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I’m a Miranda. Sex and the City fans have spent the last two decades proclaiming which of the show’s four main characters they identify with, and despite Carrie Bradshaw being the iconic, stylish, everywoman protagonist, most of my Gen X friends would also identify as Mirandas, too. But Sex was Carrie’s story to tell. Now that Netflix’s The Baby-Sitters Club is here, I’m happy to say that Kristy Thomas is the new Miranda, and she’s finally getting her due.
Though she’s the president of the Baby-Sitters Club, Kristy is not the focus of every episode. So, you might be asking, how can you compare the two shows? Unlike Sex and the City, where the whole series was told from Carrie’s point of view, The Baby-Sitters Club gives each character a chance to tell their story. But, as Kristy is sure to remind you as often as she can—starting with the first episode,”Kristy’s Great Idea”—Kristy created this club, and we wouldn’t be here without her. It’s Kristy’s world; everyone else is just babysitting in it. She doesn’t need to tell anybody else’s story for them. It’s 2020, and while Kristy may not fully understand the concept of intersectional feminism (her witchy neighbor Aunt Esmé and her friend Dawn’s mom, Sharon, will surely hold an emergency BSC meeting on the subject in season two), she understands that each of her friends deserves a seat at the table.
Being labeled a Miranda or a Kristy (or a Dorothy Zbornak, for that matter, because all hail the patron saint of sarcastic, strong-willed women) may not seem like a badge of honor. We’re not the most stylish, we’re never the ingenue, our hairstyles are only ever practical. We are industrious. (Ask me anything about the puffy-painted T-shirt business I started in fifth grade.) But these are all part of the (unconventional) beauty of being a Miranda: we’re unbothered by the fact that we’re Mirandas. Some might say we’re too caught up with other important business matters to even care about it. Mirandas don’t take Buzzfeed quizzes to find out we’re Mirandas. We just know. And that level of self-awareness lets us know we can be awful sometimes. But (at least on TV) we learn from it. We can have a judgmental and sometimes cruel streak. I’ll be the first to admit that even though I identify as a Kristy, she’s kind of terrible to her friends sometimes. When a new client calls the club in the fourth episode and makes a special request for Mary Anne—Kristy’s best friend since birth—Kristy turns on her because rules. Special requests are not just frowned upon but punishable by excommunication in the BSC bylaws (apparently). Kristy gets hers when Mary Anne finds a new best friend in the aforementioned Dawn (the free spirit that Kristy will never be), whom Kristy feels threatened by, at least temporarily.
Kristy is a girl who, at least in the books, chooses to stifle herself by wearing a turtleneck every day. She likes structure. She needs to feel in control. When new girl in town Stacey McGill acts shady and secretive, Kristy immediately rushes to judgment. “She didn’t eat anything,” Kristy says to Mary Anne after her first encounter with Stacey. “Maybe she has body-image issues. That’s not a great example for the girls we’ll be taking care of.” Dang, Kristy, let Stacey live. (Turns out [SPOILERS] Stacey is diabetic and had a traumatic experience at her old school after going into a diabetic shock in front of her classmates.) Kristy’s rush to judgment is no different than Miranda calling Carrie needy and pathetic for having lunch with Big, or Miranda telling Carrie she’s giving up her life by moving to Paris. Pity the friends of those Kristys and Mirandas caught between their barbs.
One of The Baby-Sitter Club‘s directors, Kimmy Gatewood, wrote on Instagram that when she interviewed to work on the show, she was asked by showrunner Rachel Shukert, “Who are you?” To which she answered, “Kristy baseline with a rising Dawn.” After reading that, I reached out to her to ask why she feels like a Kristy. (In one iteration of the cover art for the book Kristy’s Great Idea, Kristy is seated in a director’s chair. It seems like no surprise that Gatewood identifies.) “Kristy is the boss!” Gatewood says. “She gets to tell everyone what to do and has all the great ideas. When I had my interview for The Baby-Sitters Club Rachel, [executive producer] Lucia [Aniello], and I agreed that everyone they talked to had a baseline Kristy in them. Maybe it’s because we are all destined to be lady bosses, or maybe Kristy gave us all permission to ask for what we wanted and demand attention.” Author Ann M. Martin should be proud that she had a hand in teaching a generation of girls that there’s no stigma to the word “bossy.”
I would love to know what Netflix’s largest demographic for The Baby-Sitters Club is, because I’d guess millennials and Gen Xers are more excited for this series than the TV-Y audience it may be intended for. Though the books had already been made into a series and a movie in the ’90s, this new iteration feels like a homecoming of sorts at a time when its creators acknowledge the franchise’s direct influence on their childhoods. The link between The Baby-Sitters Club and Sex and the City is one of female friendship. Kristy and Miranda anchor their girlfriends to their principles and power. On Sex, when Charlotte tells her friends she plans to quit her job, it’s Miranda’s judgment that hurts her the most. When Carrie says she’s moving to Paris, Miranda’s the one to tell her she’s uprooting her life and career and making the wrong decision. On The Baby-Sitters Club, when Mary Anne tries to direct a play, she explains that she’s just trying to be “bossy like Kristy” to get people to listen.
The link between The Baby-Sitters Club and Sex and the City is one of female friendship, and Kristy and Miranda anchor their girlfriends to their principles and power.
No one, whether real or fictional, embodies only one archetype, and these characters break form all the time because blah blah blah personal growth, etc. But The Baby-Sitters Club taught a generation of girls that it was ok to be the boss with drive and determination—and if one day that means we turned into Mirandas, that’s cool. Because Mirandas own their own apartments, buy pie whenever they want, and, if you can handle their honesty, will be loyal for life. Gatewood sums up her experience as a Kristy thusly: “I’ve been called pushy, but I’ve also been called a go-getter. Depends on how you look at strength and persistence.”
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Brooklyn. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.
