Mary-Kate. Ashley. And Simon in the middle??
On November 20th, 2000, the day before "Our Lips Are Sealed" was released on VHS, Mary-Kate and Ashley made their highly anticipated guest appearance on the hit WB family drama, 7th Heaven.
Centered around a minister and his hot family, 7th Heaven was the longest-running series in the network's history, and "the Camdens" were as wholesome as you could get. But for their 96th episode, Mary-Kate and Ashley (aka the Murphy sisters) would walk on set as... the bad girls.
And the press had a field day. Multiple news outlets ran features on how the 14 year-old twins would play "twin temptresses," "more bad than [Simon aka Aaron Carter] can handle." Lani, who had never seen an episode of 7th Heaven in her life, made sure to set her VCR to record this historic moment, and Becca, who was already a casual viewer of the show, made sure not to miss it.
So we rewatched this episode for the first time since that fateful day in the fall of 2000, and realized... our girls are barely in this episode! They're not at all the main storyline and hardly get any airtime until well over halfway through.
But as with all things Mary-Kate and Ashley, we'll take what we can get. Seeing them as "bad" girls is a delight, but seeing them as objects of the male gaze is... unnerving. We unpack what that felt like watching this episode as children, roll our eyes out of their sockets at Matt Camden's runaway bride, and puzzle over what 7th Heaven was in our culture.
Where can you go when the world don't treat you right? The answer is... this podcast.
CNN "7th Heaven" interview
E! News Daily "7th Heaven" interview
7th Heaven "Gossip" Commercial
Talking about their transition from film to fashion (Sept 2009, we mistakenly said 2014 in this episode):
MK&A Fashion Television Part 1
MK&A Fashion Television Part 2
MK&A Fashion Television Part 3
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Lani: @laniharms
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