Quinceañeras and the Culture of Excess

I came across an interesting article last week on The Nation's website, called "Latina America Lavishly Comes of Age." It examines the increasingly commercialized Latina coming-of-age ceremony, using the intolerable MTV show "My Super Sweet 16" and Julia Alvarez's new book Once Upon a Quinceañera as points of reference. Although lavish quinceañeras could be seen as part of the Latino affect of "excess" that we talk about in class, I would argue that the exact same type of outlandish commercialism takes place at the Sweet 16 parties and bat mitzvahs of non-Latina girls. Strangely enough, out of the three, I have only attended a quinceañera, of one of the three daughters (how lucky - he has to pay for three lavish celebrations) of my father's Costa Rican best friend. I'm not sure how much they paid for the party, but I'm sure those several hundred (thousand?) dollars could be of much more use to the daughter now - she is currently a 20-year-old single mother, and had to drop out of college to take care of her infant.