Towelhead is a provocative movie. It is shocking and disturbing, difficult to watch yet undeniably honest in a powerful way that almost says, "This is a reality you cannot turn away from." It is a story of coming of age. It is a about racism, sexuality, and identity. It deals with issues of power, responsibility, guilt, and blame. And it is filled with numerous incidences of physical abuse, emotional abuse, and sexual abuse.

Alternately titled Nothing is Private, Towelhead is very much a movie that goes below the surface to portray realities that are often kept private. We do not see any of the characters at their best, but instead behind the closed doors and drawn shades we often use to hide our worst. And as the movie chronicles thirteen-year-old Arab-American Jasira's (Summer Bishil) discovery of just how complex and flawed is the adult world which she is entering, those doors and windows are thrown wide open for all of us to see the same.

At the center of Towelhead is the confusing nature of sexuality itself. Sure, it may be something that is a part of all of us, but that does not mean that what it all means and how a world in which it exists is meant to operate is exactly common knowledge. And as Jasira suddenly finds herself in that confusing new reality, all is only made more complicated by the adults who have taught her that everything is her responsibility, everything is her fault, yet somehow she is not in possession of any power herself.

Soon after the movie's opening, Jasira's mother (Maria Bello) sends her to live with her father saying, "This is your fault&ellips; there are right ways to act around men and wrong ways, and for you to learn which, you should go live with one." Unfortunately, I wouldn't exactly call her father Rifat (Peter Macdissi) the best example. As Rifat flaunts and caresses his sexy girlfriend in front of Jasira, he keeps Jasira at a distance, slapping her for showing too much skin even in the privacy of her own home, and essentially denying both her womanhood and her sexuality.

If there ever were a set-up for the young woman denied daddy's love and shoved into a world ready to take advantage of that emptiness, Jasira's situation would be it. As her mother puts it, "You and I both know your father overreacts&ellips; that means you have to adjust your behavior." But since it is physically impossible for Jasira to be the pre-adolescent girl her father wants her to be, she does what she sees to be the next best thing; she tries to be the only kind of woman the men around her seem to value.

Enter Jasira's inappropriately flirtatious neighbor Mr. Vuoso (Aaron Eckhart). To Jasira, he embodies everything her parents have denied her—excitement, freedom, love, and recognition of her value as a woman. As his creepy flirtation turns into something more, even though we see in Jasira a recognition that what is going on isn't quite right, it is painful to know that, even if only for moment, it gives Jasira a sense of value she cannot seem to find anywhere else. She ends up caught between two ideas: that her sexuality and what it has brought into her life is shamefully and wholly her fault, andthat she has in her sexuality the key to her value and a responsibility to use it to make herself lovable. It ultimately traps her in a complicated web of confusion, guilt, and pain.

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