The Wakefield twins are back... and thinner?

March 27, 2008 8:43 PM

If you're a girl and you grew up in the 80's, chances are you read Sweet Valley High books. Guess what? They're being re-released. Don't worry, they're being updated to reflect the times- Jessica and Liz will be a size 4 now, and Liz's gossip column will be a gossip blog instead. Those wishing to relive the glory days can read reviews of the old series at The Dairi Burger, a blog devoted to all things Sweet Valley.

I was glad to see they got around to reviewing several of my favorites, including #32, where Jessica dyes her hair black in an attempt to look less all-American, and #3, the one where Bruce touches Jessica's boobs during their ultra hot makeout scene in the woods.

posted by ThePinkSuperhero (63 comments total)

I feel kind of dirty for being a little excited about this news.
posted by youcancallmeal at 8:49 PM on March 27, 2008

Someone needs to come over here and disable my eBay account right now, because I cannot stop bidding on lots of old Sweet Valley High books.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 8:51 PM on March 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'm a guy and I grew up in the 70's. But I worked at libraries in the 80's and we checked these things out by the boatload. I hadn't thought of these for almost twenty years. I always wondered if that author, Francine Pascal was a real person. I guess she is.
posted by marxchivist at 8:52 PM on March 27, 2008

I mean, checked them out to other people, like young girls. Not to ourselves.
posted by marxchivist at 8:53 PM on March 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

If you're a girl and you grew up in the 80's, chances are you read Sweet Valley High books

If I ever want to commit suicide, I could use this expression on, well, just about every girl I know who grew up in the 80s.
posted by pompomtom at 8:55 PM on March 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

Oh, I loved these books. I still have quite a few of them and I now have this urge to stay up all night rereading them all.
posted by whatideserve at 9:21 PM on March 27, 2008

It makes me want to murder when they "update" books for kids.... I've had this (murderous) feeling many times - the first time, when I found an edition of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" where (and you'll recall how poor and money-concious ol' Charlie was) all of the british currency was translated into dollars. Unfortunately, the number one awesome thing about reading novels is that you get to learn about other times and places. Jesus, would it kill kids to know that there was a time when there wasn't an internet?
posted by moxiedoll at 9:23 PM on March 27, 2008 [5 favorites]

I was teenager in the 80s and never read these, or any of the series books that seemed to line the shelves of the section for "Young Adults". I went to the regular adult fiction section and found books that had REAL sex scenes, yo! You just know they've already got the movie & tv franchising sewn up on this. Hence the soap actress on the covers. Ah, it's awful when you're old & jaded enough to see it all coming.

(and I also borrowed the science books because I was a huge dork with few friends, but that's for another thread.)
posted by Salmonberry at 9:34 PM on March 27, 2008

I am stunned that the publishers were so stupid to point out the girls' size differences between the 80s books and their 2008 counterparts.

Or...

I am NOT stunned that the publishers were so CUNNING as to point out the CONTROVERSIAL changing of the girls' size differences - because "Girls Drop 2 Sizes" is a way better headline than "Fiat Becomes Jeep Wrangler".

Either way - bastards.
posted by crossoverman at 9:34 PM on March 27, 2008 [2 favorites]

I read them, I admit it. I also read things with a little more literary value, but I like the Sweet Valley High books better.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:36 PM on March 27, 2008

err, 'liked'.

I don't still read them.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:36 PM on March 27, 2008 [2 favorites]

My mom's friends all had slightly older daughters who gave me stuff like Sweet Valley High books (Babysitters Club, too). I only remember two with any clarity, the one where the twins pretend to have a "triplet" who is basically their superego and a total ho/bitch. The other one is that really trippy one where they go to the amusement park for a school trip and Elizabeth somehow becomes concussed and ends up hallucinating that she's going down the Mississippi on a raft with Tom Sawyer?? I remember thinking that the author(s) had to be on drugs while writing that particular book.
posted by SassHat at 9:44 PM on March 27, 2008

If I ever want to commit suicide, I could use this expression on, well, just about every girl I know who grew up in the 80s.

I'd be the first one to dig out the claws, let me tell you.

Yeah, so, I read Sweet Valley High books, too.
posted by katillathehun at 9:44 PM on March 27, 2008

I never read the Sweet Valley High books, but I was aware of them. By the time they became popular, I was raiding my neighbor's collection of "bodice-ripping, sweaty, his turgid member, her pouty lips, oh gawd!" romance novels. I guess both types of books really warped our young feminine minds in terms of what real love was going to be like.
posted by amyms at 10:14 PM on March 27, 2008

The one where the twins' crazy party friend dies after doing coke just once made me TERRIFIED of coke. I thought if I ever did it I would die instantly of a heart attack.
posted by loiseau at 10:34 PM on March 27, 2008 [2 favorites]

Also, changing the girls to a size 2 is utterly despicable. Good job on making the world a worse place, Francine.
posted by loiseau at 10:35 PM on March 27, 2008

Well, given vanity sizing these days, a size four today is probably equivalent in size to a size 6 back in the 80's.
posted by gyc at 11:48 PM on March 27, 2008 [2 favorites]

It's true. Sort of like how the smallest size fast food beverage you can order is what a large was 20 years ago.

These books were awful, but that didn't stop me from reading the hell out of them. I had to sneak read them, actually. The parents didn't approve.
posted by medeine at 12:05 AM on March 28, 2008

Oh man, I read these. The shame.
posted by Nattie at 1:10 AM on March 28, 2008

gyc: Well, given vanity sizing these days, a size four today is probably equivalent in size to a size 6 back in the 80's.

Yeah, somehow I don't think the change was made as a move to shine a spotlight on and realistically portray the apparel industry's changing sizing standards.

And the term "vanity sizing" is annoying. All these numbers 0-14 are arbitrary; always were, always will be.
posted by loiseau at 1:14 AM on March 28, 2008

I wonder if they're going to update those horrible 80's outfits that Jess bought at Lisette's -- all those jumpsuits and leggings and leather miniskirts. I hope not!
posted by transona5 at 6:17 AM on March 28, 2008

Faughh. Wake me up when they re-release the Canby Hall books.
posted by orange swan at 6:18 AM on March 28, 2008

I loved these books when I was about 8 to 12ish, I think when I became a teenager I thought it was abit too childish.
but.. ahh back in those days, it really made all girls want to be the "blond hair, blue eye, perfect size six with a little ..."what was it a dimple? birth mark? pimple? I forget, does anyone remember this?? It was like one twin had it on her right side, and the other on her left.. and this was the only difference they had between them.
Ah good times.
posted by insatiablehee at 6:20 AM on March 28, 2008

It makes me want to murder when they "update" books for kids.... I've had this (murderous) feeling many times - the first time, when I found an edition of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" where (and you'll recall how poor and money-concious ol' Charlie was) all of the british currency was translated into dollars.

Funny, I wonder if I read americanized Roald Dahl, since I did read them all in the US, and never thought about it. I know they americanized Harry Potter (the "sorcerer's stone") but hadn't considered whether it was done to my own generation of books.

Unfortunately, the number one awesome thing about reading novels is that you get to learn about other times and places.

I really don't think that's why you read Sweet Valley High, though :)
posted by mdn at 6:23 AM on March 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

My sister was a big fan (I will have to give her a call about this), but I was more a choose your own adventure/Narnia kind of girl. But as I recall, Francine Pascal only created sweet valley high, she didn't actually write the books herself. Isn't that the case? I tried to read a handful of them at points, since my sister was so into them, but I found them horribly written and boring; I was really shocked when I finally read a book actually written by Francine Pascal (Love and Betrayal and Hold the Mayo) and found it funny, well-constructed and well-written. I'm scared to look back and see if that's still true, however. (Funny how incredibly subjective "well-written" is as you get older.) But that experience reminded me not to write Francine Pascal off based on SVH.

I'm disappointed that the Wakefield twins have shrunk.
posted by Hildegarde at 6:38 AM on March 28, 2008

Wait, which one was the one where Elizabeth got kidnapped by the crazy guy, who locked her up in his house, but then the crazy kidnapper spotted Jessica working as a candy striper in the hospital and got confused (because they were IDENTICAL TWINS, see) and she was cunningly able to trick him into taking her back to his house, where she was able to free her sister?

Was that part of the Sweet Valley University series? Because looking back, that's kind of a heavy subject for such fluffy books. (And the weirdest part was that the dude kidnapped her for... something creepy but not explained. Not rape, evidently, because the author wouldn't go there for a teen book. Just to stroke her hair creepily, I suppose. What a strange, sanitized version of violence against women that is, and wow it's kind of screwed up that I read that as entertainment in high school.)
posted by iminurmefi at 6:40 AM on March 28, 2008

I really don't think that's why you read Sweet Valley High, though :)

Well, no. I'll never forget my humiliation when my highly intelligent and caustic English teacher, Mr. Read (a born university professor trapped in a high school), caught me reading a Sweet Valley High book in the school library. I only ever read about three of the SVH books, had only picked up that one to relax with something mindless for ten minutes, and never touched one again.

But there is something to be said for not updating even books such as these. Reading old pulp novels does give you a glimpse into another time, because they are so tailored for the moment in which they were written. Truly good fiction doesn't date, but reading old pulp fiction is like exploring a great archeological dig. It's so archetypically of it's time that it seems like a perfectly preserved artifact. You don't relate to the characters in it because they are so unreal, but you get a sense of the slang and diction, the cultural morés, the fashion aesthetic, and the mindset of those who lived then. I have almost a complete set of the 100 "light fiction" books written by in the first 40 years of the 20th century by a certain dreadful author who shall remain nameless, and one of the things I love about them is that sense of experiencing another era by someone who was writing specifically for it. To update the SVH books strips them of the only intellectual value they might have for today's teenagers and makes them just another boring, badly written set of contemporary books.
posted by orange swan at 6:47 AM on March 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

I didn't know what a size 6 was then, and I don't know what a size 4 is now. The first time I heard my dress size was when I was fitted for my wedding dress. How many pre-teen girls do know their dress sizes? It's such an irrelevant piece of information. Pants size, shoe size, American Apparel underwear size, sure -- but dress size?
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:14 AM on March 28, 2008

How many pre-teen girls do know their dress sizes?

When I was a preteen back in the 70s, I knew mine. Because I wore dresses from time to time, and they came labeled with sizes.
posted by JanetLand at 7:28 AM on March 28, 2008

I'm not clear on why the big distinction between dress size and everything else sizes. Assuming you buy pants sized like most women's ready-to-wear 2/4/6 etc, and not by waist/inseam or small/medium/large, your dress size should be pretty much the same as your pant size or your skirt size or your blouse size, no?
posted by jacquilynne at 7:41 AM on March 28, 2008

what was it a dimple? birth mark? pimple? I forget, does anyone remember this??

It was a small mole/freckle, I think.

Was that part of the Sweet Valley University series?

The crazy guy kidnapping Elizabeth, I think that was part of the main Sweet Valley High series.

I had to sneak read them, actually. The parents didn't approve.

Mine didn't either. I remember being at a thrift store (because my mother loves a bargain) was I was in middle school and finding that they had a huge collection of Sweet Valley High books, which I desperately wanted to buy. I either had the money to do it, or it was cheap enough that my mother could have bought them all for me (they were a quarter a piece, I think). She refused, saying they were trash, etc, and we left. This upset me, and I must have been pretty upset, because my mother did something I don't recall her ever doing: she turned the car around and I got to go back and buy the books.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:42 AM on March 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

I don't think I read any Sweet Valley High books, (I was hardcore into Nancy Drew & the Hardy Boys) but I did watch an episode or two of the tv series and once came across some really hot SVH fanfic.
posted by nooneyouknow at 7:58 AM on March 28, 2008

That was good of her, TPS. I know I never worried about my nieces and nephews reading garbage books. I was perfectly mindful that not only had I read my share of crap at their age but that I still did, and do. Trashy books are like candy. They make life more fun. It's only when you read nothing but trash that there is cause for worry — but it's not good to read only uber serious books either, anymore than it would be a great idea to live on nothing but broccoli.

So, I never denigrated the books my nieces and nephews liked. Instead I bought them lots of good books at thrift stores. My oldest niece, um, "Clementine Swan", once mailed me a list of the Babysitter Club books she didn't have and was disappointed when I wouldn't buy them for her. I explained to her that she was already reading them on her own, and that I would rather give her new books. Clem is now 22, and married. Her Babysitter Club books were long ago handed down to her younger sister, who in turn has handed them down to their youngest sister, while the copies of Jane Eyre, To Kill a Mockingbird and Cynthia Voigt's books and the many others that I gave her still sit on her bookshelves.
posted by orange swan at 8:02 AM on March 28, 2008

I read a few of these --we passed them around the schoolyard in sixth grade. They were made out to be racier than they were (by the girls whose moms did not read bodice-rippers, obviously.) I do remember being confused as to which twin I was supposed to want to be just like and therefore had some trouble fitting in on the playground. (Uh, for many, many reasons other than this, also.)

The changes are dumb, in my opinion. What grownups think that kids want. A Fiat is still cooler than a Jeep. Schools still have student newspapers.

I'm sure it's because my mother used to make her own clothes, but I always read the "perfect" as the particularly important part of the "perfect size 6" description, i.e. off-the-rack clothes fit them as if tailored. Even if you're not quite that seamstress-inclined, I still think that it doesn't so much matter whether they're a 4 or 6 if you're calling their figures perfect.
posted by desuetude at 8:22 AM on March 28, 2008

jacquilynne: "I'm not clear on why the big distinction between dress size and everything else sizes. Assuming you buy pants sized like most women's ready-to-wear 2/4/6 etc, and not by waist/inseam or small/medium/large, your dress size should be pretty much the same as your pant size or your skirt size or your blouse size, no?"

That's what I would've thought, but I wear size 10 jeans and -- as I faintly recall -- my dress size is more like a 6. Maybe I'm a freak.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:34 AM on March 28, 2008

Ahhh, memories.

I was never a huge fan of these books, though I did read a couple as they were passed around at school (primary, so 12 and under. Defo not a proper teenager). What I remember most is some description of a guy's neck. One of the twins, I don't remember which, fell for a guy but didn't like his think neck. Or preferred a skinnier neck, or something.

But that's it, that is what I remember most from those books.
posted by Fence at 8:45 AM on March 28, 2008

I read most of the main series. I think I was in the early 100's when I was a sophomore in high school and lost interest. They were such crap but I couldn't help myself. My main problem with them was the "good girls don't have sex, only sluts do" bullshit. Was it just me? I just wanted everyone to do it. I was perverted that way.

I did get in trouble in study hall once when I snorted out loud at a passage. I was supposed to be doing schoolwork but I was reading. There was a description of one of the twins riding on the back of her boyfriend's motorcycle, and it said something like, "The powerful feeling between her legs was like something she had never experienced. The pulsing vibrations . . . " blahblahblah. I was like "WHAT?!" I wish I could find that particular book - TPS? Anyone?
posted by peep at 8:46 AM on March 28, 2008

Oh my gosh, I just found a snarky recap of the kidnapping one (titled--naturally--KIDNAPPED!) on the Dari Burger site. It *was* SVH, and I'm very relieved to discover I'm not the only one who read it and thought, "WTF? If you kidnap her, why are you just smelling her hair? What's wrong with this picture?"

Also, the comments are priceless. Someone transcribes a page that describes the creepiest, online-porn-story-ific scene between Jessica and her brother. I can't do it justice; you just have to read it.

I need a shower, all of a sudden. Also, I need to remember my paypal password so I can go buy EVERY SVH BOOK on ebay. I must have them!
posted by iminurmefi at 8:54 AM on March 28, 2008

I love The Dairi Burger. BTW, All My Children soap star Leven Rambin is the new model for the Wakefield Twins.
posted by onepapertiger at 9:35 AM on March 28, 2008

I never read these because by the time I was in high school, the book series I loved most were the Dune books, Clive Barker's Books of Blood, and I was tearing through the entire catalogue of Kurt Vonnegut.

I remember thinking that the girls who read Sweet Valley High were probably kind of sheltered. Sorry, TPS! You're an ace gal!

Seeing that the most important items highlighted for a re-release include the girls' weights, type of car they drove (those bitches got A CAR? for FREE?), and the addition of a blog indicating their rampant popularity and influence, I hate to say this, but I'm glad I never read them.

Yeah I was a goth teenager but I also worked on the yearbook, which doubled my nerd powers in high school to make me one of the most hated people there. So what?
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 10:01 AM on March 28, 2008

I didn't really read them when I was in high school. Maybe the 8th grade, but by the 9th, I'd moved up to tacky Harlequin romances.

They were set in high school, but I think they were read more by middle-school aged kids 11-13ish. Much like the babysitters club books, which were 12-14 year old characters, but which everyone I knew who read them read while still in the 9-11 age range.

I think these books were aspirational -- you read them while you were a little younger than the demographic in the books themselves. Which is also why they seem bizarrely tame -- they are for the age range of the characters, but not necessarily for the age range of the readers.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:18 AM on March 28, 2008

There was a description of one of the twins riding on the back of her boyfriend's motorcycle, and it said something like, "The powerful feeling between her legs was like something she had never experienced. The pulsing vibrations . . . " blahblahblah. I was like "WHAT?!" I wish I could find that particular book - TPS? Anyone?

I'm guessing that's #6, Dangerous Love.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 10:19 AM on March 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

Also, I need to remember my paypal password so I can go buy EVERY SVH BOOK on ebay. I must have them!

Yea, you'll have to tear them from my cold, dead hands. I am all over those auctions!
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 10:21 AM on March 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

I used to work at the children's department of our local library, which doubled as the YA area (always a bad idea), and we used to keep SVH on a book truck of its own rather than on the shelf. That kept them portable and easy to find. Except that we often hid the truck so that the girls looking for them would pick out something better to read instead.

I'm quite ashamed of that now that I'm a librarian, and have tried to shed most of my feigned snobbery around reading and genres. Better to read "trash" than to read nothing at all; for many hundreds of years, fiction in general, and novels in particular, were considered "trash". All reading is good. SVH can be a gateway drug toward general recreational reading, which is an excellent, mind-expanding, imaginative habit. And those girls who couldn't find the SVH book truck in the early 90s when I was working in that local library: how many walked away with no books at all because of us? More than I'd now like, I'm sure.
posted by Hildegarde at 10:31 AM on March 28, 2008

ThePinkSuperheroPoster: I'm guessing that's #6, Dangerous Love.

Er, yeah I guess that makes sense - I should have checked out the Dairi Burger. I was thinking it was just some throwaway paragraph. I should have figured the hilarious moralizing of the series would mean Motorcycle = EVIL DANGER.

BTW, various other commenters: most of us SVH readers DID read other things, you know! I lived in town of about 40,000, and I believe I read pretty much every book in my small local library's YA section, some of them several times. I absolutely read every YA book in my school's library. If a brand new SVH was released, that meant there was a new book I hadn't read. Yay.
posted by peep at 10:52 AM on March 28, 2008

I was jerking off to Anne Rice when I was a teenage girl so I missed the SVH boat. Just for the record.
posted by serazin at 10:59 AM on March 28, 2008

Serazin, thank you for reminding me of that. Me too. In fact if you pull any of the Beauty series out of my bookshelf and drop them on the floor, they'll fall open to some kind of orgiastic sex scene I've read at least 200 times!
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 12:20 PM on March 28, 2008

I never read these books either, and I'm really regretting it now. My parents didn't want me reading "trash"--stuff yourselves, turkeys!--which meant that I got to read a lot of sweet award-winners about the Holocaust, sexual abuse, poverty, homelessness, foster parents, sexual Holocaust abuse, sexual homelessness, and sexual foster parent poverty. Thanks to a pious godfather, however, I did end up reading the Christian equivalents of these books--a series called Cedar River Daydreams, which chronicled the life and times of one Lexi Leighton, who according to various conflicting descriptions has "rich chocolate brown" or "rich buttery yellow" hair, and who chastely hangs with a guy named Todd. They never touch each other, ever, and it took me about four books to figure out that they were supposed to be boyfriend and girlfriend. A Tom Sawyer hallucination or two would have been most welcome.
posted by Powerful Religious Baby at 1:02 PM on March 28, 2008

The one where the twins' crazy party friend dies after doing coke just once made me TERRIFIED of coke. I thought if I ever did it I would die instantly of a heart attack.

Don't you remember? That was Regina Morrow, their saintly deaf friend who had a heart condition she didn't know about. That was the only reason she died from coke.
posted by Locative at 1:11 PM on March 28, 2008

And Bruce was in love with her! And losing her broke his heart! For one book, at least! Then he back to being slutty jerky Bruce.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 1:16 PM on March 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

When I went to vote in the last primary, the election officer that helped me was named Regina Morrow. I got all excited, I just started talking without thinking, "Oh, did you know you have the same name as a character in a book?" ("No.") "Yeah, the character was this beautiful girl who was deaf...who died of an overdose...um....but she was beloved by everyone!" So awkward.
posted by Locative at 1:16 PM on March 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

Ah, yes...but she loved Roger, didn't she, who turned out to be Bruce's half-brother?
posted by Locative at 1:17 PM on March 28, 2008

Did she? I thought she was Bruce's girlfrien when she died. Some of the details are fuzzy, I don't think I read all the books.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 1:59 PM on March 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'm so embarrassed to admit it but I read every single one of the SVH books between the ages of 10-12 years old.

I wanted to be just like Elizabeth because she was soooo smart and soooo pretty and soooo nice and soooo popular. Sadly, I think the series warped my view of what high school was going to be like and how popular girls should act.

The Dairy Burger site is fantastic. I laughed aloud over some of the ridiculous plot summaries and cover art. Wow, in retrospect, all of the characters are shallow disgusting "social butterflies."
posted by chicken nuglet at 3:51 PM on March 28, 2008

I read every SVH book that came out before I was about 13 or 14, but can't remember one plot detail. This thread is making me want to re-read them. I remember I gave them up because I discovered Shirlee Busbee.
posted by joannemerriam at 4:15 PM on March 28, 2008

SVH FANFIC? Oh dear god.

I admit it, I read some of them, too. I also liked to read Peyton Place and other crap I stole off my mom's bookshelf, which was much trashier than SVH ever was, but gaaaah, the thought of SVH fanfic is just really creeping me out for some reason.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 9:27 PM on March 28, 2008

I was jerking off to Anne Rice when I was a teenage girl so I missed the SVH boat. Just for the record.
posted by serazin at 12:59 PM on March 28 [+] [!]

Jerking off? Teenage girl? Great, now the FBI is infiltrating MetaFilter. But thanks for the mental image anyway.

(I wonder how many of my contemporaries were engaged in similar pursuits when I was spending lonely "quality time" in my local library..?)
posted by ZakDaddy at 10:39 PM on March 28, 2008

Believe me ZakDaddy, whatever hott image you had in your head of masturbating teen girls would be shattered if you knew what I look like .
posted by serazin at 1:13 AM on March 29, 2008

I read the Sweet Valley books until the late 90s (I guess 90s Ireland was 80s America) when I was around 14.

I loved it when Crazy Margo - who just happened to look identical to Jessica and Elizabeth - showed up and plotted to kill Jessica and take over her life. But it turned out Crazy Margo also had an identical twin (Even Crazier Nora) and they decided they'd kill Jessica and Elizabeth, except they both wanted to be Jessica (well, duh) so Nora tried to outwit Margo by kidnapping Jessica and hiding her at Sweet Valley High, so when Margo came to kill Jessica, she actually killed Nora, but everyone else thought she was Jessica, except Elizabeth who through the wonders of twintuition knew Jessica was still alive even though everyone thought poor, sad Lizzy had gone mad. Good times.

Couldn't tell you what I learned in school that year.
posted by matryoshka at 4:40 AM on March 29, 2008

This far into the thread and no one's linked to Amy Benfer's Believer article about this very subject?
posted by pxe2000 at 6:06 AM on March 29, 2008

I read them the first few years they were out...a girl in my teen group claimed she knew the woman who wrote them (bullshit: "Kate William" was the umbrella name for all the ghost writers). There was a profile of Pascal a few years ago in which she said she wanted to have a series of them grown up, but that must have fallen through.

I personally found out size 6 is now considered plus-size a few months ago when I was looking for a formal dress at Bendel's and told to go to a certain rack. If I were my proper weight, I would be size 10.

There are several different versions of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; the Oompa-Loompa's are black in one, white in another and the last versions don't specify race.

I read an Anglicized edition of In Cold Blood sometime ago with British spellings and terms: lorry instead of truck, draughts instead of checkers. Also, at least one American cartoon is dubbed with British accents across the pond.
posted by brujita at 10:47 PM on March 30, 2008

brujita: I personally found out size 6 is now considered plus-size a few months ago when I was looking for a formal dress at Bendel's and told to go to a certain rack. If I were my proper weight, I would be size 10.

UGH. I always wonder the measurements of the token "plus size" contestants on America's Next Top Model -- I'd be surprised if the current one is larger than a size 8.
posted by loiseau at 10:55 PM on March 30, 2008

I read these books mostly when I was 8 and 9 and imagined a backstabbing, gossip-filled high school gauntlet in my future. Having the right clothes, ample dating, wild parties, boyfriends with motorcycles -- it was all terrifying! It all sounded utterly plausible to my kid self, who didn't realize that they don't have sororites in high school.

I also remember when I reached a size 6 sometime in college. I thought, "Ah, the perfect size six!"
posted by Locative at 11:26 PM on March 31, 2008