"Tonight we are the sisters of the pants,” Bridget intoned when they formed a ring. “Tonight we
give the pants the love of our sisterhood so we can take that love wherever we go” (Brashares). Bridget, Lena, Tibby, and Carmen vowed this at the beginning of the summer, in the novel The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares. The girls have never been apart; they have always been together, even before birth, their mothers took the same aerobics class. But this summer would be different. They would be apart for the first time in their lives, but the love and magic follows them each in a pair of pants.
In the beginning of the summer the girls were still together; they were admiring a pair of Carmen's
old pants that she got at a thrift store. Each girl has a different body type so they were in shock when the pants fit them all perfectly. Then a conflict arises they all don’t want to face that they are going completely different places over the summer. Lena is going to Greece to visit her grandparents, Bridget is going to a soccer camp is Baja, California, Carmen is going to her dads house in North Carolina, and Tibby is staying home. After their first days apart they realize the pain of being away from each other, just as a bird leaving the nest for the first time. The pants then help fill the hole left by leaving their friends. The pants keep them together when they are apart and help them along when life away becomes difficult. At the end of the summer they all reunite, each with a story of their own to share that they would then inscribe on the pants.
This book also has a touch of irony; there is a young girl in the book named Bailey. She has leukemia and yet she lives her life to its fullest. Tibby thinks that she has it bad when she feels her parents have abandoned her for something better. But when she meets Bailey and finds out she has leukemia she realizes that her life was not that bad and she shouldn’t be so upset that her parent are paying attention to her brother and sister and not as much to her.
The pants are a major symbol in this book and they represent their love for each other, and how
strong and magical their friendship is. Whenever someone new would get the pants they would say that they can feel a piece of each of their friends in the pants; this is what made them hold on till the end of the summer. Tibby’s pet guinea pig symbolizes that all things are good ideas when you are young. Because when Mimi is introduced into the book Tibby explains how she saved her favorite name, Mimi for the perfect moment; she didn’t was it on stuffed animals she got. Then she explained how all things seem like a good idea when you young; she thought that Mimi was the most perfect name. As Tibby grew older she began to think that Mimi was a dumb name, and begins to think that all good things are good ideas when you’re young.
When the girls were young they could never imagine being apart, but now that impossibility is
becoming reality. And while the girls are apart they realize that all they have is each other and how much they really need each other. They begin to understand the true value of friendship. Passing the pants equally and writing letters also demonstrates true friendship. When Bailey dies it leaves Tibby feeling lost, but all of the girls were there for her. Also when everything Bridget was running from finally caught up with her, her friends were there for her. The true theme of the book is the lesson of friendship and that your life is not so bad.
This ironic comedy of girls being apart for the first time shows that when everyone else walks out on you your fiends walk in to help you. Tibby, Carmen, Lena, and Bridget demonstrate true friendship and love for each other. And over the course of the novel you realize that the book isn’t about the pants and the magic they bring. It’s about the girls and even though they are completely different in every way how they overcome being apart with the help of their strong, unbreakable, and unconditional friendship and love for each other.
