Seeing Double: Collecting Sweet Valley High

For women who were adolescents in the mid‐1980s, the Sweet Valley High young adult (YA) books series was an all‐important part of their world. The fictional adventures of identical twins Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield and their wealthy, attractive friends who lived in the idyllic upper‐class beach town of Sweet Valley, California personified the quintessential high school experience that female tween and teen readers yearned for. Despite commercial success, Sweet Valley High (SVH) was dismissed by educators and critics as having “formulaic plots, one‐dimensional characters, and simplistic prose writing styles” (D'Amico viii), and was not considered reputable literature for prepubescent readers. The world presented in these YA books promoted wealth, beauty, popularity, and dating as markers of success; they also provided a blueprint for high school that could be considered harmful to girls’ self‐esteem. This article examines motivations behind collecting Sweet Valley High novels as an adult. The adult appeal of collecting and rereading SVH books arises from acknowledging the chasm between the aspirational reading by our younger selves and our adult knowledge that the books contain false promises of high school life. Using my experience in creating communal digital space, via my blog The Dairi Burger, and concepts of feminist camp and postfeminist theory, I explore the ways in which collecting the books allow for a re‐inscription of meaning and appreciation of the comparison of self as young adult collector to an adult collector.