This process is beautifully portrayed in Mona Lisa Smile. The film is about Katherine Watson, a college lecturer from liberal-minded California, who manages to get a teaching position in the Art History Department at Wellesley, a prestigious, conservative, and elite private women's college situated at the opposite end of the country in Massachusetts. The girls who attend Wellesley are drawn from some of the most wealthy, influential, and upper class families in America. Massachusetts is a conservative place where the upper class strives to preserve their distinctive superior position, and Wellesley is an institution dedicated to this cause.