Girl in Progress

Working class Grace Gutierrez is all talk when it comes to improving her life. In the words of her current boss, she's a bit of a flake. The problem of not taking action and not being responsible is that what she does affects her now mid-teen daughter, Ansiedad. They recently moved to Seattle so that Grace could work toward getting a white collar job at Microsoft, but instead she is a waitress at a cheesy seafood restaurant, where she seems truly unmotivated to change. She is also dating Dr. Harford, a married gynecologist. None of this sits well with generally bright Ansiedad, who attends private school on part scholarship. So when Ansiedad learns about the concept of coming-of-age in her high school English class, Ansiedad believes she has to go through the stereotypical literal process of it to come out the other end a mature adult who can take over the running of her own life responsibly regardless of what her mother does. Some of the many steps in that process include starting off an innocent, then becoming rebellious by running with the wrong crowd and losing her virginity to the bad boy, experiencing loss and death, and ultimately running away to that adult life without need of her mother. Although it is all supposed to be an act, she has to convince others that it is not, except the one person in the know, her best and only true friend, Tavita. Being teenagers, the question becomes whether they can emotionally handle what happens despite it all being an act, especially if they don't have true responsible adult guidance.