The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

The Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants

Warner Bros.

Film released 2005

Director: Ken Kwapis

Writer: Delia Ephron & Elizabeth Chandler

Based on the books by Ann Brashares

Starring: Amber Tamblyn, Alexis Bledel, America Ferrera, and Blake Lively

Rated: PG

Grade: 4/5

Every once in a while I’m gonna do a post about TWEEN ENTERTAINMENT! Let’s kick off the first one with a little Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants.

I loved this movie as I was growing up (I even read the books, which are about as decent as tween books get). Why? BECAUSE IT FEATURES 4! Yes, 4! FEMALE PROTAGONISTS who have a deep, meaningful friendship.

Some queer topics covered in the movie include positive female friendships (duh), alternative family structures, mental health issues and suicide, consent, privilege, body positivity, and able-ism stigmas.  Let’s get cracking.

First, there’s the premise: 4 diverse young female friends can all fit into the same pair of jeans. In the scene where they try them on, Carmen makes a big deal out of her being the biggest of the girls and puts them on to prove that there is no way they’ll fit her as she slips them on with no struggle. So. Much. Body positivity! This scene says that what ever your body type, you are perfect for these jeans. The movie’s metaphor for the bonds of friendship literally and figuratively embraces each girl’s differences. Man. This movie was kinda ahead of its time.

The girls start off as typical female tropes: there’s the quite artistic one, the loud Hispanic writer, the sardonic filmmaking rebel, and the beautiful blonde athlete. But we learn that these girls are far more than their stereotypes suggest.

Let’s talk about the girls individually.

First, Lena: the quiet artistic one. 

'Sup, Rory?

She’s probably the least queer (read: interesting) of them all. She gets the classic love story where she falls for the foreign Greek charmer (God the actor’s accent is horrible) despite her shy nature. Her storyline follows her trip to visit her Greek family on the beautiful island Santorini (I mostly watch her sections for the landscape, tbh) and the love story. As she falls for Kostos she discovers her love for drawing and metaphorically (and literally, seeing as this is a tween movie, subtlety is not within genre) lets her hair down. He totally awakens her sexuality, which is seriously empowering, watching her take control of her body as a young woman is invigorating. Her trip to Greece reminds me of the camps I would go to during the summers in high school where I could discover who I was outside the comfort zone of my family and school. That’s where I figured out I was gay. That’s where Lena figured out she is an artist, and a proud woman.

Second, Tibby: the sarcastic filmmaking rebel. 

Get me out of the service industry!

Personally, I always thought she was gay. Her relationship with Brian, the geeky video game kid, always felt like an after thought. I also love her sassy sarcastic humour that I can totally relate to, so maybe I’m projecting, but that’s pretty much all this blog is…Anyway, her story is a different kind of love story. Tibby’s story is about Bailey, my absolute favourite character. The headstrong girl next door, wise beyond her years, who we find out is dying of cancer. It’s heavy heavy stuff. But it’s one of the most honest portrayals of a terminally ill young person before John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars finally came around. And I’d say being a kid with cancer totally qualifies as a queerness outside of the healthy norm. Tibby’s relationship with Bailey changes her for the better and not just in a cheesy way. Bailey teaches her true compassion. She makes Tibby a better artist and a better human as they go about their days interviewing people with seemingly weird and mundane lives who turn out to have fascinating stories and passions. We could all stand to learn something from Bailey.

Next, Bridget. The blonde athlete. And total tomboy femme. 

Ooooooo baraccuda

Let’s just take a moment to appreciate how damn beautiful Blake Lively is. Ok? Done? I’ll give you another minute. Man, did I have a crush on Bridget. And she has the most complex story by far. She’s the beautiful extroverted blonde athlete whose life seems perfect from the outside, but she’s got some serious demons. We find out pretty early on that her mother committed suicide (while it’s not said explicitly, it’s heavily implied) and suffered from what the book outlines as Bipolar Disorder. Bridget’s storyline opens up an interesting discussion of mental health and dealing with grief. She struggles to understand what her mother went through, why she killed herself, and if she is like her mother. This movie gets so many points for the mental health discussion, which movies for tweens rarely explore, especially in the early 2000s. We can also look at her relationship with Eric, the older counsellor she has a fling with at soccer camp and loses her virginity to. Oh man. This is complex. First of all, she explicitly tells him that she is 17, and he’s in college, so I’m pretty sure that’s illegal statutory rape… The whole relationship is forbidden from the start, but she pursues him anyway. And when they finally hook up, she starts a downward depression-riddled spiral. There’s a nice opportunity for a discussion about consent here which the story doesn’t really take up, which is definitely an oversight, but it at least acknowledges the fallout and the emotional consequences Bridget faces when she leaves soccer camp. I think they actually start a serious relationship in the books, or something like that, but don’t quote me on that.

Finally, Carmen: the loud Hispanic girl. 

Ugly Betty as a teen! 

She’s got some alternative family structure going on. Her white father left her mother when she was young and this summer she’s going to live with him for a month. She finds that he’s shacked up with a pretty blonde white woman and her porcelain son and daughter. Here’s our complicated depiction of class, race, and privilege: queer versus norm. This storyline is the most direct conflict between these two worlds. Carmen feels completely out of place in her dad’s new whitewashed world that she runs away from her embarrassing bridesmaid dress fitting and throws a rock at her dad’s window when she sees them all sitting down to a nice dinner like she never even ran off. She tells her dad that he was a dick for not telling her about his fiancé (true), that it felt like he was erasing her from his life, and that he is embarrassed by his half-Hispanic daughter and her mother. This phone confrontation is totally heart-wrenching. The end of the film (spoilers!) takes us to her dad’s wedding where she swallows her pride and publicly joins him and his fiancé at the altar as her dad brings her into his new family. I don’t know what that says exactly about race and class and privilege and all that, but Carmen’s story opens up a dialogue about mixed race families, the racial stigmas, complications, and personal struggles that come along with it. I honestly don’t know if another narrative like this exists because this topic can be unsettling and the film really doesn’t shy away from the plot in the books (if my memory is at all reliable).

All in all, powerful movie about positive female friendships and there’s so much complex queerness that it’s almost overwhelming. It covers so many bases in each of the girls’ storylines that there’s a little queerness for everyone. I just wish one of them had a coming out story. That would have been the cherry on top.

OTP: Tibby and Bridget. Do I need to explain that one?

MVQ: Bailey. No competition.

Favorite Moment: When the girls all go over to Bridget’s with pizza to cheer her up.