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#ugh just really feeling on another level of transness today
ksfoxwald · 1 year
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I just find my current fascination with the Babysitter's Club fascinating on a meta level because I would have absolutely hated these books as a proto-queer dragon-loving child (I would have gone absolutely feral over Wings of Fire, even more so than I am now).
But as an adult I'm like, these are a masterclass in character building and episodic storytelling (HP killed the chapter book, but that's it's own post). And the graphic novels are a masterclass in adapting media to other formats. And even though I can't relate to the actual story events - babysitting, crushes, engaging in girl culture - I can relate to the feelings. Being embarrassed, getting carried away, trying to fit it - those are pretty universal.
Actually, besides the clothes, not many details had to be updated from the 80s. Pretty much every book has at least one passage that goes "So-and-so is sooo fashionable; for example today she was wearing [the most bonkers 80s outfit you can imagine]"
A few other things that got adjusted:
When Kristy's mom is getting married it's a plot point that "oh no, we sold the house earlier than expected so now we have to hold the wedding earlier than expected, because we can't move in with each other before we're married!" The GN throws in a line about the stepdad's family being religious.
When Logan Bruno, the "boy babysitter" joins the club as an associate member, in the books he decides not to come to meetings because it throws off the vibe; they can't talk about girl things like bras if a boy is present (funnily enough, the only time anyone ever mentions a bra at a club meeting is when Logan is present). But now it's supposedly less weird for girls and boys to hang out in mixed gender groups, so they had to give him a schedule conflict.
Which! Is really interesting, actually, that writers would think a lone boy in a group of female friends wouldn't be weird. I know kids gender less now than they used to, but they still gender quite a bit. We still live in a heteronormative society, just one where kids know that gay people exist, and that means that interactions across gender are weird, especially among tweens. But kidlit keeps pushing for less gender. Every book (particularly fantasy) must have a Boy and a Girl protagonist, and they are each allowed a maximum of 1 line to express feelings about gender.
It might feel counterintuitive for a nonbinary/agender person to be arguing for more gender in kidlit, but I'm frustrated. Kidlit is trying to present a washed out image of gender, and for me, gender is and has always been painfully sharp. It is jarring to read books where Boy and Girl friendship pairings are the default while living in a world where single-gender friend groups are the norm. People not acknowledging gender actually does make it harder for me to be nonbinary, because they're still doing gender even if they're not talking about it, and then you have to be the one to bring it up, and then it's "why is everything about gender with you?" Ugh. Gender.
Groups vs. Pairs is another issue. I suppose it's simpler, particularly in fantasy, to have a pair of protagonists rather than keeping track of a large group. (Animorphs did it, though. Just sayin') BSC showcases some very intricate group dynamics, how some members are closer than others and some have recurring personality conflicts and how various circumstances change their relationships.
Gender, though. Strangely enough, that is part of why I'm so fixated on this series. Because these books are full of gender. These are girls being loudly and unabashedly girly, experimenting with ways to express that and navigating society's expectations of it. It's like cis people nowadays are afraid to talk about gender, because gender belongs to the transes, and they miss the deep, deep irony that they are the ones who make the most gender. Just. I don't know. I'm running out of brainpower here. Something something letting cis people gender hard actually frees trans people to gender hard as well?
Or maybe it's just the validation that girls were exactly as girly and alienating as I remember. I am out of brain. But between BSC and my Animorphs re-read, there's going to be a lot of retro kidlit on this blog for a while.
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