BSC #60: Mary Anne's Makeover

The plot of this one is simple. Mary Anne wants to get a new and very short haircut, but when she points out a photo of the kind of style she wants to her friends, they all laugh and tell her how dumb she’ll look. She decides to surprise everyone by doing it anyway and goes to the mall to get a haircut with her dad, also coming back with some hot new clothes and make up. The BSC, and Dawn in particular, start acting cold to her and she ends up ignoring them back by missing meetings and eating lunch with Logan. Rumors fly that an older high school guy named Carlos Mendez is interested in her, and Mary Anne starts feeling bad. Eventually she and Dawn make up and MA sucks it up, drinks the Flavor Aid and goes back to the BSC. At the end, it turns out that Carlos is really interested in Sabrina Bouvier, another eighth grader.

• Mary Anne’s New Year resolution is to be the best possible person she can be, so she tries to be more understanding when she’s talking to Carolyn about something in the first chapter. Honey, if you get any more understanding, your transformation into doormat will be complete.

• MA’s dad gets a lot of shit for being strict with her when she was younger, and for being kind of nerdy, but for the most part, he seems like an awesome dad. Especially compared with some of the other parents (Stacey’s dad is a controlling workaholic, Mallory’s parents haven’t yet learned that the rhythm method isn’t an effective method of birth control). It’s nice to see them bond in this book when he takes MA to the mall to get a haircut.

• The other members of the BSC just tell Mary Anne that her hair will grow out and that it isn’t her. In one scene, Mary Anne sits alone and another girl, Susan, asks her to join their table. You know, she really should have. This book was a golden opportunity for Mary Anne to branch out and not obsessively hang out with the same old friends. Stacey was a real bitch most of the time, but I actually respect her for temporarily leaving the babysitters cult…I mean, club.

• Dawn’s a total bitch. I never realized this till the second time I read these books. Gotta love when she tells Mary Anne she has a boy haircut and is wearing clown make-up.

• At the end, Dawn and Mary Anne primp to go to the dance, and Mary Anne has to borrow some blush from Dawn because she’s run out. Except she only bought her blush about two weeks ago. I bought my last tin two years ago and it still hasn’t run out. Maybe Dawn was right about the clown make up.

• The girls wear long dresses and heels to the dance. And Logan even wears a tuxedo that he looks good in. Between this and his job at the Rosebud Café, I think this is what gave me unrealistic expectations of how grown-up thirteen year old boys were.

• If Mary Anne is growing up into a young woman and Sabrina Bouvier goes to the dance with a high school guy where they both look about twenty years old, how come no members of the BSC have started menstruating? I want them to start talking about their menstrual flow and scented tampons at sleepovers, damnit, not the Korman kids and their stupid phobias.

• Oh yeah, about the kids. Carolyn Arnold builds a time machine in the basement and starts telling everyone about it, telling kids to give her a dollar and that when she unveils it later, she’ll let them travel through time. Mary Anne feels guilty that she didn’t ask any of the other members for help in dealing with the situation because they were fighting. If I were a thirteen year old babysitter, this would get a gigantic NOT MY PROBLEM sticker.

Continuity Alert

• Can we decide what Dawn does and doesn’t eat? In some books, it’s just no red meat. In this one, she says, “Eww” when she sees that Richard and Mary Anne brought home a carton of lobster. In any case, this is good practice for when she finally goes vegan and spends every meal proclaiming that she won’t eat anything that casts a shadow.

Bitchy Remark Du Jour

• “Oh, go choke on an alfalfa sprout!” (I’ll let you figure out who MA directed this comment at.) Go MA!