BSFC #30: Mary Anne and the Great Romance

It's hard to take a lighthearted tone in such dark times, but fortunately this episode was recorded well in advance of the horrendous attack on Ukraine. If you need a respite from the weight of this brutal, stupid world, join us as we reflect on some of our favorite things from January 1990: "Rhythm Nation," the original BSC TV show (!), and GOZZIE KUNKA.

Brooke and Kaykay discuss Mary Anne and the Great Romance's exploration of shifting family dynamics, attachment styles and their impact on relationships, and the struggle to find a proper balance between "lonely" and "free," with diversions on Gozzie Kunka, '90s nautical fashion, and Gozzie Freaking Kunka.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Brooke: Welcome to the Baby-sitters Fight Club, where the first rule is, you don't talk about Fight Club. Instead, you talk about the battles fought and the lessons learned in the Baby-sitters Club series of books by Ann M. Martin. I'm Brooke Suchomel, an editor who's revisiting these books after 30 years. 

[00:00:24] Kaykay: And I'm Kaykay Brady. I'm the Forrest Gump of the eighties. 

[00:00:29] Brooke: You really are! You really are, and now we get to find out if you are also the Forrest Gump of the nineties. 

[00:00:35] Kaykay: Oh shit! Probably not, cause I was just off in the woods. 

[00:00:39] Brooke: Fingers crossed. But like Forrest Gump, you were like off with famous people from history. So I have a feeling there may be more Forrest Gumpery than you might anticipate right now, coming our way. 

[00:00:55] Kaykay: Forrest Gumpery! 

[00:01:00] Brooke: So this week, we are taking you back to January of 1990. That's right. We are entering the nineties in this episode. 

[00:01:11] Kaykay: Holy crap. Okay. So how many years did we go through the eighties? When did we start? 

[00:01:15] Brooke: We started in '86. 

[00:01:17] Kaykay: Okay. So we went through half of the eighties decade. Wow! What a jaunt that was.

[00:01:22] Brooke: What a jaunt. And what a jaunt it will continue to be, because the nineties, how can I describe the nineties? The nineties were the eighties in a different way. You know what I mean? Like a lot of the things that were sort of fucked up about the eighties were also fucked up in the nineties, but just in a different tone. 

[00:01:45] Kaykay: Worst clothes. Worst pants. 

[00:01:47] Brooke: You get this nice bridging period up to like '92, where like '88 to '92 are kind of same vibes, you got a lot of neon.

[00:01:58] Kaykay: Yes. 

[00:01:58] Brooke: You know, in that window you get like just sort of a consistency of like hip hop style and influence, you know, we're, we're getting into like TLC wear.

[00:02:08] Kaykay: Good point. 

[00:02:09] Brooke: Those are good pants. 

[00:02:11] Kaykay: And in fact, I wear 90s sunglasses. There's a lot of nineties that I love and wear to this day. 

[00:02:18] Brooke: The nineties does have its redeeming qualities, but one of them was not what was at the top of the charts, musically, to enter the nineties, because we are entering sort of the domination of adult contemporary at like the top of the charts for the early nineties.

[00:02:35] Kaykay: Like Kenny G? 

[00:02:36] Brooke: Yeah, we'll get some Kenny G. I'm so excited to say what the two number ones were in January of 90. So we already know from our last episode that the first number one of the nineties was Phil Collins' "Another Day in Paradise." And then that was followed by Michael Bolton's "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?" 

[00:02:58] Kaykay: No... 

[00:02:59] Brooke: You got the Michael Bolton face.

[00:03:03] Kaykay: Yeah. Just like, this song didn't need to be made. 

[00:03:06] Brooke: No. 

[00:03:06] Kaykay: That's my feelings about it. 

[00:03:08] Brooke: It was very much like music to get your teeth cleaned to.

[00:03:11] Kaykay: Muzak in the elevator. 

[00:03:13] Brooke: Yeah. And so those were the songs that prevented one of my favorite songs of all time from topping the charts, which was Janet Jackson's "Rhythm Nation," which only hit number two because of those songs that I just mentioned.

[00:03:30] Kaykay: I mean, this is, you couldn't ask for a better example of sort of like mediocre white maleness dominating over like a fierce fucking force of nature, which was "Rhythm Nation." 

[00:03:45] Brooke: Truly. And there are a lot of other fun songs on the charts. So like our playlist for this month is quite good, if I do say so myself. It just does not include a number one song, because I won't subject our listeners to that nonsense that was at the top of the charts. But we do have "Rhythm Nation" on it, which was just spectacular, as well as our friend in our hearts, who I think would be our friend in reality if we ever had a chance to meet, Michelle Visage. Her number one dance song with her group Seduction, "Two to Make It Right." 

[00:04:20] Kaykay: "It takes two to make a thing go right. It takes two to make it out of sight." Well, I know this song so well, especially because, uh, we have a camping chair that we call Couchy. And when you pull it back together, you got to clack the clasps and it's hard to do with one person. So you say, "It takes two to make a Couchy right. It takes two to clack it up so tight." I'm sure all of the internet in the world really wanted to hear about our camping couch. 

[00:04:58] Brooke: Right. Well, I'm glad that this is like the anthem for Couchy, and instructions for like how you and your partner work together to achieve a goal. Have you seen the music video for the song? 

[00:05:13] Kaykay: Yes. I watched it because RuPaul references it at one point and I was like, "I remember that song! That was Michelle Visage?!" And then I went back and looked at it and saw her in like her weird secretary, like on one side, hair. 

[00:05:26] Brooke: Bright blonde. The three women in the group are all wearing like amazing shoulder pads, like Working Girl kind of attire. Really bright, and with like a cinched tight waist. So she's like the lead on this, which I didn't realize.

And she also is voguing her ass off and there's like all of the backup dancers voguing. This is before "Vogue" from Madonna comes out, like long before. And if you look at her styling, her hair, everything in this video, it's super Madonna Vogue era. Michelle Visage is the proto Madonna Vogue.

[00:06:08] Kaykay: Which is interesting, because didn't she get sued by Madonna?

[00:06:12] Brooke: I don't know. If she did, that's horseshit. 

[00:06:14] Kaykay: She was claiming that Michelle Visage was copying her, like her style. 

[00:06:19] Brooke: This whole thing was filmed long before. So there is documentary evidence that that's horseshit. I highly recommend checking out this video of, we put a video playlist together for every episode too. You can find that on our soundtracks page that we have on our website, and you can check out the video, because this is perhaps the most eighties, nineties cusp thing that I have seen. 

[00:06:44] Kaykay: Yeah, it's very eighties, nineties cusp. 

[00:06:45] Brooke: The set that they're on, it looks like a high school homecoming, where you get your picture taken. It looks like that. And then it also looks like if you ever played, which I love, the find the difference between these pictures game that's like tabletop.

You know, Photo Hunt. And you play the version that's like Nudie Photo Hunt, and it's all like soft core porn from like the late eighties and early nineties. It's also like on that set as well. So you get like so many different flavors of style of the time. It's fucking delightful and the song is catchy as hell.

So "Rhythm Nation," "Two to Make It Right," both of them were at number two on the top 40, held off by two mediocre white men. 

[00:07:34] Kaykay: Fucking Michael Bolton. 

[00:07:35] Brooke: Yeah, fucking Michael Bolton, goddamn it. 

[00:07:37] Kaykay: Get out of there. 

[00:07:37] Brooke: Get out of there, Michael Bolton. Movies, not super exciting. It's January. Everybody that's trying to get an Oscar comes out in December. And so everybody that's not trying to get an Oscar comes out in January. And, uh, the movies reflect that. 

The number ones were Born on the 4th of July and Driving Miss Daisy, and nothing else of any interest came out. But on TV, it was a different story. Because this was the month that the very first Baby-sitters Club TV show premiered on HBO. The nineties were kicked off by the Baby-sitters Club on HBO, because it premiered on January 1st, 1990, and then all of the remaining episodes came out weekly through March.

So much of what we remember, those of us that ever saw this, it was on HBO. And then I think they aired it on like the Disney channel. I saw it via the VHSs that, I had Stacey's Big Break. My friend had the one where they do a campaign for a girl who is running for student president or something like that, and they all say "Count on Court! Count on Court!" That's what I remember. So all of those came out in January of 1990, those two episodes. 

[00:08:56] Kaykay: That's very exciting. 

[00:08:58] Brooke: And they're available on Amazon Prime, if you want to check out the original recipe Baby-sitters Club. 

[00:09:04] Kaykay: Yeah, we talked about visiting those at some point. 

[00:09:07] Brooke: Yeah. Yeah, that might be another like summer break to do at some point. So this was obviously the Baby-Sitters club big moments because not only was it coming out in book form, it was coming out on TV. And so the book that was out when the very first Baby-sitters Club show on HBO came out was the 30th Baby-sitters Club book, Mary Anne and the Great Romance, which was released in January of 1990.

So it's time for some back cover copy and I quote, "It's official! Mary Anne's father and Dawn's mother are getting married. The babysitters think it's so romantic, especially since Mr. Spier and Mrs. Schafer first fell in love when they were in high school, but nothing can top Mary Anne and Dawn's excitement. They want a huge wedding with beautiful dresses, lots of presents, and a five layer cake.

After all, this isn't just any wedding. Mary Anne and Dawn are going to be babysitters, best friends, and sisters, too!" End quote. 

[00:10:12] Kaykay: What could go wrong? 

[00:10:14] Brooke: What could go wrong? That's a good lead in to this. And just to sort of set the stage, we get a cliffhanger at the end of this book. This book covers the engagement up to the wedding and ends with the bouquet being thrown, and all of the girls of course are together to try to catch it. That leads us into the next book, which we'll pick up. Kaykay, what did go wrong, or what do we see potentially going wrong in this new relationship dynamic that we have? 

[00:10:49] Kaykay: Well, I guess I'll just go straight for the central theme that I saw. 

[00:10:53] Brooke: Let's do it. 

[00:10:53] Kaykay: As I feel like it's really relevant, which is the sort of tension between close and too close, you know, wanting to be close and join together, and then also needing enough space to differentiate. It's sort of a theme across multiple of the subplots, you know, the first main subplot that was right in the back cover copy being Mary Anne and Dawn now becoming stepsisters. And it actually turns out they're even going to be moving in together. 

And this really pisses Mary Anne off because she's like, "Why am I leaving my house? Nobody even told me that this was happening!" So there's kind of like tension developed there. And then also we've got Marilyn and Carolyn, our favorite twins are back, and still struggling with their differentiation. And of course we have Mary Anne being their free, very skilled therapist, fixing it for them.

[00:11:44] Brooke: Right. 

[00:11:45] Kaykay: So that theme covers both of those stories in my mind. 

[00:11:49] Brooke: Yeah. And we also get that very, very briefly in a chapter where Kristy is talking about how she's babysitting and you see that same dynamic really with Karen and Emily Michelle. So it's like three pairs of sister dynamics that are having some tension, and the reason for that, and how do they resolve that? Yeah, it's a pretty consistent theme throughout the book, for sure. So from a therapist perspective, as you were reading this, what were you seeing as the underlying things going on and, and how you might address this if you were in the Mary Anne position? 

[00:12:29] Kaykay: Well, I think the author makes it pretty explicit. She has one of those funny Ann M moments. I've realized Ann M tries to put her wisdom in a certain format, which is, "'Funny,' thought Stacey, 'The twins had changed so much. They'd all been allowed to go their separate ways, and now they have their own rooms and their own friends. Yet they seemed closer than ever. Was that what moving apart could do, make you grow closer?'" 

She did it in a way we didn't love in the last book where the character says, "Hmm, maybe I'm the racist one for assuming that my experiences are valid." Hmm, maybe. But anyway, she uses a similar format, in my opinion, where the central insight of the book is presented in this, where it sort of like touched on, and then there's an open question. 

And in family therapy, especially, we're always working with how close families are. Because too close, you could get a lot of conflict and you also get a lot of lack of agency for all the members of the family. They can't differentiate between their identities and another person's identity.

And there's loose boundaries, where the person actually may never learn to, you know, think independently, do independently, make choices independently, and it can lead to a lot of dysfunction in adult relationships. And then you have families that are too far apart, and there's a lack of intimacy that can create adults that really struggle with intimacy and being close with people, because you know, they've never had it modeled for them.

I think in this book, you're seeing much more of the too close, which we use a term called "enmeshed." And enmeshed means, you know, there's sort of loose boundaries and a lot of too closeness. And, you know, the central premise of the book, which is totally valid, a little bit of distance actually increases intimacy and increases personal agency, which allows you to be close with another person.

[00:14:22] Brooke: Yeah. I mean, I totally had the same thing, that it seemed to me that, you know, the central theme that they were fighting was how to like balance independence and the need for self-expression with the relationships, like your closest relationships that you have. And especially as all of these kids are in such a transitory time.

Um, you've got obviously Mary Anne and Dawn going through the biggest transition of all, which is that their families are merging coming together. 

[00:14:56] Kaykay: Oh my god, are we gonna talk about the fucking disaster looming? 

[00:15:00] Brooke: Which is them deciding to move in together, I'm assuming? That Mary Anne and Dawn are sharing a room? 

[00:15:07] Kaykay: And the parents! That's a match made in heaven. 

[00:15:11] Brooke: Right. The thing that I, that really jumped out at me is, at their wedding lunch, which is at Chez Maurice, he offers a bite of his veal roast to his new wife, who he knows is a vegetarian and it looks hurt when she turns it down. And it's like, what you marry her and you think that she's now going to start eating baby cow? Like, I don't think that that's going to happen. 

[00:15:37] Kaykay: It's actually a little sign of a bid for an enmeshed interaction. You don't get to have your own food and your own desires around food. 

[00:15:48] Brooke: There's definitely signs this is not going to be a smooth transition for the family that you see sprinkled throughout. And I think that's why we get a cliffhanger rather than a clean break. Things aren't perfectly resolved at the end. You see tension bubbling up at the wedding. So that's going to carry us into the next book for sure. 

[00:16:09] Kaykay: It was interesting we got a cliffhanger. This was the first cliffhanger. 

[00:16:12] Brooke: Yeah, it literally ends, "Mrs. Schafer stood on her chair. She turned her back and tossed the bouquet over her shoulder. It was heading straight for Dawn and me. We both jumped for it." So you see that they're going to be in a battle for something. That is how this book ends. And then it goes, "To be continued in book 31, dot dot dot." Clear cliff hanger.

And you see them talking at the end about they're going to move in together and they decide that they're going to share a room, Dawn and Mary Anne. When we just had an entire book that focused on how Marilyn and Carolyn needed to get their own rooms in order for there to be peace and harmony within the household.

So it's set up in a way that an eight year old reading this I think would be able to pick up on it. Like it's not super subtle that there's going to be some tension coming. So we've got the Mary Anne and Dawn family dynamic with like major transition. 

We have Marilyn and Carolyn being in that transition of like, we knew them when they were the same, you know, designed basically to be clones of each other. And then we saw with Mallory and the Trouble With Twins, how they became happier and like more integrated into society, frankly, when they were allowed to express their independence, weren't just speaking their own language. They were actually like making friends. 

[00:17:41] Kaykay: They were no longer The Shining twins.

[00:17:44] Brooke: There were no longer The Shining twins, no. And then to a lesser extent, the focus on Karen and Emily Michelle. You see Karen comes down after she sets Emily Michelle up, like frames her for throwing cookies on the floor. 

[00:17:58] Kaykay: I had such a problem with this scene. What the fuck? You give a two year old a time-out? I mean, a two year old doesn't even know right from wrong. A two year old basically just has needs. They're going to freak out if their needs aren't being met, and then it gets punished. 

[00:18:13] Brooke: Yeah. And there was the line that made me uncomfortable that was like, "Even though Emily Michelle didn't have much, it was important for us not to spoil her." It's like, she's two. It's kind of hard to like, quote unquote, "spoil" a two year old. Don't let your two year old hit people and stuff. But if cookies fall on the floor? Okay. 

[00:18:34] Kaykay: She's two! 

[00:18:35] Brooke: Look, it's Girl Scout season. I had a lot of cookies this week. I'm quite sure there have been cookies on the floor in my household, all right? And I am a grown ass woman, so...

[00:18:48] Kaykay: You're basically sleeping on a mattress of cookie crumbs.

[00:18:52] Brooke: Just rolling over, "Nom nom nom," when I wake up in the morning, when I go to bed. Delightful. A dream. 

[00:19:00] Kaykay: Live your dreams. 

[00:19:01] Brooke: Yeah. And then she comes down and the shirt that she's like, "Put this in our dog's dog bed," is Karen's shirt that says like, "I'm the middle sister."

[00:19:10] Kaykay: "I'm the middle sister and loving it" or something, which is so funny. Cause nobody loves being the middle of sister.

[00:19:17] Brooke: So it seems like, you know, Karen is struggling with not being the little sister of the family, right? Everyone is in this state of transition, and so we see these characters grappling with that. And through that you see them express like both jealousy and insecurity about these shifting family dynamics. And sort of figuring out, how do we express ourselves in this time? 

And that's something that even if you're not going through any transitions in your family, when you're a kid at this age, you're grappling with that already. So it's like this heightened stakes of I'm trying to figure out who I am and what I like and what I want and need, but like the ground beneath me is shifting. 

So, you know, they don't always show their best selves in that, because it's a scary time and they're really trying to like figure out self preservation techniques, frankly. 

[00:20:19] Kaykay: Yeah. And they're big family transitions. I mean, there's, you're seeing a lot of big family transitions in this book, which are inherently extremely threatening.

Kids take a lot of solace in stability, routine, sameness, consistency. And so anytime there's changes for kids, there's going to be a lot of insecurity and anxiety. It would be impossible for there not to be, just given their little psychologies at that point. 

[00:20:52] Brooke: You know, as you were saying that I'm thinking, I'm like, oh, I kind of feel that too, that feeling of being unsettled when things change in your life, even if they're changes that ostensibly on paper are for the better. Even if it's changes that are what you want. 

Like, we see Marilyn and Carolyn want to be able to have their own independence. We know that about them. They want to express themselves and be different. But that has resulted in Carolyn being like more of a social butterfly and Marilyn being less of a social butterfly. So that Carolyn has all of the friends and Marilyn has her imaginary friend, Gozzie Kunka.

[00:21:31] Kaykay: Which, I couldn't wait for you to bring up Gozzie Kunka.

[00:21:36] Brooke: Okay, here's my notes. Right at the very top, I just, "GOZZIE KUNKA!!!" All caps, multiple exclamation points, underlines. 

[00:21:48] Kaykay: I think we had a psychic moment, because the first time I read "Gozzie Kunka," I could just imagine you writing in your book, "Gozzie Kunka." We really had a psychic moment. 

[00:21:58] Brooke: I like to think that you were having that thought as I was writing it, and it was telekinesis. 

[00:22:04] Kaykay: It was like Fievel singing to the moon. Gozzie Kunka was our moon.

[00:22:12] Brooke: Gozzie Kunka is the moon. 

[00:22:16] Kaykay: Bumper sticker. It's like, how legit of a Baby-sitters Club fan are you, that you could get that reference on a bumper sticker? 

[00:22:26] Brooke: Yeah. And for anyone who hasn't read it, I just need to spell this character's name because it's like even more ridiculous when you see it written than when you hear it out loud, because it's G-O-Z-Z-I-E, K-U-N-K-A. It's Gozzie Kunka, who was a foreign dignitary's daughter who lives in Stoneybrook, but nobody knows about her other than Marilyn. And everyone else in the book is like, "Oh yeah, of course. That makes sense." 

[00:22:55] Kaykay: Of course, Gozzie Kunka. 

[00:22:57] Brooke: And they're like, I've never met her, but yeah, that must be her friend. Like if there was someone in your school, first of all, who was like a foreign dignitary's child? I don't know, well, I was just about to say, I don't know about your school, but actually, nevermind. 

For everyone who didn't go off to the woods with foreign dignitaries' children to be educated, um, like at my school, if there was some foreign dignitary's kid, everyone in that school would know, and that kid would probably be, I mean an object of fascination. Probably would like immediately be like the most popular person in school because we lived in a very boring environment. So that would be exciting and fresh and new, right? But also the name "Gozzie Kunka." It's like a magnet, right? Like you don't even have to be a foreign dignitary's kid if your name is Gozzie Kunka. You got to figure out what's going on. 

[00:24:00] Kaykay: You got it going on.

[00:24:05] Brooke: Who wouldn't want to be friends with Gozzie Kunka just to be able to like, say the word all the, like, I can't stop saying Gozzie Kunka cause it's so fun to say Gozzie Kunka. So even if Gozzie Kunka was a total asshole, I would probably like, you know, at least acquaintances with Gozzie Kunka, so I could constantly say Gozzie Kunka.

[00:24:24] Kaykay: I'm imagining Gozzie on the soccer team with me. Cause you know, we used each other's last names and you'd be like, "Yo, Kunka!"

[00:24:35] Brooke: If you see Kunka coming your way, you're like, "Oh shit." 

[00:24:39] Kaykay: "Kunka's comin'. Kunka's comin'!"

[00:24:46] Brooke: Oh, it's so good. So yeah, Gozzie Kunka, Marilyn's imaginary friend. And so like if Marilyn's imaginary friend is Gozzie Kunka, I want a whole book of just what's in Marilyn's head because she sounds fascinating. That is creative as hell. And she sold it! She got everyone believing in Gozzie Kunka. 

[00:25:07] Kaykay: It wasn't until the end of the book that somebody's like, "I have a crazy theory!"

[00:25:15] Brooke: Right, the person that no one has ever met and has only been referred to by their name, Gozzie Kunka, might not be a real person. Yeah, it's like a realization that comes into their head, I think while they're sitting at the wedding dinner. Which just goes to show you how exciting the wedding dinner must be.

[00:25:34] Kaykay: I really want to know what happens if you Google Gozzie Kunka. 

[00:25:37] Brooke: Let's find out. 

[00:25:38] Kaykay: Shall we do it?

[00:25:38] Brooke: Let's do a quick Google search, "Gozzie Kunka." So it doesn't automatically populate, unfortunately. 

[00:25:48] Kaykay: Oh my god, Gozzie Kunka's on Facebook!

[00:25:54] Brooke: Seriously?

[00:25:56] Kaykay: Yeah. First of all, there's a couple of, uh, you know, Baby-sitters Club things, right? Of course, yeah, Baby-sitters Wiki, Wiki about Marilyn. 

[00:26:05] Brooke: Yeah. 

[00:26:06] Kaykay: Okay, but who's Gozzie Kunka? 

[00:26:08] Brooke: It's a Turkish Facebook, it redirects you to a Turkish site. You don't see Gozzie Kunka anywhere. So somebody just got Gozzie Kunka in like their name somehow? 

[00:26:20] Kaykay: They just put it as a search redirect.

[00:26:25] Brooke: It's an SEO strategy. "I know how I'm going to drive up numbers on my Facebook page. I'm gonna put in Gozzie Kunka, for all of the people that are searching for Gozzie Kunka. They will come to me." Yeah. So good. I love Gozzie Kunka! Anyway. God, that was great. 

[00:26:47] Kaykay: What were we talking about? 

[00:26:51] Brooke: I don't know. 

[00:26:52] Kaykay: How did we get here? 

[00:26:53] Brooke: I think the question is, how did we not get here sooner? I might kind of amazed that I didn't start this with just like, it's the Gozzie Kunka book, y'all. Like, if you read this, you know what we're about to talk about, which is Gozzie Kunka. What else is there to discuss in this book? Gozzie Kunka. So Marilyn has Gozzie Kunka, whereas Carolyn has real friends. 

[00:27:17] Kaykay: Real friends, actual friends.

[00:27:18] Brooke: Yeah. And then obviously Karen is struggling with that position in her family, no longer being the little sister and now being the middle sister. So it's kind of, even when you get what you ostensibly want, things will continue to change. It's not like you get what you want and then everything's good.

Like, you get what you want, and then things are still going to be complicated and messy. And that, especially when you're a kid and you haven't had a ton of experience of getting what you want, and then knowing that like, okay, but that doesn't mean that like everything's perfect. Now I remember being a kid and being like, "Oh yeah. If I just like, get this bike, then like my life will be great." 

And you get your bike, even if it's a sick fucking wicker white plastic basket on the front and the streamers coming out of the handlebars and a bell that has, what on it? You guessed it, a bunny. 

[00:28:16] Kaykay: Yes! Queen!

[00:28:20] Brooke: You will still have problems in your life. 

[00:28:23] Kaykay: And you experience that over and over again as an adult, right? Like the thing you think you're chasing after, if you get it, you usually, your window of happiness is short and then you get used to it. And all of a sudden you're not happy anymore because you're not really searching for that.

And the other thing is that change for people is excruciating, even quote unquote, "good" change. Change in general is excruciating for human beings. They usually need a lot of support through it. 

[00:28:52] Brooke: And I think we are starting to see that in this book with Mary Anne and Dawn, how so many books, like you've mentioned in our last episode, it's been leading up to this, right?

Like there's been so many books that have been like, "Ooh, wouldn't it be fun if we were step sisters? Wouldn't that be great?" You know? So it's like, okay, this is what you want. You're getting what you want. And then it's, oh, well, I didn't think about how this would unfold. They didn't even really think about like, well, who's house gets moved into? What are we going to do about the fact that Dawn's mom apparently doesn't like cats, so what's going to happen with Tigger? Is there going to be tension there? 

There's all of this other stuff that is starting to come up and it's because now they're going to get closer. It's just really unpacking, like what happens in a relationship when your relationship moves to either like, quote unquote, "the next level," gets more intense, or just like goes to a different level. Like the dynamics shift in some way and how that can be very confusing. 

When you're a kid it's even more confusing because you haven't had that experience of it happening. But even when you're an adult, it still sucks. Where you're like, well, you know that it's not going to be like, your brain knows that things aren't going to be perfect when you get what you want, but your heart kind of still hopes that it will, at least in my experience.

So, you know, you may not be surprised when you're disappointed, but you're still disappointed. And you still have to figure out how to work through that. And hopefully by the time you're an adult, you've got enough experience and skills that you can do that in a productive way. But if you're a kid, particularly a kid who hasn't had a lot of healthy relationship modeling, that can be really tough. 

[00:30:44] Kaykay: Hundred percent. And I'm also thinking about the ways that Marilyn and Carolyn, unlike Dawn and Mary Anne, they're separating a little bit. And that causes a lot of stress. They may need to differentiate and separate, and they probably feel a huge amount of ambivalence about it, which like all people feel ambivalence about change. They want it, they don't want it. They're driven to it, they're holding onto the way things are. 

And the way that they're fighting is actually a way to maintain closeness. Because fighting is actually a real sign of closeness. You know, some of that is I think reflecting just that ambivalence to let go.

It's like that phrase and I don't know where it comes from, but you know, "The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is indifference." 

[00:31:31] Brooke: Correct. 

[00:31:32] Kaykay: And so often in families, fighting is an expression of care and closeness. It's just a maladaptive expression of care and closeness, because they don't know how to actually show care and closeness in any other way. I'm talking to you, Irish Catholics! 

[00:31:51] Brooke: Word. 

[00:31:52] Kaykay: This is like, we're at Thanksgiving. I said to your husband, I said- 

[00:31:56] Brooke: Oh, Jesus Christ. 

[00:31:57] Kaykay: Your husband and I were talking about our Irish Catholic upbringings, but I said something like, "You know when the men start wrestling, it's time to go home." 

[00:32:07] Brooke: Yes! Correct. Like, that was one of my favorite, we quote that all the time. That has entered into the household lexicon. So thank you for that, because that was so on point. Yeah. In a lot of families, I think the fighting is kind of how people express affection in a really weird way, because like expressing feelings of love is like, "Don't do that. That's weak." So you express feelings of frustration or vent when it gets to a boiling point, because you haven't been expressing those feelings of love.

[00:32:45] Kaykay: It's also way to express worry and concern. And worry and concern is very hard for people to hold in the face of their loved one's suffering. So to just sort of be with your loved one as they are suffering and support them is very difficult. It's a lot easier to get angry and be like, "Why the fuck are you doing this? Do that. What's wrong with you?" It's an expression of worry and concern. It's just, they don't know how to sit with those really hard feelings of worry and concern. 

[00:33:13] Brooke: So true. Yeah, Ann M really teed up the fact that we're going to see Dawn and Mary Anne's relationship evolving in a way that we haven't seen before.

[00:33:24] Kaykay: Yeah, and it might be kind of gnarly.

[00:33:26] Brooke: Yeah. And you even get that hinted at with the way that it calls back to Mary Anne's relationship with Kristy. She notices that Kristy, she's happy for Dawn and Mary Anne, but also feels left out. And so Mary Anne writes Kristy a note that, it's meant to express affection, but it also kind of felt to me almost terminal. Did you notice that? 

[00:33:52] Kaykay: Terminal? 

[00:33:53] Brooke: Basically, she says, "You will always have been like my first best friend." She slips a note in the back pocket of her jeans, so she doesn't even say this to Kristy. It's not even a conversation that they have. It's like a, I'm going to write you a note so that you can read it in your own time.

[00:34:12] Kaykay: She puts it in her jeans while the jeans are on her body? 

[00:34:14] Brooke: Yeah. 

[00:34:15] Kaykay: Would you touch your friend's butt like that? 

[00:34:17] Brooke: I think it's like a matter of tucking in. These are 1990 jeans, which were not tight.

[00:34:23] Kaykay: There's three inches between the butt and the jean. 

[00:34:26] Brooke: There was a lot of space. These were some big ass pockets, literally. 

[00:34:31] Kaykay: Maybe these were Cavariccis.

[00:34:33] Brooke: These are probably like, these would have been peggable jeans. You could have been doing some serious tight rolling in these jeans, which means you had to have a lot of fabric to tight roll, so Kristy didn't even notice this. So consider this to be like a backpack hanging over her butt. 

So yeah, when Kristy hugs her, when they're at the Baby-sitters Club meeting, they tell everybody that their parents are going to get married. Mary Anne had already written a note to Kristy, knowing that Kristy's going to feel a little left out by this. And it says, "Dear Kristy, as you and I grow up, we'll have lots of friends and lots of things will change. But one thing can never change. You are my very first best friend. I love you, Mary Anne." 

There is something about the fact that it's written, that it can be found at a different time. Like this is communication that is happening in isolation. She even says that Kristy doesn't talk to her about it, but she smiles at her in like a nice way the next day at school, so she's like, she must've read it. So they don't have a conversation. It's like, you aren't close enough that you can like really talk this out. So it's kind of like an indicator that they're probably not going to be as close in the future as they have been in the past or something. 

[00:35:52] Kaykay: I'm thinking about that word "terminal" you used, which I think is a great word, because the note very clearly states like there's an applied ending there, you know? Versus you would imagine a softer way to have that conversation might be, "this is not a zero sum game" kind of conversation. "There's room in my heart for many close friends, of which you are extremely dear and special to me." 

[00:36:12] Brooke: Yeah. It's the use of the past tense, as well as like referring to the future. "Things will change in the future, but you were my first best friend.

[00:36:23] Kaykay: Yeah. And it's a little like dumpy, it's a little like Dear John. 

[00:36:27] Brooke: Yeah. Like, "We're still going to be in each other's lives. It's probably going to be different. You were my very first best friend," you know, and that's something that like, I think when you're a kid at the age of the kids that are reading this book, at least in my experience, your friend circles don't necessarily stay static.

Who your quote unquote, "best friend" is can often change based on, well, who's in your class at school this year. 

[00:36:55] Kaykay: Yep. Where you live, did you move... 

[00:36:58] Brooke: It's so proximity based, and it's based on things that you have precisely zero control over. It's been a theme in other books. Like we get that with Stacey's moves and like her relationship with Claudia and Laine.

And then we also get it with Claudia, how she's kind of growing apart from the Kristy and Mary Anne dynamic, and Stacey, and then there's like, well, maybe she's going to be closer with Ashley. Like you see things happening with friends coming in and out of the picture, but there isn't a whole lot of like explicit conversation about what that means.

You just see it happening, which is how you go through it as a kid. You're not having a conversation about what it means that the person who was your best friend in third grade may not be your best friend in fourth grade. You're just like going through life. 

[00:37:50] Kaykay: Yeah, you're not reflecting and processing on relationships like that.

[00:37:56] Brooke: It's just happening, which can also, let's be honest. Like, you really haven't gotten the skills yet to really reflect, and that's a pretty heavy thing to think about. But like, it just can feel like the natural order of things. 

And I think here we see a little bit more of Mary Anne because she's being put in such a heightened transition for the first time in her life. She's going to have an older woman living in the home with her. She even says, "I'll get to talk to Dawn's mom about girl stuff." So much is changing for her that I think it puts all of the relationships in her life into such stark relief that you can see more, at least, acknowledgment of what transitions might mean and their impacts on other people happening, even if it's very much happening in the manner of "the men start wrestling, you need to go," you can slide that note in the back pocket.

We won't ever like personally have that conversation, but there is at least an acknowledgement of the closeness and the impact of that on our lives. 

[00:39:02] Kaykay: Yeah. You know, to me, it felt a little bit like, speaking of older women, an older woman's reflection. "That was my first best friend." That's something you definitely come to later. And so it almost felt like a little breadcrumb from Ann M to younger audiences, just helping with a little bit of insight and reflection there. 

[00:39:24] Brooke: Definitely, which is nice. It'd be nice to see them have a conversation about that. But would that be realistic? Probably not. 

[00:39:30] Kaykay: No, I don't think it'd be realistic at all. I mean, I don't see the note as super realistic either, frankly. But it feels a little more realistic than them sitting down and working it out.

[00:39:38] Brooke: Yeah. I mean, there are so many people that go through their entire lives without having that conversation. 

[00:39:44] Kaykay: Of course! Yeah, I would say like the vast majority of people are not having reflective, processing conversations about relationships and their natures and how they're changing, and the feelings that that's creating. 

[00:39:58] Brooke: Yeah, because having that conversation stirs up more feelings, and more feelings equal scary to a lot of people. 

[00:40:05] Kaykay: This is why, you know, people go to therapists in times of change. And this is why families go to therapists because they need a contained safe space to do that with someone that has some skills at holding those feelings in a safe way and facilitating the conversation. Because for most people this feels way out of their comfort zone, because it's like, all these dynamics are like bumping up. 

I mean, we see the dynamics and the emotions that any closed system is creating in this book right there. Like feelings of jealousy, resentment, anxiety, those are very strong feelings to hold. And, you know, most grown-ups don't feel like super comfortable sitting with those or holding those because it can feel really overwhelming. 

[00:40:46] Brooke: Yeah. Not having that conversation out, not giving yourself even the time to sit and think about the, it made me think about like, this book shows the importance of giving yourself space to like, explore what you need, explore what you want, figure out how to express your own interests, et cetera.

Like you see that when Marilyn and Carolyn get that space, that's when they're able to come back together. And I think that we're getting an indication in this book that not giving yourself that space, and the way that Mary Anne and Dawn are planning to, right? They're planning to share a room, even though there is another room that would be available for Mary Anne. They're going to share that room.

We can see that that's probably going to lead to some significant exacerbation of the tensions that we already see in this book, because we have seen that play out in the subplot. 

[00:41:49] Kaykay: I want to reflect on the ways that these ideas of closeness and separateness and sort of the idea of what's a healthy amount is kind of a Western construct.

It's a cultural thing from our culture. You'll often find that in other cultures it's not true, and it's not held in the same way as cultures that tend to be stresses that come up with that closeness. There's something about the Western culture in particular, and like all the Western childhood development theorists and like family therapy theorists, they're all like Western white men with a perspective of, "There's a right amount of closeness, and it's not too close."

So I guess I just want to like throw that in here that there's a lot of cultural bias and perspective. 

[00:42:33] Brooke: Growing up in a society where quote unquote "rugged individualism" is held up as like the pinnacle of personhood to strive for, how that complicates relationships in so many ways. That makes a lot of sense.

[00:42:51] Kaykay: And also the ways that you see the differentiation happening, it's through a lot of like Western capitalist tropes, like what you buy and what you wear and how you look, and having your own room, your own little box in this house. 

[00:43:04] Brooke: How you decorate. Your things equal your personhood. 

[00:43:09] Kaykay: Yeah. So I guess I just feel like, interesting to point out the ways that we're seeing the dominant culture playing out in the themes the book. 

[00:43:19] Brooke: Ooh, that makes me think about what it means symbolically that Mary Anne wears Dawn's dress to the wedding. 

[00:43:28] Kaykay: The Laura Ashley dress? 

[00:43:29] Brooke: Yeah, they go shopping and Dawn gets a very stylish sailor dress, which she wears with ankle boots. 

[00:43:37] Kaykay: Is there, I mean, is there such a thing? You're the straight person in this relationship. I can't...

[00:43:42] Brooke: Yeah. I mean, I think it's probably referring to like the collar. So in the early nineties, there absolutely was a nautical theme to clothing. Like there is a nautical fashion in the nineties, for sure. 

[00:43:56] Kaykay: Like, beyond boat shoes? 

[00:43:57] Brooke: For sure. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I think you may not have picked up on it as much just because you were hobnobbing with the sailing elite. 

[00:44:06] Kaykay: Oh shit. Can we talk about the style of the preppies has never changed? It's like the same in 1972 as like 2022. Same style. It's like parted blonde hair, very little makeup, Patagonia gear. 

[00:44:22] Brooke: Like, "I engage in light sporting activity on the weekends."

[00:44:28] Kaykay: Yeah, "I will definitely be sailing sometime this month. I need to be dressed accordingly." 

[00:44:33] Brooke: I wonder how much of the quote-unquote preppy fashion that you saw come in in the eighties and then carried over into like the nautical themed fashion of the early nineties, how much of that was tied to like shit like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Like, wealth being pitched to us as like, "Be a part of this in some way." And like the only way that somebody who makes an average income in America could do that would be in the clothing. Like, you couldn't actually live that lifestyle. 

[00:45:04] Kaykay: You're not gonna go buy a boat, right. 

[00:45:05] Brooke: But you could dress like you did, so long as those styles were available at like mass market retailers, which they came to be, then. 

[00:45:14] Kaykay: Just don't shop from J Peterman. Cause that shit will kill you. 

[00:45:17] Brooke: Again, never heard of it in my life. It wasn't a risk. 

[00:45:22] Kaykay: Didn't you read it? You got familiar with it.

[00:45:25] Brooke: I did. Yes. After we, I don't know what it was, but like I got, did you order me the catalog? 

[00:45:33] Kaykay: I think I just sent you a link or something and you, and you went a deep dive on J Peterman. 

[00:45:37] Brooke: But then I got a catalog in the mail. 

[00:45:41] Kaykay: You think I'm like, I know, I wish I was that thoughtful of a friend that I would like send you a J Peterman catalog. 

[00:45:47] Brooke: I was like, where did this come from? But yeah, I mean, you see like Mary Anne doesn't buy her own. She's just like, "Well, maybe I can just wear Dawn's that she wore the last time." So you're already starting to see, she's like putting Dawn's clothes on as opposed to getting her own dress. So there's a little indicator there, you know.

 And Dawn isn't, "I'm going to wear one of your dresses." They don't swap. Dawn gets something herself. Mary Anne puts Dawn's clothing on her body. I mean, I don't think we're going to get Single White Female, but like, you know. 

[00:46:23] Kaykay: That was in my head. 

[00:46:24] Brooke: Little vibes, little vibes of that. 

[00:46:26] Kaykay: Single White Female vibes. Oh my god, I would love if Baby-sitter's Club jumped the shark to Single White Female.

[00:46:35] Brooke: That wouldn't be jumping the shark. That would be like, what is the opposite of jumping the shark? That would be like next level awesome if we got that. That would be so fucking cool. Fan fiction! 

[00:46:47] Kaykay: Fan fiction! 

[00:46:49] Brooke: There's also a line where Mary Anne says, "Dad and I would never be lonely again." And then like dot, dot, dot. 

[00:46:58] Kaykay: Fatal Attraction! Now we're in Fatal Attraction, which actually is making me think, how did you deal with the bunny scene in Fatal Attraction? 

[00:47:06] Brooke: I never watched Fatal Attraction. 

[00:47:08] Kaykay: Okay. 

[00:47:08] Brooke: I'm familiar with what happens, you know, but like, there are so many eighties movies I've never seen. Cause again, it's like, if I didn't rent it from the gas station down the street, I didn't see it. 

[00:47:21] Kaykay: This is why I feel like someday when we get our Matreon going, we can just switch roles.

[00:47:27] Brooke: It'll be so good. 

[00:47:28] Kaykay: Where like I get to pick the films and be like, "This week, Better Off Dead." 

[00:47:32] Brooke: Yeah. That has to happen. But yeah, so she said, "By that evening, I would have an official stepmother, stepsister and stepbrother. Dad and I would never be lonely again. We would never be facing the world alone together again. So why didn't that comfort me? I felt unsettled. Dad and I had done pretty well facing the world alone. Did I really want that to change?" 

So there's acknowledgement that it's not all like, happy fun. And we see that with Mary Anne being like very upset when she finds out that she's going to be moving into Dawn's house.

But it seems like the theme that I got throughout too, which is just another way of sort of phrasing what I think we've been talking about, is like finding that balance between lonely and free. How do you figure out how much connection with others you need? What type of connection you need with others, where that happy balance is for you. 

Particularly when you're a kid growing up in like American society, where like, you're taught that your goal should be to be very popular. Like everybody wants to have the most friends. And in that way, you would kind of never be on your own. And if you're never on your own, if you're always immersed in a world of others, how do you figure out who you really are, particularly as you grow up and start to learn more, and your personality starts to emerge a bit more and you learn more about yourself?

So I think that there's a lot of really good, really loaded questions happening in, this was a quick read for me. I don't know if it was for you too. It was a very fast read, particularly compared to the previous book, which was a long slog. We don't get resolution on a lot of these questions, but we get them raised, which is a good thing, I think.

[00:49:27] Kaykay: Yeah, it's definitely a good thing. And it's really interesting because attachment, which is kind of what we're talking about, your style of attachment is determined by your childhood experiences and the style of attachment that you had with your caregivers. 

[00:49:44] Brooke: Which is going to be quite loaded for both of these kids.

[00:49:47] Kaykay: Yes. Right, exactly. And I'm especially thinking about Mary Anne, having lost a caregiver. That can lead to an insecure attachment where you seek fusion and enmeshment in adult relationships, because you're sort of like seeking the safety that left. So it makes sense for me, that Mary Anne would be like wearing Dawn's clothes. Like we are fused. 

[00:50:10] Brooke: Right. And Dawn, who has always been presented to us as, she's independent, how she will take to that. 

[00:50:17] Kaykay: And Dawn has had, so there's two types of insecure attachment styles. One is anxious and one is avoidant. An anxious attachment style would be Mary Anne's like, fuse. And then avoidant could be perceived as more Dawn, like an avoidant attachment style is like, "I keep you at arms length because attachment is not safe." because we see that they could take that from Dawn also like losing her dad. 

[00:50:42] Brooke: And her brother. 

[00:50:43] Kaykay: And her brother, yeah. 

[00:50:44] Brooke: And with her relationship with her mom, that being very codependent and she's sort of parentified. Whereas Mary Anne is sort of parentified in a different way, in that she's always got to like make dinner.

We see her again, she makes dinner, like she tends to the household for her dad, but her dad is still this domineering figure. It's not like they're having close conversations about things, you know? So we don't have, I don't know if we have many examples at all of secure attachment. 

[00:51:14] Kaykay: That's a great question.

[00:51:16] Brooke: Mimi and Claudia? And Mimi died. 

[00:51:20] Kaykay: Mimi and Claudia. Mimi and Claudia is a great example, because the keystone of the secure attachment, you can observe it in little, little kids, like two years old, one years old. And I hate to break it to the whole world, but what happens to you then kind of like sets the stage unless you work on it for the rest of your life.

But so like a securely attached baby, they call it the safe base. The parent is the safe base and then the baby gets to go out and explore. And then when the baby gets frightened, they choose to come back to the caregiver and the caregiver comforts them and then the baby can go out and explore again.

I'm like, that is exactly what Mimi did. Like Mimi would hold Claudia when she needed, but she wasn't like overbearing. Was just available and very loving and supportive. So yeah, I think that's a great example of a secure attachment. 

[00:52:09] Brooke: Yeah. What you've just said makes it all the more important that even if Emily Michelle does dump cookies on the floor....

[00:52:17] Kaykay: Oh my God. 

[00:52:18] Brooke: If a two year old who grew up in an orphanage and just moved to a new country with a new family dumps cookies on the floor, don't punish her. 

[00:52:29] Kaykay: Yeah. That's the crazy thing. Like attachment is so important in the first year, the first six months, even. And so like a lot of times, if you have kids that grew up in orphanages, they struggle so deeply with attachment for the rest of their lives. And they can't even remember what happened to them. The science now says that your brain changes. 

So like, if you don't get the care that you need as a little baby, your brain will change and you will start to develop skills of independence that a child that is like more carefully attended to will not. It's a fucking trip. Like attachment studies will blow your mind. 

[00:53:08] Brooke: Shit, Mary Anne would have lost her mother in that window. 

[00:53:12] Kaykay: Yes, exactly. Exactly what I'm thinking. 

[00:53:14] Brooke: Something to watch for in future books, I think. 

[00:53:18] Kaykay: I can't wait. 

[00:53:19] Brooke: Yeah. What did you have for most nineties moments? 

[00:53:23] Kaykay: Oh, shit. I put eighties on the thing, but it's nineties. I put Laura Ashley. That feels very nineties to me. Maybe that was just because I was with the preppies, I don't know. But like everybody was wearing Laura Ashley. 

[00:53:35] Brooke: Yeah, I didn't know what it was. I remember being like, I wonder what Laura Ashley's like. I thought it must be something very exotic because I read about it.

[00:53:41] Kaykay: It was just like ugly flower dresses. 

[00:53:43] Brooke: I could get that from JC Penney's under a different name. So you were picking up on the fashion. The hair in here. So Stacey has a body wave. A body wave, that's very nineties. Carolyn has a quote, "very stylish" curly mullet. 

[00:54:02] Kaykay: Fuckin' rock on! 

[00:54:05] Brooke: It was cut very short, but with longer curls down her neck. 

[00:54:09] Kaykay: Party in the back, Carolyn!.

[00:54:11] Brooke: Yeah! And then Claudia, it says that she's going to come over and give Mary Anne something spectacular of a hairstyle for the wedding, and it's with French braids. So that is also very nineties. And then food-wise, Mary Anne describes what a sun dried tomato is. 

[00:54:32] Kaykay: Oh, so exotic! 

[00:54:34] Brooke: She's making a salad and her dad loves "these little salty things called sun dried tomatoes." And like sun dried tomatoes, plus like tiramisu were like the height of exotic nineties food. And they go shopping at Talbot's too. Talbot's still exists, but I'm just trying to picture like taking a 13 year old shopping at Talbot's, and it's very funny to me.

[00:54:56] Kaykay: I'm sure it still happens, but probably still is painful. 

[00:55:00] Brooke: Right, taking your 13 year old to Talbots has never been something that a 13 year old has enjoyed, whether in the nineties or today.

[00:55:07] Kaykay: My god, at least bring 'em to Chico's! Give 'em a break. 

[00:55:10] Brooke: Chicos. So we get to pick up on all of this sort of tension and the sort of looming battles that we see from this book in this episode in our next episode, which is focused on book number 31. And the title alone tells you what this is going to be like, because it's-

[00:55:33] Kaykay: Baby-sitters Fight Club? 

[00:55:34] Brooke: Yeah. Yeah, it's literally called just Baby-sitters Fight Club. We take the name of this podcast from the literal title of book 31. Close, in theme, Dawn's Wicked Step-sister, in the next book. And that wicked step-sister, then- 

[00:55:49] Kaykay: It's a bit on the nose. 

[00:55:50] Brooke: Yeah, would be Mary Anne. As the cover of this book says, "It's Mary Anne and Dawn's dream come true!" It looks like in our next book, they're going to indicate that that dream perhaps has some nightmare qualities. It should be fun to see how the tensions, in terms of making healthy attachments and unhealthy attachments, play out in the next book. 

[00:56:13] Kaykay: Oh, I'm so curious, especially because we've identified that they're the two primary insecure attachment styles, which often find each other. 

[00:56:21] Brooke: Yeah, those two find each other in the same room in the next book, so that's going to be fun. Again, spontaneous combustion, fears of spontaneous combustion, another very nineties thing. 

[00:56:34] Kaykay: Valid, in this case. 

[00:56:35] Brooke: I wonder if they'll work in quicksand in a way. We got Bermuda triangle in this book, they mentioned the Bermuda triangle. So you can pick up on more 1990s fears in our next episode, and that should be fun. Looking forward to that. 

[00:56:49] Kaykay: Me too!

[00:56:50] Brooke: But until then... 

[00:56:52] Kaykay: Just keep sittin'! [THEME] I'm the Forrest Gump of the eighties!