There are several character-memes in the BSC fandom, and one of them is “Stacey is a ho.” I.e., you will find Stacey underneath the bleachers sucking off the basketball team LOL. I have always found these meme to be unfair and distasteful. Yes, as we saw in Stacey and the Boyfriend Trap, Stacey sure has had a lot of boyfriends for an eighth grader. But to be fair, Stace was in eighth grade for a very long time. (Oooh, another fandom meme!) Really, is it so hard to believe that someone who is smart, attractive, and pretty damn nice would be attractive to the opposite sex? And wouldn’t have a hard time finding a boyfriend (or seven)?

SOmeone on the BSC boards, however, pointed out that they didn’t really like the message that it sent that Stacey moved right on from one serious relationship (Robert Brewster) to another (Ethan Carroll). This criticism kind of threw me for a loop, because I’ve done the same thing. I am what a women’s magazine would call a serial monogamist. I don’t have one night stands. I date people for about two years, and enter into a relationship state known as being Brooklyn-married. The longest time since I’ve been seriously dating that I’ve gone without some sort of romantic attachment: two weeks. Shortest: twelve hours. So as you can see, for me Stacey’s serial monogamy that occurs later in the series doesn’t strike me as odd at all, and I never even thought to fret about the messages that Stacey’s boy-attachment sends to young, impressionable readers.

Then, like in Beavis and Butt-head when their very small and ineffectual brains begin working, a dim, small lightbulb appeared above my head. Out of all the BSC members, Stacey is the one whose family situation most resembles my own. My dad has always worked a lot, my parents got divorced, and he found his own Samantha Young while my mother is still single. I can say, easily, that things that are easy for my friends with parents in loving stable relationships (getting over things, breaking up with someone), are very difficult or near impossible for me. I then began to think about some of the other members of the BSC, and their attitudes toward men and relationship.

Mary Anne, Jessi, and Claudia are probably the healthiest. Jessi’s parents seem to have a really great relationship, and Squirt is still a toddler so you know their marriage is still Hot. Jessi is usually pretty level-headed, and she tells Quint where to go when he wants to take their relationship further and more serious than she is comfortable with at age eleven.

As far as Mary Anne goes, well, my hatred for Logan is still strong. Despite her meekness, Mary Anne is able to stand up for herself and dump the dead weight and bossiness to rival Kristy Thomas that is Logan Bruno. Yeah, she takes him back a few books later, after he promises to smother her less, but she finally realizes that Logan is not the guy for her in Mary Anne’s Big Breakup. She knows that she needs to be her own person, and having Logan Bruno around will hinder that. It is easy to criticize Richard Spier for being nerdy and over-protective, but I think that Richard, especially later Richard, is one of the BSC parents who is actually the most tuned-in and active in their kid’s life. It was Richard’s help, after all, that Mary Anne recognized that she needed to dump Logan–for good this time. Even her friends in the BSC blew her off, but Richard recognized that the relationship wasn’t really working for Mary Anne anymore.

Claudia is someone who should be on the same boy-attractiveness plain as Stacey, but she doesn’t even have a boyfriend who’s not a Vacation Boyfriend until Mark Jaffe. Janine dumps her Hottie Boyfriend Jerry and have her pine after her for the rest of the series. Go Janine! The Kishis, like the Ramseys, have a really strong marriage.

On the divorce side, we also have Kristy and Dawn. While many pin Kristy as a lesbian, I don’t think that not caring about clothes and a love for sports automatically defines someone as a lesbian. Kristy manages to keep Bart as her sort-of boyfriend until Kristy + Bart = ?. Bart gets fresh (Peter Lerangis’s memorable makeout scene!), Kristy freaks out. Kristy realizes that she is not ready for that kind of action yet. Some people read this as Kristy will NEVER be ready for this kind of action if a penis is attached, but I think that might not be necessarily true. I think it has far more to do with the fact that her father abandoned her. Kristy: probably should go to therapy now that she has a millionaire stepdad who can afford it.

Finally, we have Dawn. Dawn is one of the more contradictory characters in the BSC, and perhaps in children’s literature as a whole. We are told over and over that Dawn is such an individual, but yet she often changes her California Casual self to satisfy what she perceives as what other people would like. The two most glaring examples of this involve boys: Travis and Lewis. Dawn did everything Travis told her, because she thought that Travis liked her and if she cut her hair and pierced her ears again that he would like her even more. And then she made that kind of psychotic-sounding phone call–”I was already a beauty!” And for Lewis, Dawn did that weird makeover/personality transplant, and then immediately went back to Old Dawn when he revealed that he liked Old Dawn more. Insecurity stemming from the fact that her parents, who for most of her life seemed to be happy and loving, very suddenly got divorced and her family was ripped in half? It’s the only explanation I can come up with that makes sense.

I am sure that there are people with divorced parents who are OK with relationships, and people with happily-married parents who are messed up about them, for various life factors. But it sure does seem to be an explanation for a lot of what goes in BSC lovelife land.

I think that my hatred of Logan is one of my strongest and most steadfast BSC opinions. Thus, I can’t help but look at this book through special Logan-hating goggles.

One of the biggest illusions that the BSC gives its young readers is that the mousy, shy girl who can barely speak to the opposite sex will end up with the cute Big Man On Campus, despite the fact that if Mary Anne were a Monopoly property, she’d be WaterWorks. But I think that all of middle school losers should be thankful the boys made fun of us instead of making out with us, because we could have ended up with boyfriends like Logan.

In this book, however, Logan seems pretty sweet, being very understanding when MA doesn’t want to dance after clocking Mr. Kingbridge in the head with her shoe, or when MA runs away from her own birthday party. He doesn’t really show signs of the Draculogan he will become in the future, the one who gives iron chain bracelets as presents after being dumped.

One of the essential questions that this book will ultimately raise in a reader is, “Why Mary Anne?” After all, sophisticated Stacey seemed interested. I have two answers for this. One comes from what we know about Ann. Mary Anne is an exaggerated version of Ann, and she wanted to give her doppelganger the chance of a dreamy junior high school romance that she never had. The other answer I have, from a very biased perspective that affects my analysis of Logan’s character, is that Logan wanted a girlfriend he can control. Looking at the character of Lyman Bruno, it’s not hard to see where that stems from.

Sorry for the long time between updates, but in the last couple of weeks I didn’t have time to sleep, let alone write a thoughtful and coherent blog post. Next on the agenda: my review of Best Friends and a look at Stacey and the Bad Girls.

In the early 90s I remember that gang violence was really in the forefront on the national scene. Television shows such as Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper addressed these issues with Very Special Episodes that involved tragic shootings and deaths which, quite frankly, shared the shit out of me.

In an attempt to stay relevant to the world around them, the team behind BSC did a Very Special Book about gangs. It was a Special Edition Reader’s Request, to be more precise. That’s right everyone: Logan Bruno, Boy Baby-Sitter. In the BSC version, however, there were no warring factions wearing colors and getting special tattoos. Instead, the gang members in question wear matching leather jackets and calls themselves The Badd Boyz. Yes, with a “z” and two “d”s. They do things like steal. And eat pizza in the parking lot.

Apart from the late 80s/early 90s mainstream hip-hop group-style spelling of their names, the Badd Boyz make me think of more 1950s/1960s street gangs (junior versions of the gangs inWest Side Story, Rebel Without a Cause, Grease) than the kind of gang with which I was familar. I know that Ann has a habit of regressing back into her childhood (*cough*i love lucy obsession*cough*) but seriously? This is what Ann comes up with when they decide they need to address gang violence?

Do you think that the Badd Boyz were even an attempt to bring to light some issues of the day in a way that would be less disturbing to young readers? Or was it just the male version of Stacey’s Bad Girl arc? Or did someone in the Scholastic art department draw that rat note and thought it was really neat, so they built up an entire book around it?

Very Special Thanks to Penny for scanning this!