Please click: WeChat text link The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants tells a story about how a pair of magical jeans changes the lives of four different-sized girls throughout one influential summer. The film tells us the importance of enduring friendships when everything all around is changing. “Sisterhood” is an important theme in this film, however, what is more inspiring is, the search for self-identity in the name of the travelling pants and sisterhood. Lena, the one who goes to Greece to visit her grandparents and ends up falling in love with a dreamy fisherman, is depicted to be sexually constrained. She looks gorgeous but conservative, which can been seen from the way she dresses. Although longing for passionate and unconstraint life style, Lena used to put wall up with people. Knowing the story of Kostas 'parents,she realizes her problem—"It makes me so sad that people like Kostas and Bridget, who have lost everything can still be open to love, while I, who have lost nothing, am not." Then she decides to make a change, to be brave to let Kostas enter her world. This is Lena's self-realization and self-acceptance of who she is and who she wants to be, which is feministic and liberating. Bridget goes to a soccer camp in Mexico where she has a crush on a college student coach. After having sex with the guy, she feels emptiness and realizes this affair, which is a mistake, cannot make up for the love she lost when her mother committed suicide. And her self-reflection and self-acceptance is shown on her apology to the guy later in the film. Bridget's story is about how to deal with life loss, letting the grief go and move on,and this is only done by her girl friends' help, and the film is focusing the power of sisterhood. Carmen has family issues. She goes to visit her father but only to find his new marriage, which makes her feel abandoned. Although trying to suppress this feeling, she finally cannot hold her anger and frustration so that she runs away home. In the end of the film, the girlfriends help Carmen buries the hatchet with her father by attending his wedding. The film tells the importance of communication between family through Carmen's story; it teaches audiences to learn to understand and forgive; but again, it emphasizes the supporting system of sisterhood that brings Carmen the courage to admit her feelings. The “rebel” Tibby's experience might be the most touching one. She stays home and makes a documentary film by interviewing Wal-Mart staffs.However, she doesn't see any point of this film until meeting a 12-year-old girl who's dying of leukemia. Interestingly, it is also the travelling pants bring this two girls together although by mistake, which reveals the “magic” and the message of sisterhood again. Furthermore, the precocious kid teaches Tibby to see life ethically and expansively before she dies, which brings the film to a spiritual level about humanity, and appreciation of life. The weird partnership between the two girls is not a stereotypical representation of sisterhood, however, that's also the film's introspectional purpose on self-realization—a teenager (Tibby)'s changing outlook of the world through surroundings events(little girl's story). Overall, the themes of The Sister include relationships with boys and families, self-acceptance and forgiveness,letting the past go and seizing life's opportunities. They are all connected by the travelling pants, and have been handled in a sensitive and subtle way – “Pants equals love, love your sisters, love yourself”. Of course the pants do not have magic to change the girls' life. What really happens is, the pants witness the girls' troubles and conflicts, then prompt an epiphany of life for each of them making them realize who they are, and what they want, and eventually hold them together to what we call a “sisterhood”. © Lydia L 2/28/2011the pants witness the girls' troubles and conflicts, then prompt an epiphany of life for each of them making them realize who they are, and what they want, and eventually hold them together to what we call a “sisterhood”. © Lydia L 2 /28/2011the pants witness the girls' troubles and conflicts, then prompt an epiphany of life for each of them making them realize who they are, and what they want, and eventually hold them together to what we call a “sisterhood”. © Lydia L 2 /28/2011
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