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During the movie Dirty Dancing, Baby Houseman made significant progress in becoming more adult.
In this article, I will point out three aspects of that progress.
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Inner Conflict About Femininity
At the beginning of the story, she imagined that she would find a romantic partner, a husband, who would be quite similar to her father.
On the other hand, Baby felt repulsed by her sister's and mother's behaviors that attracted a man like her father. Her mother and sister spent a lot of effort on developing their feminine appearance and attractiveness. They did not share Baby's drive to improve herself intellectually and morally.
This situation caused Baby to suffer from an inner conflict about femininity. Much of that inner conflict was caused by the models that she perceived within her own family. She perceived that her father was the masculine ideal and that her mother and older sister were the intellectually stunted kind of woman who won such a man's love. After all, her mother had won her father's love, and her sister quickly won the attention of Robbie Gould, a medical student.
Baby intended to spend the next four years in an all-women's college, which would delay her having to resolve that inner conflict. She would be less likely to become socially, romantically or sexually involved with a man.
However, during the Dirty Dancing story, a series of unplanned events caused Baby to spend a lot of time dancing with Johnny Castle, a man very different from her father. From dancing with him, she became sexually involved with him, and she got to know and appreciate his personal qualities quite well.
During her experience with Johnny, Baby developed her femininity naturally in accordance with her own personality. She no longer was limited by the models of her father, mother and older sister. She learned to be femininely attractive with her own independence and style.
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Becoming Honest with her Father
Baby was a "Daddy's girl" who had enjoyed being his favorite daughter and who wanted to maintain his favor by pleasing him.
However, Baby resorted to deceiving him about her conduct. She lied to him about the money she borrowed for the abortion. After he forbade her to associate further with Johnny, she hid from him her continuing and more intimate relationship with him.
She got caught in her deceptions, however, because of events that she did not foresee. Penny Johnson became very sick from her abortion and needed a doctor's treatment. Johnny was fired because of an accusation that he had stolen a hotel guest's wallet. These events exposed her deceptions to her father.
These exposures caused her to lose her father's favor. Her father became more attentive and trustful toward his older daughter Lisa and shunned Baby.
This situation caused Baby to confront her disappointed father. She admitted that she had deceived him, but she revealed that she had become alienated by his social and political attitudes. She became honest with her father in a new way.
Baby ceased being "Daddy's girl" and became his more adult daughter.
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Emotional Maturity from Dancing
Baby's experience of learning from professional dancer Johnny how to dance for a performance improved her emotional maturity.
When she first danced with him at the "dirty dancing" party in the employees' bunkhouse, she ended in a silly manner.
Several days later, when the suggestion was made that Baby might substitute for Penny at the Sheldrake Hotel performance, she protested that she could not even dance a simple merengue dance.
As she learned to dance with Johnny, she would throw angry fits -- for example, kicking a railing -- when she practiced alone.
And she would giggle continually when Johnny touched her underarm.
Eventually, though, Baby mastered some dance skills well enough to perform before audiences. Furthermore, she even was able to develop a novel dance that she performed privately to delight Johnny.
The music and dancing that Baby experienced during her time with Johnny helped her to understand her feelings and to develop her emotional intelligence.
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I will continue this series in Part 6.
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