As the Australian musician Michael P. Balzary once said, "If you live a rebellious lifestyle, then you rebel against things because they go against your ideals and the integrity of who you are as a person." Teenage rebellion is merely young adolescents reacting against their parents since their beliefs and integrity are different. Teenagers often have strong, emotional opinions regarding their beliefs, although parents can be unsupportive and fail to perceive their child's ambitions. The 2002 film, "Bend it Like Beckham," evidently demonstrates the rebellion of a teenager who goes against her parents beliefs, in order to succeed in a sport she is passionate about. Jess endures countless disputes with her parents as a result of conflicts in interest. Her parents, narrow-mindedly believe that as a young women, she must follow Indian tradition and become an honorable women with the ability to cook. Despite being reluctant to opposing her parents, the instilled ambition to follow her heart and become a professional soccer player triumphed. As a result, Jess resorts to deceiving her parents in order to attend training and pursue her passion.
The traditional Indian culture portrayed by the parents of Jess played a major role in her restriction from becoming a professional footballer. Jess parents are extremely religious and emphasize the importance of their reputation and traditional values. In the culture, females are not permitted to take part in athletics as it retracts time for studying and learning to cook.
These principles are highly valued as it is common for families to marry away their daughters.
Therefore, the family of the husband would not want, “a daughter in law who can run around kicking football all day but can’t make round chapattis!” As a result, the mother restricts Jess from football, in turn forcing her to learn to cook full Punjabi dinners involving meat and vegetarian plates. In addition, her father corresponds with her mother, agreeing that football is negatively affecting her education. He accentuates the importance of education and wants her to have a successful future, resulting in another restriction from football. In addition, her father had a poor personal experience with bowling. When he came to the country, he was the best bowler in his school. Despite being greatly talented, he was excluded from teams and antagonized in regards to wearing a turban. Wearing traditional clothing to cover the body is important in Indian culture and he did not want Jess to be provoked. The football uniform exposed her legs, which greatly upset the parents. Jess mother exclaims that she “shouldn’t be running around exposing her legs to 70,000 people” because it would bring shame to the family for failure to abide by the religion. Regardless of Jess’s parents beliefs and restrictions, she continued to practice the sport she loved. Jess perceives football differently in comparison to her parents. Jess sees a passion that she is motivated to achieve well in whereas her parents see it as a distraction from what is important. Jess fails to comprehend her parents views, causing her to believe that she has rights to play football and doing whatever it takes.
Regardless of the way her parents perceived football, Jess persistently attempted to achieve her dreams and practice the sport she loved. Her values greatly differentiated from her parents, causing a conflict of interests. Being a young adolescent, it was inevitable that Jess would rebel against her parents, although her case was slightly drastic. Jess began to mislead her parents into believing she had a job at HMV. In reality, she was attending team practice with the Hounslow Harriers Girls team. Further, she lied to her mother saying she needed to
