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The Cat Ate My Gymsuit

88 statements
16 feature instances
9 referencing feature instances

The Cat Ate My Gymsuit	type	TVTItem
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit	label	The Cat Ate My Gymsuit
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit	page	TheCatAteMyGymsuit
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit	comment	A 1974 young adult book by Paula Danziger that follows a Ninth grader dealing with pressures at school and at home as she tries to do well in school and not draw attention to herself.It was followed by Theres A Bat In Bunk Five.
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit	fetched	2023-08-22T05:27:46Z
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit	parsed	2023-08-22T05:27:46Z
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit	isPartOf	DBTropes
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_3324d1c8	type	Gift-Giving Gaffe
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_3324d1c8	comment	Gift-Giving Gaffe: When shopping with Marcy, Joel is looking for a bad gift for his mother, who he hates. He ends up picking out a really ugly heart-shaped pin with red, green and orange rhinestones.
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The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_40cc0c7e	type	Bittersweet Ending
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_40cc0c7e	comment	Bittersweet Ending: Ms. Finney wins her case but declines to be reinstated and becomes a therapist. Marcy vows to continue her self-improvement and accepts her father will never change his ways. Marcy's mother tries to be more assertive, even going to night school for self-improvement.
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The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_612f2a40	type	Hates Their Parent
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_612f2a40	comment	Hates Their Parent: Marcy hates her father for reasons that very quickly become evident: he's an emotionally abusive waste of flesh that constantly belittles his entire family. This never changes throughout the story. Classmate Joel has a bad relationship with his conservative mother, as well.
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The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_750c05ce	type	A Dog Ate My Homework
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_750c05ce	comment	A Dog Ate My Homework: Marcy uses the title statement as one of her excuses for not participating in PE class.
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The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_9cbf01d6	type	Stay in the Kitchen
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_9cbf01d6	comment	Stay in the Kitchen: Combined with Straw Misogynist, Marcy's father believes that women and girls are good for nothing else other than getting married, cooking, cleaning and being quiet and obedient. He always says that girl children should be born at age 18 and married off immediately.
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The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_b11ac9f5	type	Abusive Parents
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_b11ac9f5	comment	Abusive Parents: Marcy's father Martin constantly berates her in nasty ways, calling her stupid, ugly, fat, a know-it-all and saying that he'll never get her married off. Her younger brother, Stuart (who's 4 years old, mind you), doesn't get off much lighter, as he's scolded for such unmanly behaviors as sucking his thumb and having an attachment to Wolf, his teddy bear. It doesn't help that their mother is severely in denial, trying repeatedly to justify his actions to Marcy ("Daddy loves you very much, he just doesn't know how to show it"), and is heavily dependent on prescription tranquilizers. "I hate my father" are even the first words printed on the back of one edition of the book itself. (The book was written and is set in The '70s, which accounts for some of the Values Dissonance between the characters; Marcy can see that her family's dynamic is messed up, but her father's mindset is mired so much in The '50s that he genuinely doesn't realize he's the problem.) Towards the end of the book, Marcy’s mother Grew a Spine and starts standing up to him and taking night classes, with the implications that she might eventually leave him. He gets slightly better, but doesn’t apologize for his actions or attempt to repair his relationships with his wife and kids. But he does at least stop verbally abusing Marcy.
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The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_c868a42a	type	Freudian Excuse
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_c868a42a	comment	Freudian Excuse: The principal hates non-conformists because his daughter dropped out of college and became a hippie living in a commune after meeting "some people with very radical ideas".
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The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_d397657d	type	Hoist by His Own Petard
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_d397657d	comment	Hoist by His Own Petard: Marcy and Ms. Finney's other students organize a rebellion against the principal for firing her. They end up getting suspended but this leads Marcy's mother (head of the PTA) to intervene and a legal hearing is called to settle the case on Ms. Finney's firing.
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The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_deecc9eb	type	Awful Wedded Life
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_deecc9eb	comment	Awful Wedded Life: Marcy's father frequently yells at her mother, and she's become reliant on prescription tranquilizers as a way to cope with it.
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The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_e2c91d45	type	Comfort Food
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_e2c91d45	comment	Comfort Food: Marcy's mother Lily gives her ice cream whenever she's upset (and she has good reasons to be upset a lot of the time, given how her father treats her). It's implied that this is part of the reason for her weight problem.
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The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_e5fd8bc2	type	Hate Sink
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_e5fd8bc2	comment	Hate Sink: Martin is a terrible father and husband who constantly fights with his wife Lily to the point where she appears to be taking drugs to cope and is abusive to his two children, calling his teenage daughter fat, stupid, and ugly (leaving her with severe self-esteem issues as a result), and harshly scolding his four-year-old son for sucking his thumb and playing with his teddy bear. It's quickly obvious to the reader that he doesn't even like, let alone love his family. Especially when Marcy tries to get her family to sit around the dinner table and discuss things like a normal family, her father's response is, "I work hard all day for this family, I don't have to talk to all of you too, do I?" as if talking to his wife and children without screaming at them is a strenuous chore. He also uses Marcy as a scapegoat for nearly everything that goes wrong in his life, including Lily spending less time with him and more with their children, his fighting with Lily that he always initiates, and Marcy's attempt to initiate a simple family discussion going horribly wrong. One has to wonder why he decided to get married and have children in the first place if he hates having a family so much, outside of a possible Shotgun Wedding. From start to finish, he has zero redeeming qualities and it's obvious that he's meant to be despised by the reader more than any other character. The only good thing that can be said about him is that by the end of the book, he's been convinced to more-or-less leave Marcy alone and has achieved an uneasy peace with her, but he's still far from being any kind of family man. The ending shows Lily is starting to stand up to him and making a life for herself, foreshadowing the possibility she may hopefully leave him and take Marcy and Stuart with her.
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The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_e7ecdeb0	type	Weight Woe
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_e7ecdeb0	comment	Weight Woe: Marcy is heavily insecure about her weight and thinks of herself as a "blimp" because her father is always calling her fat.
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The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_edfb8d92	type	The Generation Gap
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_edfb8d92	comment	The Generation Gap: A big theme in the book. Marcy's father is psychologically stuck in The '50s, the older teachers don't like Ms. Finney's approach to education and the principal himself is bitter after clashing with his own hippie daughter; in turn, they all clash with Marcy and the younger generation for their rebellion against the older ways.
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The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_f032f3c0	type	Hippie Teacher
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_f032f3c0	comment	Hippie Teacher: Barbara Finney is the first person to help insecure Marcy Lewis break out of her shell. Her controversial teaching methods has also caused an uproar from a large portion of the school faculty.
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The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_f5988a03	type	Teachers Out of School
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit / int_f5988a03	comment	Teachers Out of School: Marcy is surprised to learn her teacher has a first name.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

The Cat Ate My Gymsuit	hasFeature	A Dog Ate My Homework / int_3eb3b89c
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit	hasFeature	American Literature (# to D) / int_3eb3b89c
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit	hasFeature	Fired Teacher / int_3eb3b89c
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit	hasFeature	Hates Their Parent / int_3eb3b89c
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit	hasFeature	Hippie Teacher / int_3eb3b89c
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit	hasFeature	School Stories / int_3eb3b89c
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit	hasFeature	Teachers Out of School / int_3eb3b89c
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit	hasFeature	Useless Bystander Parent / int_3eb3b89c
The Cat Ate My Gymsuit	hasFeature	Young Adult Literature / int_3eb3b89c

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