Important Lessons Learnt from Teenage Fiction

I have absolutely no idea what the youth of today are reading, other than Harry Potter, but back in my day, it was all about The Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley. Everyone had their favourite sitter and everyone had their favourite twin in Sweet Valley. Unless you were just a fan of The Awesome Lila, the spoilt rich-biatch. But, I digress.

At the time, I loved these books. I read them avidly and I could never wait for the next one to come out. Of course, they never taught me anything – or so I thought. Sure, there were a few ‘issue’ books dealing with anorexia, divorce, etc but these were rarely done well. The only exception springing to mind is Claudia and the Terrible Truth, a BSC book dealing with child abuse. Heavy stuff, indeed, especially for the targeted age group of these books.

No, with the exception of this book, SV and BSC in general taught me a big, fat, nada. Unless we’re counting some useless bits of trivia which may or may not come up in a pub quiz. However, on reading back over these for nostalgia’s sake, I have, in fact, learnt many lessons. Though, not necessarily the right ones.

• You can never be popular or good at anything if you are fat

Yeah. The fat characters were there to be mocked, a la Enormous Hill, Robin the Cheerleader, cousin Robin’s ex-best friend and that girl in BSC Super Special 3: Babysitters Winter Vacation. Nope, you are fat, you have committed a crime and must indeed lose weight and become a cheerleader or spend eternity as the token fat person. Sadly, the most disturbing thing about this is the fact that most of the token fat characters were probably quite normal. Indeed, unless you are a perfect size 6, you are fat. I am not convinced that this is a good message to send out to your catchment of predominately female teens and pre-teens.

• Rich people are all snobs.

Yes, rich, nice people simply don’t exist. Unless you are of the Brewer-clan in the BSC books. Other than that, all rich people are arrogant, stuck-up, snobs who refuse to wear polyester and only wear the finest calves leather. Again, stereotyping, much?

• If your friends are all ganging up on you and are generally being bitch-queens, YOU are the one who must apologise.

Again, another ridiculous message to send out. Yes, I am referring to BSC #60: Mary Anne’s Makeover. If you do something to make yourself happy, without consulting your friends, you will be shunned and you MUST apologise to them, for them being mean to you. Again, another stupid message, basically telling you that being nasty is OK and you must be a doormat.

• It is perfectly acceptable parenting to allow your eleven year old to babysit for her two younger siblings for a whole weekend.

Need I say anymore? Needless to say, I could never understand why I was never allowed to babysit at eleven.

• Continuing on from above – eleven is that much more mature than ten.

If you are ten, you cannot wipe up your own spills. However, at eleven you are practically adult.

• Continue on is redundant.

Thank you, Janine, for that English lesson.

It’s actually rather shocking the messages that these books gave out. But still, we go back for more, wondering why we can’t all be exotic, sophisticated, perfect size six people.