Dear Baby Ribbon:

If the Sweetheart Sisters were supposed to be teenagers, then why are they taller than the adult ponies?  Did a pony start out small, grow tall as a teen, and then shrink as an adult?  

Also, why are all the Sweetheart Sisters earth ponies?  Did unicorns and pegasi not become teenagers, but went straight from baby to adult?

Featherfire

Dear Featherfire,

Good question.  It does appear a paradox, because the Sweetheart Sisters are all teenagers.  The key to understanding this issue is to realize that the Sweetheart Sisters do not look that way because they are teenagers.  In fact, many of the more traditional-looking ponies are not really that much older than the Sweetheart Sisters.  Love Melody told me on her last birthday that it was her 22nd (but Yum Yum informed me later that that was Love Melody's sixth 22nd birthday).

You see, Sweetheart sisters are not just teenagers.  They are the teenagers.  They are on magazine covers, they are in pageants, they are on the runway, and they are the ones who make normal-looking ponies think they are fat and do disturbing things like eat granola and jog at 5 A.M. to fit into a size 2 bathing suit when it would be socially acceptable to wear nothing but a ribbon.

I believe you humans have something comparable in your world.  The average fully-grown human female is five-foot-four and weighs about 145 pounds, but the 0.00005% of women who are allowed to model clothing are all over six feet tall and weigh 100 pounds.  This scenario not only makes it impossible for any trendy clothes to ever look good, but also makes all the normal people "fat," makes sugar "bad," and makes a wiry hunk of steel resembling a torture implement from the Dark Ages sell on cable TV for $400.

As for all of the Sweetheart Sisters being earth ponies, well of course unicorns and pegasi have to go through puberty too.  Sweetheart Sisters, because they do tend to set the trends and model the clothes, need to reflect the needs and wants of every pony (even though they are as tall as Amazons and skinny enough to fall through a grate on the sidewalk).  Since there are many more earth ponies than anything else, the Sweetheart Sisters are all earth ponies.

Madison Avenue strikes again!