Fashion matters to adolescents, and those who don't wear hip clothes with designer labels may be isolated and ridiculed. The clothes are expensive and produce tough choices for the family. In another vignette, young girls decry the pressures they face from the onslaught of unattainable images of feminine beauty, even as they confess to being absorbed and fascinated by those same ideas. Their stories are both timely and timeless. This seems to cause adults to cross the street.
Race is an unavoidable issue in the cities of America.
As a teacher Ramon Gonzales notes, it's not all black and white. Adolescents struggle with the meaning of color, and the discovery of race is one of the defining issues of their young lives. In this hour we accompany five adolescents home to meet the adults who are raising them. In two of the families, the fathers are absent, and the adults struggle to help their daughters come to terms with their absence. Our five families are typical urban Americans.