Saw this disturbing piece at Shapely Prose yesterday. In a nutshell: the Sweet Valley High twins have had their size changed to a 4 in the latest version of the books, down from a size 6. And this is a big deal in the SVH series, because *every fucking book* has the same stupid description of the twins and their blonde hair, aqua-colored eyes, and perfect size X. So they really hammer it in. I could even swear that it used to be a size 8 back when I was reading, but Feministing's original post says that the 1983 versions had them as a size 6, so maybe I'm misremembering.
Now that I'm thinking more about it, I remember that there were a couple of poor pathetic chubby girls in the books. I'd love to go back and reread them with a more critical approach to the treatment of the chubby girls... but then again, fuck it.
And before anyone says the change is probably just due to size inflation (which is a comment I've seen on a couple of other sites), let me ask you this: why the fuck do the books have to mention the girls' size in the first place?
2 comments:
Jessica and Elizabeth are a "perfect size six."
Their mom was a size 8. And had a pageboy haircut.
Yeah, that's right. I can basically recite Chapter 2 from every single SVH book.
Oh, right, the mom was an 8 -- maybe that's what I was thinking of. I remember her being described as a MILF-type who was often mistaken for the twins' older sister. But she must have really let herself go, to get up to a whopping size 8.
Actually it would be interesting to see whether they changed the mom's size too, since the twins were downsized.
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