Carmen Lowell is working on the backstage of a play at Yale. When the lead actress, her friend Julia, invites her to Vermont with her to work on a play with a professional cast, she decides to stay with her friends and her pregnant mother. However, she changes her mind after she finds that her friends will all leave for the summer: Lena Kaligaris will travel to a drawing course, Bridget Vreeland, who is in an existential crisis, missing her mother, will travel to an archaeological dig in Turkey, and Tibby Tomko-Rollins is working in a rental and still editing her documentary. Carmen grows a crush on the lead actor Ian, who convinces her to participate in an audition, and she is then invited by the director Bill Kerr to perform the lead female role. Later she finds the truth about the friendship of Julia. The broken-hearted Lena finds that Kostas has just married, and she dates the model of her drawing class. Bridget finds letters addressed to her from her grandmother that her father has hidden, and decides to visit her, discovering information about her mother. Tibby makes love with her boyfriend Brian McBrian and gets scared of a possible pregnancy. In the end, the girlfriends discover that their friendship is real and amounts to more than just a pair of jeans.

The movie is based on the young adult book, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, by Anne Brashares. As four best friends spend their first summer apart from one another, they share a magical pair of jeans. Despite being of various shapes and sizes, each one of them fits perfectly into the pants. To keep in touch they pass these pants to each other as well as the adventures they are going through while apart.

Frances lives in New York, but she doesn't really have an apartment. Frances is an apprentice for a dance company, but she's not really a dancer. Frances has a best friend named Sophie, but they aren't really speaking anymore. Frances throws herself headlong into her dreams, even as their possible reality dwindles. Frances wants so much more than she has but lives her life with unaccountable joy and lightness.

TBW