Let's Make a Pact

“Now and Then” was an absolute staple of my girlhood. When it was brought up in class, my mind immediately raced back to the fourth grade and the weekends my best friend and I would spend watching the movie during sleepovers at her house. I specifically remember enjoying the thrill of watching something my mother wouldn’t have allowed in my own house (swearing! nudity! sex talk! never!). Needless to say, I was a bit of a Chrissy back in those days. Watching the movie this weekend helped me to appreciate the movie in an entirely new light, however, and fall even deeper in love with the story than I was before.

One recurring theme that I first began to notice during this watching was the adamant declaration of girlhood by the four young women. First reasserted by Chrissy in the restaurant when their waitress called them boys, and later by Roberta when she was told that girls couldn’t play softball, this insistence on being called “girls” was important in constructing the many different identities and personalities which can, and do, all fall under the category of “girlhood.” Despite the differences between feisty Roberta, mothering Chrissy, glamorous Teeny, and contemplative Samantha, each still insisted on their girlhood, thus illustrating the many different possibilities available to young women. This was a pleasant contrast to the two theoretical ideas often presented in scholarly work, that of girls as either consumer-obsessed, post-feminist girlies, or as drowning Ophelias in need of adult intervention.

Although the girls were greatly distanced from their parents – Teeny admitted she barely knew hers, Samantha’s were recently divorced, Roberta’s mother passed away, and Chrissy’s father was never seen – each did still play an important role in their daughter’s lives. Much of the plot revolves around each of the girls dealing with their familial struggles separately and together, and it is through these struggles that their own individual identities can be seen to form – Teeny’s constant need for attention and Roberta’s jokes about death, for example. The power that previous generations are capable of holding over young girls’ heads can thus be seen, along with the understanding that, despite what many girls grow up being taught, “no shit … parent’s aren’t always right.” By deconstructing previously held notions about the perfect family – through divorce, death, and a lack of honest education – the girls discover that are capable of carving out their own paths in life, and that they can – and should! – question the “ideal” life they are brought up buying into.

Ultimately, this movie is about girlhood blossoming into womanhood, and the promise that despite wherever independence and adult life brings an individual, the bonds formed between close friends never have to be broken by a society that fears the power of female relationships. As Samantha contemplates near the end of the film, “We all used to try so hard to fit in. We wanted to look exactly alike, do all the same things, practically be the same person, but when we weren't looking that all changed. The tree house was supposed to bring us more independence, but what the summer actually brought was independence from each other.” Although this moment could be representative of the end of the girls’ friendship, it actually symbolized the strength the girls gave each as they entered into adult life, and the pact that no matter where they were in life they would always return home to each other and the perfect treehouse they spent the best summer of their lives in search of.