Sourced Transcript for BSFC #12: Claudia and the New Girl
Brooke Suchomel: 0:19
Welcome to the Baby-sitters Fight Club, where the first rule is, "You don't talk about Fight Club." Instead, you talk about the Baby-sitters Club series of books by Anne M. Martin. I'm Brooke Suchomel.
Kaykay Brady: 0:30
And I'm Kaykay Brady.
Brooke Suchomel: 0:31
And this week, we're traveling back to April 1988, when the number one songs of the month were Billy Ocean's "Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car."
Kaykay Brady: 0:42
All I hear is a saxophone in my head.
Brooke Suchomel: 0:45
We need a Billy Ocean resurgence. He needs a comeback.
Kaykay Brady: 0:52
Is that Frank Ocean's dad? No.
Brooke Suchomel: 0:54
Let's start that rumor.
Kaykay Brady: 0:57
You heard it here first.
Brooke Suchomel: 0:58
Regardless, they need to come out with a joint album, and they can just go as The Oceans. I'm into that.
Kaykay Brady: 1:05
Oceans Two.
Brooke Suchomel: 1:09
So Billy Ocean's "Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car" and Whitney Houston's "Where Do Broken Hearts Go?" were the number one songs of the month.
Kaykay Brady: 1:18
That whole album was just so off the chain.
Brooke Suchomel: 1:21
It's a great album. There's a lot of those, like Whitney Houston's album Whitney and then Janet Jackson's Control, in all of the playlists that I've been putting together, I feel like I'm putting entire albums over the course of each month on this playlist. Because some of these have six singles. They're all so good. So yeah, that's what was on the charts. And then at the box office, Beetlejuice dominated. It was number one throughout the whole month. Everything else released that month was crap, and we were cursed with the first Steven Seagal movie, Above the Law.
Kaykay Brady: 2:02
You know, I've never seen a single one of those.
Brooke Suchomel: 2:05
I've only been forced to witness them as background noise.
Kaykay Brady: 2:10
On planes or something?
Brooke Suchomel: 2:12
Or my husband or some male family member is watching it.
Kaykay Brady: 2:18
Because you're roaming in straight male circles more than I am.
Brooke Suchomel: 2:21
Yes, exactly.
Kaykay Brady: 2:23
You know how when you're a gay person that's never slept with the opposite sex, you're a Gold Star? We need something like that for Steven Seagal movies.
Brooke Suchomel: 2:31
Ooh, yeah. What would that be? Would that be like a...
Kaykay Brady: 2:34
Pink Fist?
Brooke Suchomel: 2:36
I'm thinking, like, a Silver Knuckle? Not brass knuckles, but a Silver Knuckle. Something like that.
Kaykay Brady: 2:41
Perfect.
Brooke Suchomel: 2:42
So would that be a Silver Knuckle lesbian?
Kaykay Brady: 2:45
Yeah. I'm a Silver Knuckle lesbian.
Brooke Suchomel: 2:48
A lesbian who's never seen a Steven Seagal movie. We'll make it a thing.
Kaykay Brady: 2:53
This is like the gay man's hanky code, you know?
Brooke Suchomel: 2:57
Right, but it's just weapons for different straight male things.
Kaykay Brady: 3:03
Yeah, it's just terrible straight male movies you haven't seen and there's a different color handkerchief for each one.
Brooke Suchomel: 3:10
Right, you've never seen a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie...
Kaykay Brady: 3:14
I have not, actually.
Brooke Suchomel: 3:15
And so you would get a certain belt. Would it be, like, a rainbow belt? A Rainbow Belt has never seen a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. Rainbow Belt and Silver Knuckles. I'm into it. On television, the first Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards was held, and it was hosted by Debbie Gibson and Tony Danza.
Kaykay Brady: 3:35
Wow.
Brooke Suchomel: 3:37
What a pairing!
Kaykay Brady: 3:38
What a pairing. I would really love to see that.
Brooke Suchomel: 3:41
Find some footage of that? So the Favorite Movie for the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, the very first one, was Beverly Hills Cop II. The award for Favorite Song went to "La Bamba." And what do you think the Favorite TV Show was? The very first Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award for best TV show.
Kaykay Brady: 4:03
This is '88?
Brooke Suchomel: 4:05
'88.
Kaykay Brady: 4:07
I don't know, Different Strokes?
Brooke Suchomel: 4:09
ALF.
Kaykay Brady: 4:10
Yeah! See? Kids have taste!
Brooke Suchomel: 4:20
I just love how you just- like, the sign of victory.
Kaykay Brady: 4:24
I did, I raised my arms in triumph.
Brooke Suchomel: 4:25
Your fists pumped the air, just like you frickin' crossed the finish line first. Like you just won a gold medal.
Kaykay Brady: 4:33
Baby Kaykay was obsessed with ALF.
Brooke Suchomel: 4:36
Oh, who wasn't?
Kaykay Brady: 4:37
Yeah, I mean, no friend of mine.
Brooke Suchomel: 4:40
Did you have any of the ALF puppets from Burger King?
Kaykay Brady: 4:43
I did. Well, I actually had more of a full sized ALF. I don't know if it was a stuffed animal or a puppet, but it was about two feet tall.
Brooke Suchomel: 4:53
Oh, wow.
Kaykay Brady: 4:54
And plush.
Brooke Suchomel: 4:55
That's like a full size ALF!
Kaykay Brady: 4:56
True.
Brooke Suchomel: 4:57
I was so into ALF. I think that was probably the only time in my childhood we ever went to Burger King was when they had the hand puppets of ALF that you could get if you bought a kid's meal. The one that I had was wearing a blue Hawaiian shirt.
Kaykay Brady: 5:15
Yeah, I mean, that was one of his main outfits. When you say "ALF," you kind of say "elf."
Brooke Suchomel: 5:22
So that would be the Midwestern accent.
Kaykay Brady: 5:25
Is it?
Brooke Suchomel: 5:26
Yeah.
Kaykay Brady: 5:27
I never hear it, but just with "ALF," I hear it.
Brooke Suchomel: 5:30
Just when I say "ALF"?
Kaykay Brady: 5:31
Yeah! It's 100% "elf."
Brooke Suchomel: 5:35
That's my Midwestern accent coming through, it's only in the pronunciation of the word "ALF."
Kaykay Brady: 5:41
Here's mine. "Fuckin' ALF!" There's mine.
Brooke Suchomel: 5:45
That's your Bronx accent?
Kaykay Brady: 5:46
Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel: 5:47
Fuckin' ALF.
Kaykay Brady: 5:48
Fuckin' ALF!
Brooke Suchomel: 5:49
That's delightful. And then also, I found this to be very interesting and odd and I love it. In April '88, Celine Dion won Eurovision.
Kaykay Brady: 6:01
Oh!
Brooke Suchomel: 6:02
For Switzerland.
Kaykay Brady: 6:04
Wow!
Brooke Suchomel: 6:05
The Canadian Celine Dion won Eurovision for Switzerland. She was like a ringer.
Kaykay Brady: 6:10
You can just tap someone that's not from your country?
Brooke Suchomel: 6:13
I guess!
Kaykay Brady: 6:14
This is horseshit!
Brooke Suchomel: 6:15
And if that's what you can do, I want to win Eurovision.
Kaykay Brady: 6:19
For?
Brooke Suchomel: 6:20
I don't care! I don't care, anybody! So that's what was going on in April of 1988. And the 12th Baby-sitters Club book, Claudia and the New Girl, was released. So, time for some back cover copy. And I quote, "Claudia has always been the most outrageous kid in her class...until Ashley Wyeth comes along. Ashley is really different. She wears hippie clothes, has six holes in her ears, and is the most fantastic artist Claudia has ever met. Ashley says Claudia has artistic talent, too. She thinks Claudia should spend more time on her 'calling' and forget about the Baby-sitters Club. It's just a waste of time. The Baby-sitters are sick of Ashley Wyeth., and they think Claudia is a traitor. Claudia's got to decide, either the Baby-sitters Club or the new girl…one of them's got to go!" End quote. So I had a lot of questions for you Kaykay, but I think I'm just gonna go with the one that is just first and foremost in my mind. Is this the gayest Baby-sitters Club book?
Kaykay Brady: 7:29
Yeah. Well, it's so funny you say that, because this book hurt. This book hit me where it hurt.
Brooke Suchomel: 7:39
Okay, so let's talk about that.
Kaykay Brady: 7:41
Because, okay, this is definitely a thing for young lesbians. And it certainly was a thing for me, which is, when you have your first girlfriend, you completely ditch your friends. It was a time where you were so desperate to be loved. And when you finally discovered that you could be loved, you just ditched everything and jumped in with both feet. So it was hard to read this because, oh, have I done this so many times. And do I have so much sadness and regret in my heart for how I treated my friends.
Brooke Suchomel: 8:19
So you identified with Claudia?
Kaykay Brady: 8:21
Yes.
Brooke Suchomel: 8:22
In this.
Kaykay Brady: 8:23
100%. Is that why you're asking? I mean, am I kind of hitting the plot that felt gay to you?
Brooke Suchomel: 8:29
I mean, as I was reading this, I was kind of back and forth, where I was like, the text is Claudia being torn between her identity as an artist and her identity as a friend. And a babysitter, you know, her quote unquote "job," as the case may be. Her responsibilities and like, her passion. But for me, the subtext was very clear. The subtext, it wasn't very subtle.
Kaykay Brady: 9:02
It's so helpful for me to hear that because I just assumed, you know, it was hitting me where it hurt, and so of course I read it as subtext. But it's really helpful to hear that you read it as subtext, too.
Brooke Suchomel: 9:14
Right, but it's to the point where I'm just like, is it even really subtext? Back in '88, this would have been subtext.
Kaykay Brady: 9:23
Deep, deep subtext. For sure.
Brooke Suchomel: 9:25
But today, it feels pretty obvious to me that it is really trying to explore two different identity crises.
Kaykay Brady: 9:37
Yes.
Brooke Suchomel: 9:38
It's certainly trying to grapple with Claudia as wanting to live up to her best possible self as an artist, like, "Do I go all in?" You know, "Do I allow this part of me to become all consuming?" But it also seems like that's a metaphor. Like, Ashley was also a metaphor to me for art, but then also it seems like Claudia's level of instant, all consuming infatuation with Ashley...
Kaykay Brady: 10:15
And sort of mutual, you know, mutual infatuation.
Brooke Suchomel: 10:18
Yeah, absolutely. But you know, looking at it from the narrator's perspective, how Ashley kind of takes over her life and also her thoughts?
Kaykay Brady: 10:30
Yes.
Brooke Suchomel: 10:30
To me it was like, well, yes, this is about being an artist, but it also felt very much like it was exploring sort of grappling with a queer identity as well.
Kaykay Brady: 10:43
Yeah, definitely. As you're talking about it, something is occurring to me, which is, in 1988, you really had two choices. You could go all in into the queer world, or you could stay in the straight world. There wasn't, like today, where you can be a gay person, you can still be accepted by your family. In rare circumstances, people that were very lucky, but in the vast majority of cases, if you were a gay person, it was like you had to enter into this complete and total identity and sort of step out of the straight world. Because you know, you weren't going to be allowed to stay in the straight world.
Brooke Suchomel: 11:20
And abandon your life.
Kaykay Brady: 11:22
Yes, abandon everything! No kids, no straight friends. As you're talking, I'm thinking, "Wow." What a strong metaphor.
Brooke Suchomel: 11:31
It felt so obvious to me, in a way that made me question, is this just me reading my 2021 view on things? Where, you know, coming out of queer theory, feminist theory, like all of that being established and a thing, and so now looking at it through this lens, or was it intentional? Or not even intentional, but like, I just wonder, since it is being written by a queer author, that sort of pulling at the identity seemed so clear. A lot of the language that was used to- again, I feel like all of the language choices, like the word that you pick to describe something, it's always very deliberate. And when they have the conversation about sculpting love- do you remember that?
Kaykay Brady: 12:30
Yes.
Brooke Suchomel: 12:31
Claudia asks, "Ashley, how would you sculpt love?" And Ashley responds, "With gentle curves and tender feelings."
Kaykay Brady: 12:43
Hmm.
Brooke Suchomel: 12:43
That's a really heavy conversation for 13 year old girl.
Kaykay Brady: 12:46
Very heavy.
Brooke Suchomel: 12:47
To have. And "gentle curves and tender feelings" is very overtly feminized language, and sort of a feminized description. Again, I can't divorce those language choices from the creator.
Kaykay Brady: 13:07
There is sort of a plot where it would make a lot of sense if, let's say, Claudia was not sure if she was queer or not, and maybe wasn't even conscious of these feelings. But if you read it as, Ashley was conscious of those feelings, and Ashley was kind of in love with Claudia, all of a sudden Ashley's behavior makes perfect sense.
Brooke Suchomel: 13:30
Oh, yeah.
Kaykay Brady: 13:30
Whereas Claudia is much more open to bringing Ashley into the friend group and merging those two worlds, Ashley just wants Claudia to herself, and really has a bad reaction when Claudia starts putting in boundaries, and deciding that she's not going to choose Ashley's world completely. Ashley has a very intense, jealous reaction.
Brooke Suchomel: 13:57
Oh, yeah. I mean, when they have the first conversation with the friends at the lunch table, when Claudia is like, "Come sit with my friends," and Ashley's like, "No, no, no, we have to go off on our own and talk art." You know?
Kaykay Brady: 14:14
Oh, is that what the kids are calling it?
Brooke Suchomel: 14:16
Uh huh!
Kaykay Brady: 14:16
"Let's talk about gentle curves and tender feelings."
Brooke Suchomel: 14:20
Right. So when Claudia takes Ashley over there to tell her friends that they can't sit together at lunch because they need to discuss this project, "Ashley slipped her arm possessively through mine."
Kaykay Brady: 14:32
Yes, "possessively."
Brooke Suchomel: 14:34
Yeah. So that's set up from the beginning. And I have to say, toward the end, I started to go, "Is this like a Mulholland Drive situation?" I kind of have a theory that most of this book didn't actually happen.
Kaykay Brady: 14:52
Whoa!
Brooke Suchomel: 14:56
Because, okay, so in the same way that the book starts off with Claudia off in her own little daydream, just focusing on everything other than what is actually happening in front of her, and how it's grounded in the problems that that causes. Where she's not always tethered to reality, sometimes she's just focusing on whether or not flies have family reunions. Right? That's the first page of this book. And then toward the end where things just started to go off the rails. Where you have these frantic scenes of the Baby-sitters Club in Claudia's room, without Claudia.
Kaykay Brady: 15:46
Writing nasty notes.
Brooke Suchomel: 15:47
Yeah, and they're like, ransacking it, eating all of her food. And then they're leaving her nasty notes, and it gets to be this sort of frenzy in the way that it's described. Kristy decides to hide a blank piece of paper under her rag doll to drive Claudia crazy, make her feel like there's a message that's written there that she can't see or something. It felt so over the top and detached from reality. And the fact that Ashley, we don't see her interact with like, anyone else.
Kaykay Brady: 16:25
We've got a Sixth Sense situation here.
Brooke Suchomel: 16:27
Exactly. So that's why I was like, "Is this Sixth Sense?" What's going on? Is Ashley a figment of Claudia's imagination?
Kaykay Brady: 16:35
This is a very special book on paranoid delusion, is what you're saying.
Brooke Suchomel: 16:39
Right. But then, the way that it ends with Ashley sitting at the table with them, I kind of had this theory of, was this just a dissociation? So everything that you saw from the first time that she brings Ashley to the table to when Ashley sits at the table, my theory is that nothing in between that actually happens. It's all Claudia just working out in her mind what level of devotion she's going to give to her art versus her other responsibilities.
Kaykay Brady: 17:15
I love this read.
Brooke Suchomel: 17:16
Because it seems unreal. The rest of it seems unreal, it's like a fever dream.
Kaykay Brady: 17:21
It's a real departure from reality in a lot of ways, and also the sculpture contest, which also doesn't seem very real or attached to reality in some ways. You're blowing my mind.
Brooke Suchomel: 17:34
And her friends making up chants about how she's a traitor and they hate her.
Kaykay Brady: 17:40
I know! It was so intense, and the notes all over the room.
Brooke Suchomel: 17:44
Yeah!
Kaykay Brady: 17:44
It's way overkill.
Brooke Suchomel: 17:45
It just didn't feel real, which made me think that we were actually seeing more inside of Claudia's mind, because this is such a heavy metaphor in so many ways. And Ashley seems, like, the reason why Claudia is so struck by her is it seems like Ashley is the first person Claudia meets who she aspires to be.
Kaykay Brady: 18:10
Good point.
Brooke Suchomel: 18:11
She's the first person Claudia meets that Claudia is impressed by in this small provincial town.
Kaykay Brady: 18:19
Other than Stacey.
Brooke Suchomel: 18:21
Yeah, I mean, even with Stacey, she'll say, "Stacey's cool, but she's not as outrageous as me," right?
Kaykay Brady: 18:29
Oh, true. She's always saying that and now, all of a sudden, Ashley is more outrageous in her weird hippie sculptress outfits and her six earrings.
Brooke Suchomel: 18:42
Claudia actually says on page 78 that Ashley, quote, "looked a little bizarre." Claudia says someone looks bizarre! This is the same girl who in the last episode was going around with shirts that say "Bebop" all over it and stuff, you know? So she's always trying to show that she is like, so much cooler, and trying to push the envelope as far as possible. And what's funny is that what's described as Ashley's clothing doesn't seem nearly as weird to me.
Kaykay Brady: 19:17
I totally agree. It's just some run of the mill hippie shit!
Brooke Suchomel: 19:21
Right, it's just shit that she got at a thrift store.
Kaykay Brady: 19:25
Yeah, what were the descriptions? Long dresses and beaded sweaters...
Brooke Suchomel: 19:30
And hiking boots. She's always wearing the hiking boots. Which...symbolism. Never takes off the hiking boots. So...
Kaykay Brady: 19:41
Thinly veiled symbolism. I mean, she's gonna have a lanyard next.
Brooke Suchomel: 19:45
Right. But it just seemed to me like Claudia was just trying to work out how far she's willing to push herself and that Ashley is just sort of a conduit for her working things out. And I think to your point, when you said that it really was hard for you to read, what parts were the most painful for you? Not to dredge stuff up, but like, what struck you?
Kaykay Brady: 20:11
Hey, I'm a therapist, I can hang. It'd be really funny if I was a therapist who's like, "I don't want to talk about hard things." I could be like Willam, Willam the drag queen, who's like, "Feelings are for ugly people." I don't agree with that.
Brooke Suchomel: 20:25
Please tell me you don't have that hanging up in your office.
Kaykay Brady: 20:31
Damn! Damn, that would be funny if I put that in my office. Holy shit. Sorry, it's taking me a minute to recover from that. It's making me so pleased to think about having that in my office. Anyway, I believe feelings are for everyone, and I'm open to exploring mine. The hardest part was just, you know, the pain that she caused her friends, and thinking about the pain that I had caused my friends. I think this book does such a lovely job at, by the end, giving you empathy for Claudia, because she says at one point, "I never get told that I'm smart or good at anything. And so to have someone so talented come into town and give me all of this attention, and give me all of this validation for something that I care about," you know, she's very vulnerable to it. And I can just remember myself in similar times being so vulnerable to someone's attention and love, because as a queer person, you're just so starved of it. At least when I grew up. Because you were not dating same sex partners. There was no Logan for a lesbian when you're 12 or 13. You have to go to college, at least, until you start dating people. And at that point, you're just like, so hungry. And you don't even know that you're hungry, because you don't even know what you're missing, back then, because you didn't even know being gay was really an option. It's just, you know, this is something you don't get. You don't get romantic partners, you don't get kids, you don't get treated as a whole person or grown person. And all of a sudden, all of that kind of changes for you, and you just run to it. So I thought that the art was such a beautiful metaphor for what I felt as a young, queer person, where that part of you isn't allowed and isn't seen. So, it hurt.
Brooke Suchomel: 22:36
Yeah.
Kaykay Brady: 22:37
And then most of my friends- it's funny that you say that it's sort of a surreal response of, I mean, it's kind of somebody's worst nightmare, right? You can imagine having a nightmare about that, that your friends are in your room.
Brooke Suchomel: 22:49
They're in your room.
Kaykay Brady: 22:50
You're not there. They're eating all of your prized things, you know, the things that you love most.
Brooke Suchomel: 22:56
In your stash box. They're going into your stash box for your marshmallows.
Kaykay Brady: 23:01
Sure. I mean, college for me, it would have been pills, but hey. So they're in your dorm room, they're taking all your pills.
Brooke Suchomel: 23:06
Pills, marshmallows, same diff. Yeah.
Kaykay Brady: 23:08
For Claudia, it will be pills soon. I mean, I see that for her. But anyway, they're just all hating you together. And they're writing nasty notes all over. Like, they're so angry at you, they hate you so much, that they want to hurt you.
Brooke Suchomel: 23:24
And they want to make you feel like you're crazy. I mean, that was the part where I was like, okay, this is over the top, putting a blank sheet of paper under your ragdoll named Lenny.
Kaykay Brady: 23:36
That's some Karen level shit. That's savage.
Brooke Suchomel: 23:38
So that you think that there is a message on there that you are unable to read. First of all, I think if somebody was going to come up with that sort of a plan, it would have been Mary Anne.
Kaykay Brady: 23:49
Right, the secret savage.
Brooke Suchomel: 23:49
Mary Anne is the one who's got that dark, deep down, "Here's what you do." I don't know if Kristy would be the one to come up with that. But I just felt like everybody was in a frenzy hating Claudia, which is your worst nightmare.
Kaykay Brady: 24:08
It is a nightmare.
Brooke Suchomel: 24:09
I mean, that is a 13 year old girl's worst nightmare, literally.
Kaykay Brady: 24:12
And I would have expected a different reaction. More of the reaction I got from my friends, which was they kind of just keep it inside and are deeply wounded, and maybe you hear about it five years later.
Brooke Suchomel: 24:26
Mm hmm.
Kaykay Brady: 24:27
Not "I'm gonna go to war with you."
Brooke Suchomel: 24:30
Right. How much of it has to do with the fact that in this book, the- again, not the subtext, but the text is, "Claudia is choosing art and her relationship with this fellow artist." It's just an art based friendship. That's at least the text of what is happening, and so that's what the girls are responding to. Versus if this was, "Claudia is falling in love with this girl," to your point, you couldn't say it. That wasn't a conversation that you could have, you would have to have a fight about something else. Because the thing that the tension is actually about is something that can't be spoken.
Kaykay Brady: 25:21
Correct. And your friends wouldn't understand it. I mean, that's the best case scenario is that they don't understand it.
Brooke Suchomel: 25:27
Right. And in this book, it's, "Well, my friends don't understand art. I can't have a conversation with my friends about art." Because let's be honest, she could have a conversation with Kristy about girls.
Kaykay Brady: 25:39
Come on, just sit down with Kristy and work this out.
Brooke Suchomel: 25:44
Right. But again, it's '88, so you can't have that conversation.
Kaykay Brady: 25:49
That is an interesting point. Because what if it was Kristy that was obsessed with some new girl?
Brooke Suchomel: 25:55
So that's the thing, it can't be Kristy in this world.
Kaykay Brady: 25:58
It can't be Kristy.
Brooke Suchomel: 25:59
Because if it's Kristy, that's pushing it too far.
Kaykay Brady: 26:04
Ah. Well, that's why I kind of think, you know, Claudia is probably somewhere on the spectrum. Not totally queer, and not totally straight.
Brooke Suchomel: 26:14
Oh, yeah.
Kaykay Brady: 26:15
And I could read this more as Ashley is much closer to the queer part of the spectrum, and is sweating Claudia really hard and doesn't even know how to talk about it. Reading it that way, everything falls into place for me.
Brooke Suchomel: 26:30
I agree.
Kaykay Brady: 26:30
You know what I was thinking? I was thinking Ashley is the kind of person that would have one of those Earth/Art bumper stickers.
Brooke Suchomel: 26:41
She's kind of like Dawn without the emotional intelligence.
Kaykay Brady: 26:47
Art is the healthy eating. Just ease up on this girl, please.
Brooke Suchomel: 26:52
But she does the same thing. So to your point, you know, you mentioned a couple of episodes ago how Dawn's healthy eating and sort of fixation on food and what she puts into her body, pointing out how what everybody around her puts into their body is poison, how that is a means of her being separated, continuing to assert her individuality.
Kaykay Brady: 27:18
Individuation. Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel: 27:20
Claudia brings that up, too. So Claudia actually puts all of the Baby-sitters Club on a spectrum in this book, where she puts them on the spectrum of how into boys they are and what they wear. And she says Dawn's right in the middle. She's an individual, she just does her own thing and doesn't care. So when Claudia gets lunch with Ashley, she points out that Ashley also goes for the quote unquote "health food" and gets yogurt and an apple, and says how that reminded her a lot of Dawn with her fruit and granola and vegetables. I just have to say, Ann M. Martin, there's more to health food than yogurt and granola and produce.
Kaykay Brady: 28:07
I was gonna say, I'm sure it was a low fat yogurt. So basically, you're eating sugar. You're eating sugar for lunch.
Brooke Suchomel: 28:13
Like, yogurt and an apple does not constitute a lunch. That is a midday snack, my friend.
Kaykay Brady: 28:20
I mean, it is so interesting to me the way healthism and wellness is sneaking into culture, and you could see it sneaking into this book. You can see sort of the baby beginnings of it, right? Where most people still were in this space, for hundreds of years as a culture, we're in a space of like, food is good and eat what your body asks for and stop when you're full. And then, you know, the 80s were the time, well, the 70s too, where food became "good" and "bad." And you put it into these particular buckets and you were a righteous person if you ate healthy and you were, you know, not woke and lazy if you ate badly. So you can sort of see the little baby sprout legs of this, which is so interesting to me.
Brooke Suchomel: 29:06
Right. So Ashley and Dawn are connected in that way. Ashley is also an outsider. She comes from Chicago, and you know, there's no previous reference made to Chicago. Unlike Dawn comes from California, where it already had been established that Kristy's dad ran off to when he went away.
Kaykay Brady: 29:28
Yeah, Chicago's totally new.
Brooke Suchomel: 29:30
Right. So you had the coasts represented, and now you've got somebody being transplanted from the middle of the country. And, you know, it's mentioned that she's got really long hair, but not as long as Dawn's, and she's got blonde hair, but not as blonde as Dawn. So there is this connection that comes throughout for Ashley, which again brings me back to like, is this a metaphor? Is Ashley real? I don't know that Ashley is real. I kind of feel like this might all be one big hallucination on Claudia's part.
Kaykay Brady: 30:03
I love it.
Brooke Suchomel: 30:04
Ashley will say things about how like, she's "an artist and her craft is calling." It just felt like those aren't words that people would say.
Kaykay Brady: 30:16
Oh, but Brooke, "Who needs friends when you have art?"
Brooke Suchomel: 30:19
Yes, I've got that too.
Kaykay Brady: 30:24
I mean, if that isn't a truism, I don't know what is.
Brooke Suchomel: 30:27
Oh, man.
Kaykay Brady: 30:28
We know that artists are the happiest people in the world.
Brooke Suchomel: 30:31
Particularly when they push every everything else in their life away. They're just wandering the streets looking for inanimate objects to animate via clay.
Kaykay Brady: 30:43
They're eating, you know, apples for lunch.
Brooke Suchomel: 30:46
Apples and yogurt, to balance the gut biome. That's everything that you need. But it's interesting that when she says, "How would you sculpt love? With gentle curves and tender feelings," and then she sculpts a fire hydrant.
Kaykay Brady: 30:59
Wait, who said the quote with the tender feelings? That was Ashley?
Brooke Suchomel: 31:03
Ashley.
Kaykay Brady: 31:04
Oh, I thought that was Claudia.
Brooke Suchomel: 31:05
No.
Kaykay Brady: 31:06
Ohhhhh. Yeah.
Brooke Suchomel: 31:08
So Ashley is the one who is pushing Claudia to go beyond her standard. It is really funny, the definition of art in this book, where it is just like everyone's mind is blown by the concept of not sculpting an eagle. Even the art teacher is like, "You want to sculpt something that isn't alive?! That's never been done before!" You know what I mean? This isn't that novel of an approach, people. Ashley is trying to encourage Claudia to go beyond expectations. She's trying to really push her to go beyond this provincial town that she's in, you know, with their art teacher who thinks that like, you can only sculpt hands and eagles, and that's the only thing that constitutes art. It's pretty clear that Ashley is actually pushing Claudia to be a better artist.
Kaykay Brady: 32:10
Yes. And it's also clear by the end of the book that if Claudia had just gotten her shit together a little more, she would have won the sculpture contest.
Brooke Suchomel: 32:17
Right.
Kaykay Brady: 32:18
But it's sort of an ambiguous ending, in a sense, because I don't feel like the author gives us an opinion on that, whether or not it felt like the right decision for Claudia to choose not to put more time into the sculpture project and not win it.
Brooke Suchomel: 32:33
Well, what's funny is, throughout, Ashley is the one telling Claudia, "We can't get started yet." There's numerous times in the book where Claudia's like, "I think we should get started..."
Kaykay Brady: 32:44
Saboteur!
Brooke Suchomel: 32:46
Again, in her head, it's like Ashley is Claudia's attempt to push herself, and it's almost like Ashley is a representation of artist's block. If Ashley is a metaphor, it seems to me like that's what she's a metaphor for. It's that, "No, you can't get started yet, you have to keep on looking. Let's go and look at this town and see things in this town that you've never seen before." That constant focus on preparing to create, as opposed to the act of creating itself, and how that process of preparation can be really inspirational and consuming, but also can end up tying your hands because you just can't make up your mind and you just never get started.
Kaykay Brady: 33:33
Yeah, and can end up being a complete fucking waste of time. Because ultimately she sculpts Jackie, who's right there all the time.
Brooke Suchomel: 33:40
At the same time, I was like, why don't you just turn in your hand? Just turn in the hand sculpture!
Kaykay Brady: 33:44
The hand's fuckin' fine. They love hands! It's alive. It's an eagle or a hand, you got two choices.
Brooke Suchomel: 33:50
Right, these are the two things that are sculptable. Everybody knows the only two things that you can sculpt are eagles and hands, so just turn in your hand.
Kaykay Brady: 33:57
But yeah, I think you're totally right that there's definitely this metaphor being set up of, you know, you can go seeking in the outside world. And, you know, there's the sort of alienated lone wolf artist, and then there's the fulfilled person who's connected with people and who is using her art to express her love of someone that she feels close to in Jackie. So it seems clear to me that this is being pulled up as sort of a binary choice in some ways, and there's a lot of ambiguity. The author isn't so clear about what the right answer is, although I think Ashley is portrayed in a very not likable way in a lot of regards, which does kind of lead me to think we are being swayed towards the right answer is the full life.
Brooke Suchomel: 34:50
Yes. Even though it's clear that Ashley is the best artist, right? Ashley is a better artist than Claudia.
Kaykay Brady: 34:59
And she wins. She wins the contest, right?
Brooke Suchomel: 35:02
But this is the trade off.
Kaykay Brady: 35:04
Right. And you know, the author could have easily had Claudia win, and then it would have been a slam dunk, "Oh, you can go try to be a lone wolf obsessed artist, but really the way to be is connected with other people and having a full life."
Brooke Suchomel: 35:19
To me, it seems like that's the conclusion that Ann M. Martin is conveying. Like, obviously, Claudia is a much happier person with this balance. She says, "I'm not going to give up the things that I care about." Claudia is, in that very 80s feminist way, trying to have it all.
Kaykay Brady: 35:41
Totally. I'm so glad you went there, because I was gonna go there next. Okay, there's the queer read, right? And then there's also the feminist read, which is very interesting. The way that it's the babysitting that seems to be the break between Ashley and Claudia, where Ashley keeps saying, "This is stupid. Why are you babysitting kids? This is a waste of your time." You know, I thought a lot about that tension between working moms and deeply committed artists, and it felt like a feminist argument, too, or a feminist tension.
Brooke Suchomel: 36:16
Yeah, definitely. And I think that's what they are fighting. Claudia specifically is trying to find the balance between, at first I was like, between responsibility and passion. But then I'm like, it's not even just responsibility and passion. It's competing passions, because she does seem like she genuinely enjoys babysitting and her friends. I would say Claudia has always felt like the character who is more distant to the other characters, who's kind of been, like, the cooler one. She's always been a little bit too cool for everybody else, but she wants to have that connection, when she asserts herself with "I'm not gonna give that up," and this is very real, too. It's not just a matter of saying, "I'm going to prioritize what I love" versus "I'm going to prioritize what I have to do." There's a lot of things where it's just like, you don't have enough hours in the day to do all the things that you love, to do all of the things that you want to do. Even if you're like, "I'm just gonna do what makes me happy," nobody can do everything that makes them happy. You've got to pick and choose. And so it seems like that was the thing that she was fighting, that sort of responsibility. And then also the balance between, like, solitude and sociability. How much time is she going to spend just immersing herself in her art, and, frankly, Ashley as a metaphor for that art, as an extension of that art, versus all of the friends, and all of the babysitting jobs, and all of those things that she's leaving aside? I mean, we barely see anybody else in this book. We see one babysitting gig, besides Claudia. And that's Dawn with the portable makeover in a wagon, going to play Mom at the school where her brother is in trouble.
Kaykay Brady: 38:21
So inappropriate.
Brooke Suchomel: 38:22
Dawn as, like, both tied to Ashley and also like the photo negative of Ashley.
Kaykay Brady: 38:29
True. Good point. Good point,
Brooke Suchomel: 38:31
You know, Ashley, all immersed in passion. Dawn, all immersed in responsibility.
Kaykay Brady: 38:38
Yeah. I think responsibility is true, and also, I think there's something about maternal connection. So it's not just a kind of grinding responsibility, it's a sense of love that drives the responsibility and devotion. You know, I don't get the sense that these kids are doing it just purely out of responsibility. I get the sense that they're enjoying the maternal feelings that they're feeling for the babysitting charges. And that's why I had that that was what they were fighting too, but I had the poles as passion and love, especially maternal love.
Brooke Suchomel: 39:22
Mm hmm. Which, at that time, this whole mythology of feminism equals having it all. You've got your career, you've got your family, you've got your friends, you've got all of this, and then what gets left out is yourself.
Kaykay Brady: 39:42
Yeah, it's so funny because this is such an 80s trope, which has continued into a 2021 trope in Christmas movies, but it's like that "cold hearted bitch working woman, makes a million dollars, doesn't need a man," you know, this is Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl, straight fucking up. It's just art instead of business. It was a trope totally born in the 80s, and this trope annoys me because it's so reductive. It's so fucking reductive.
Brooke Suchomel: 40:15
Do you think it was reductive at the time? Or is it reductive now?
Kaykay Brady: 40:19
That's a great question. I also think it was reductive at the time, because, I mean, people were just more complex than that, you know? And I think it was a trope that got created for movies to make convenient villains. You know, it could have been just as interesting to make Sigourney Weaver's character in Working Girl empathetic. An empathetic character that was really struggling, versus, you know, a cartoon.
Brooke Suchomel: 40:48
Mm hmm.
Kaykay Brady: 40:49
I think it was just the laziness of 80s male writers writing females. The male version of, like, "This is a bitch," you know? This is a working woman, she's gotta be a bitch. She's got no heart in her chest. She's all pissed off, because she's not having kids. You know, this is a very male version of womanhood in a lot of respects.
Brooke Suchomel: 41:11
Right. And in a way, at the time, it was kind of couched as, that is a feminist thing.
Kaykay Brady: 41:18
Totally!
Brooke Suchomel: 41:19
To say it's feminist to be like, you should have kids, and you should be PTA president while also being Vice President at your firm, because, that's pretty much the highest aspiration that you could have at that time in business, you know?
Kaykay Brady: 41:38
Nothing like middle management, everybody knows. Well, and it's the pitting against each other, too, that happens.
Brooke Suchomel: 41:45
Right, and like, there's only one choice, and that one valid choice is attempting to quote unquote, "have it all," which is actually just eliminating the self, because you end up overextending yourself in every possible way, and never being truly fulfilled. Like, we don't know if Claudia is actually- maybe for her to have this well balanced life, to feel like she is fulfilled in all aspects of her life, maybe honorable mention artist is the best that she can do. And the thing that I'm not sure that we know is, like, is Claudia okay with that? We see in this book that she's okay with that. I think it undercuts it a little bit when the teacher comes in and is like, "Well, if you would have just devoted more time to this, you would have won," and it's like, "Okay, but Claudia, do you have the time to devote to this? Are you going to be okay?"
Kaykay Brady: 42:50
Yeah, is that a choice that you would make?
Brooke Suchomel: 42:52
Right. You could be this blue ribbon artist that is Ashley, and just have to let a lot of the rest of your life fall to the side. But if getting that blue ribbon is the thing that's most important to you, then maybe that's the trade off that you make. And I think the true feminist take is, like, "And that's okay."
Kaykay Brady: 43:14
Yeah. And she kind of tries to get there. The author kind of tries to get there at the end.
Brooke Suchomel: 43:19
Yeah. Like, not everybody has to have a million friends and to have other jobs. Some people are just going to be a one track mind and a one track life, but if that's what they truly want...
Kaykay Brady: 43:33
Mazel Tov!
Brooke Suchomel: 43:34
Yeah. Who are we to say that there's anything wrong with that?
Kaykay Brady: 43:38
Well, in the end, you get in Claudia's mind, and Claudia is saying something along the lines of, "Well, Ashley wants to choose this, and that's okay. And that's not what I want, and that's okay." So, in Claudia's mind, you hear the author definitely trying to get there. But I just wish Ashley had been portrayed in a little bit less of a shitty light. Because it kind of undermines that pat "you're okay and I'm okay" at the end. I mean, it just wasn't earned, because Ashley is insufferable.
Brooke Suchomel: 44:15
Right. Which is why I kept coming back to, "Is Ashley real?" She, like, stalks Claudia at her jobs to be like, "What are you doing here?" You know?
Kaykay Brady: 44:29
Brooke Suchomel: 44:30
To where it's like Ashley is just a voice in Claudia's head, more than a person, right? I feel like Ashley is just not real, like maybe Ashley's a real person, but maybe that real person didn't actually say, "I saw your bike. I'm coming here to ask you what you're doing. How dare you be at this house where this kid that you babysit exists?" It just was so over the top. But yeah, I think that the ending- like, the very end paragraph, which you mentioned, says how, "Ashley sometimes sat with us but often sat alone. Either way, it was okay. She and I had become sometimes friends. And that was okay, too." That's a little aside there, but that "sometimes friends," there's actually a really good powerful statement there in the fact that, like, you can have friends that are kind of like glorified acquaintances.
Kaykay Brady: 45:27
Yes.
Brooke Suchomel: 45:28
And that's okay. Those are people that make our lives richer, too. Not everybody has to be all consuming, or you've got everything in common with them. Like, you can have people that you get together with for very specific purposes for specific points in time in your life, and that's okay. You could do a straight up dissertation on this book.
Kaykay Brady: 45:48
Oh, I know, this was a rich book. I mean, Ann M. Martin really just hammers some amazingly deep themes and topics.
Brooke Suchomel: 45:58
She really does.
Kaykay Brady: 46:00
And again, I'm just not sure how much is conscious on her part, but it's just uncanny what blossoms when you start really looking into these books.
Brooke Suchomel: 46:12
Yeah. And I don't know if, especially back in that time, I don't know if you get this level of richness and deep empathy for all different aspects of a person's life experience if you aren't coming from a marginalized group. If you haven't had that experience of feeling isolated, feeling unloved, feeling unseen, feeling like you are somehow letting people in your life or yourself down, having the world feel like it's not made for you. I don't know, if you haven't had those life experiences, if you're able to tap into these things in a way that, like, we've been saying, you can have such a deep queer reading of this, such a deep feminist reading of this, like, the sort of Freudian reading of this. I mean, the metaphors are so thick, you can read at least two different meanings into almost every word on this page. And this book is a lot about the act of creation. You know, she even says, "You can tell a lot from a person's portfolio." She says it's like straight up psychological, so art as a psychological reflection of the artist. Same way with a book, right? The written word is a reflection of the writer and the editor, and everybody that's involved in it. Which, you know, makes me think that there was at least some sort of implicit awareness, from the editorial standpoint, about deeper readings of this book. Because, to me, it just seemed so thick. The queerness of it is so obvious to me now, but I feel like it wasn't super subtle in a lot of ways. That it had to have been recognized by the editors as well. And for them to be like, "This is great! We're gonna keep this here."
Kaykay Brady: 48:29
I really hope you're right. But my sense of it is probably not. I mean, just to think about the culture of the 80s, especially love between two women, there was certainly a real fear of gay male culture, and that was spoken about, but lesbians were just so invisible. It was so invisible that it wasn't even something to be afraid of, or something to be mocked. More that it didn't exist. There was just such blatant stuff that you could read as subtext that the vast majority of the population would never, so I would be stunned if the editor read that as subtext. Because it was just so, man, everything was so underground, it was unbelievable.
Brooke Suchomel: 49:18
Yeah. I know it was a woman editor who was, like, prolific.
Kaykay Brady: 49:25
I mean, I totally could be wrong. But it's just my 80s bitterness says, "No."
Brooke Suchomel: 49:33
I don't know, it's just my dream. They know what's happening, and they're like, "Fuck it, we're doing it." You know what I mean? The fact that it would be overlooked by 99% of the population made them even more excited to do it. I don't know, that's just my inner editorial dream. I'm putting myself in Sigourney Weaver's shoes, back in '88 as Ann M. Martin's editor, saying, "Fuck it, we're doing it." And just, like, being a badass bitch putting queer shit out for the kids.
Kaykay Brady: 50:06
That's it. I'm sweeping my 80s bitterness aside and I'm sharing your dream. The dream is now mine.
Brooke Suchomel: 50:14
Speaking of the 80s, what did you have for Most 80s Moments?
Kaykay Brady: 50:18
God, I didn't have anything other than the Working Girl dynamics, that sort of tension between, you know, "having it all" and motherhood. What did you have?
Brooke Suchomel: 50:29
Well, I had some little, like, obvious things. I mean, I just I loved that Mariah Perkins' toy bear that got a makeover and her hair permed was named "Mrs. Xerox." Mrs. Xerox was getting her hair permed. Like, "Mrs. Xerox is getting her hair permed," that in and of itself?
Kaykay Brady: 50:49
80s.
Brooke Suchomel: 50:50
It's like somebody had, you know, you get those poetry magnets? And somebody had 80s poetry magnets.
Kaykay Brady: 50:57
Brooke Suchomel: 50:58
"Mrs. Xerox is getting her hair permed."
Kaykay Brady: 50:59
"Sun-In." What else would be in the magnets? "ALF."
Brooke Suchomel: 51:06
Definitely ALF. So much ALF.
Kaykay Brady: 51:09
Oh my God, I want 80s magnets. I think that would be so fun.
Brooke Suchomel: 51:12
Hey, I'm seeing merch. I'm seeing a merch idea.
Kaykay Brady: 51:16
"Tubular."
Brooke Suchomel: 51:18
And, you know, the pizza burger for school lunch. But the thing that I was like, "Oh shit, I remember that," was when bell bottom jeans were like a slur. When they're like, "Oh, everybody was talking about Ashley today. She wore bell bottom jeans!" Just like, "Can you even imagine?" I remember bell bottoms in the 80s as being, like, a description of something that you can't even imagine was allowed to exist. Like, it was such an affront. It was considered the ultimate fashion faux pas, bell bottom jeans. When the 90s came around, I had like 12 pairs of bell bottoms.
Kaykay Brady: 52:04
Yeah, totally.
Brooke Suchomel: 52:04
Because you had that resurgence later on, when the 70s came back into fashion in the early 90s. And particularly in the mid 90s, when you had Dazed and Confused out.
Kaykay Brady: 52:19
All that nostalgia started coming out.
Brooke Suchomel: 52:21
The 70s, bell bottoms, platform shoes, all of that was a trend. I wore bell bottoms and platforms out.
Kaykay Brady: 52:30
Same.
Brooke Suchomel: 52:31
Just wore them out. That happened because it was like we were sending two middle fingers up to the generation before us that had told us, "Bell bottoms are disgusting. They're so ridiculous." And so you grew up thinking bell bottoms are so ridiculous.
Kaykay Brady: 52:45
Oh, and also the whole me me me 80s. You know, the way that the clothing reflected that and the way that bell bottoms were sort of a middle finger to that culture and going back to, you know, more of the hippie culture.
Brooke Suchomel: 52:58
Yeah, I mean, you had tight rolled, French rolled, everything in the 80s was like as tight as possible around the ankles. Remember when you could get tapered jeans? They were called "tapered," and so you would have these, like, they were almost like hammer pants, but in jean form.
Kaykay Brady: 53:17
Sounds so flattering.
Brooke Suchomel: 53:19
Yeah. So the way that bell bottoms were described, and that that is the thing that the outrageous Stacey can not conceive of, how anyone would ever wear bell bottoms.
Kaykay Brady: 53:35
That is a really good catch. I feel like you worked really hard for the 80s references and you came through.
Brooke Suchomel: 53:41
Oh, well, thank you.
Kaykay Brady: 53:43
I just phoned it in. I'm glad someone's on it.
Brooke Suchomel: 53:46
I also really enjoyed, I don't know that this was super 80s, but I do think that it deserves a shout out, Ashley's earrings.
Kaykay Brady: 53:52
The six earrings?
Brooke Suchomel: 53:53
The six earrings. And how on one ear she had a seashell, a real feather, and a dangly flamingo. Which I saw as a whole thing. Like, that in and of itself was like, an artistic installation called "Beach, Deconstructed" or something. You know, she's really trying to send a message there.
Kaykay Brady: 54:16
Well, and you could also see Cyndi Lauper wearing something like that.
Brooke Suchomel: 54:19
Yes.
Kaykay Brady: 54:20
So it is pretty 80s, now think about it.
Brooke Suchomel: 54:23
The earrings, I think that's what hooked Claudia in.
Kaykay Brady: 54:28
Definitely.
Brooke Suchomel: 54:29
Where she was just like, "She has six earrings!"
Kaykay Brady: 54:34
I remember thinking that was kind of fierce. My first girlfriend had six earrings.
Brooke Suchomel: 54:38
Did she also wear a flamingo and a seashell and a dangling real feather?
Kaykay Brady: 54:43
Probably. I think they were mostly hoops, but I thought it was pretty cool.
Brooke Suchomel: 54:47
Did she do it where it would get, like, progressively bigger, so you'd have the small and the bigger and then the bigger?
Kaykay Brady: 54:52
Exactly.
Brooke Suchomel: 54:53
Yeah. So bad ass.
Kaykay Brady: 54:54
And I have no earrings. I've never had my ears pierced.
Brooke Suchomel: 54:57
Never?
Kaykay Brady: 54:58
No, never.
Brooke Suchomel: 54:59
Have you ever rocked a clip on?
Kaykay Brady: 55:01
I've definitely rocked a clip on, for costumes and stuff. That's where it becomes real pain when you don't have pierced ears, and you know I love a costume. So that is when it's a real drag, but you can do a clip on.
Brooke Suchomel: 55:14
Little advice for our listeners there. Do a clip on! Having a rough day?
Kaykay Brady: 55:18
Do a clip on.
Brooke Suchomel: 55:20
Do a clip on. So that was Claudia's newest relationship, in this book. And then in our next book, we see a dissolution of a relationship, or a transformation of a relationship, with Good-bye Stacey, Good-bye.
Kaykay Brady: 55:39
What?
Brooke Suchomel: 55:40
Book 13. Mm hmm.
Kaykay Brady: 55:43
Does she die of diabetes? Is that what happens?
Brooke Suchomel: 55:48
Yes. In the next book, Stacey dies of diabetes. It's just called Good-bye Stacey, Good-bye, it's at the very beginning.
Kaykay Brady: 55:56
Smell ya later!
Brooke Suchomel: 55:57
No, she actually gets stung by a bunch of bees. Not only does she have diabetes, but she also was allergic to bees, and this is where the plot for My Girl came from. My Girl is actually a remake of Good-bye, Stacey, Goodbye, with Macaulay Culkin in the Stacey role.
Kaykay Brady: 56:1
Holy shit. The themes are so deep, man. I would not put it past this author.
Brooke Suchomel: 56:25
So I'm looking forward to getting into that in the next episode.
Kaykay Brady: 56:29
Me too.
Brooke Suchomel: 56:30
But until then. .
Kaykay Brady: 56:32
Just keep sittin'! (THEME SONG) Cold hearted bitch working woman, makes a million dollars, doesn't need a man!
