa and

tells her, “I Broke into a sporting goods store with a buddy. Did my time. I was in jail for five

years.” This is already a red flag because she makes it seem like she doesn’t care about his

negative appearance and what harm he’s bringing into her life, but just living on the fact that

som​eone can like her enough to give her the attention she wants​. From what I can

predict is that he will benefit her with the self love she gains but will bring her life to bad

mistakes. Even though I don’t agree with her dating this man, he did give her self confidence and

the power to stand up to her mom. In other words, he makes her feel better and shows her he

doesn’t care about her weight. He reminds her by telling her not to miss a meal. Miguel says on

page 26 “​Eat, Don’t matter if you’re heavy, Rosa. You gotta eat.” Although, her mom

doesn’t appr​ove of her new boyfriend, I believe it’s her fault Rosa didn’t pick wisely on who

she dates because she constantly reminds her that she’s fat. Her mom is a representation of
society. For instance she tells her on page 24, ”Rosa, I’m trying to help you here..just look at

yourself. Look at that body. Do you want to go on living like that.” I feel as if her mom could of

have told her in a better way rather than bringing her down and making it seem like it’s such a

big deal. I blame her mom for teaching her daughter that is is not ok to be fat when clearly it is

ok that we are all different shapes and sizes. Society has the worst expectations. As Girdonam

from “ Society's Pressure to be Perfect” her articles says, “ Teenagers in our culture are

constantly forced to act and feel a certain way. Society enjoys dictating how our youth should

behave. The pressures placed on teens to meet a certain standard often lead to harmful

outcomes.” She depicts exactly how society wants teenage girls to be.

In addition, despite learning that Rosa doesn’t love herself, we also learn that she’s a

young teen school drop out. I feel as of having her child young it is the cause of what she’s living

and feeling now, even though I know she probably can not picture her life without her baby.

When having a child of your own at a young age a lot of the time you don’t fix yourself up

because you’re maintaining your child more than yourself. To explain further, from what I have

noticed watching my cousins have kids at a young age, I notice that they don’t put on makeup

the way they use to nor do they dress up everyday the way they’re use to doing. Everyday they

wake up tired having to get up whenever the child wakes up while working a late night, the night

before. Having a baby at a young age you have to be working to provide for food, clothes and
other life essentials to make a decent living and to try to live at least in a working class category .

Malone, Gloria ​from “What Teen Moms Want You to Know” States “ 60.5% of teen moms live

in the lower class, however 40.5% get live in the working class level”. He shows credibility by

doing test on teen moms, asking them questions helps count up the percentage. This provides

some proof to how difficult being a teen mom could be, the effects of mental and physical

distress. A role model of mine, who I call my mom showed an admiring act of perseverance

while caring for her children in her teenage years. She suffered an extensive amount of

difficulties that force to be selfless and cared only for her children.

All in all, I believe Rosa made a few mistakes but she is still a good person. Yet, her

mom is very tough on her as a result it makes her a little stronger. The novel lets us know that

she still works two jobs, which are a cashier and she cuts hair on the side. Her personal demon

doesn’t really affect her being a mom to her little boy. It affects her relationship with her mom

and I sometimes agree with her mom about her weight issue because health should be very

important but for the most part the self love thing is way more important than not loving

yourself. I can relate to Rosa because I myself have an issue with self love and it makes my

relationship harder since I’m insecure. Not only do I have little issues with my partner but my

mom also constantly reminds me that I’m gaining weight and it leads me to frustration and an
unhealthy relationship with my mom. But just like Rosa’s mother my mom is always there when

I need her help.

In discussion of self love, one controversial issue has been that Rosa’s mom

doesn’t stop pushing Rosa to lose weight but when having a big responsibility such as a

child at a young age you get lost trying to live a decent life. On the oth​er hand from my

point of view, it is important to maintain a good healthy lifestyle but without having a guy try to

love you first.

 Work cited

Malone, Gloria. “What Teen Moms Want You to Know.” Seleni Institute,

www.seleni.org/advice-support/2018/3/15/what-teen-moms-want-you-to-know​.

Hanly, Samantha. “Facts About Insecurity in Teens.”

LIVESTRONG.COM, Leaf Group, 13 June 2017,

www.livestrong.com/article/1002381-insecurity-teens/.

Giordanom. “Society's Pressure to Be Perfect.” Teen Ink,

www.teenink.com/hot_topics/what_matters/article/690519/Societys-.