'Pleasantly plump' teenager Tracy Turnblad achieves her dream of becoming a regular on the Corny Collins Dance Show. Now a teen hero, she starts using her fame to speak out for the causes she believes in, most of all integration. In doing so, she earns the wrath of the show's former star, Amber Von Tussle, as well as Amber's manipulative, pro-segregation parents. The rivalry comes to a head as Amber and Tracy vie for the title of Miss Auto Show 1963.

Thymian Henning, an innocent young girl, is raped by the clerk of her father's pharmacy. She becomes pregnant, is rejected by her family, and must fend for herself in a harsh, cruel world.

A fired teacher finds work at a girls reform school and helps a detective on a case.

A new social worker at a girls' reformatory discovers that her charges are being used by a group of ancient alchemists, who have insinuated themselves as the prison's chief staffers, to keep themselves alive and free from an insidious petrification, which is already afflicting one of their number.