If you were an elementary school girl between 1987 and 2007, and you weren't particularly athletic, there’s a very good chance you spent much of your recess reading Ann M. Martin’s seminal and wildly unrealistic (the Pikes have eight kids, how can they afford to go on vacation so goddamn much?) "The Babysitter’s Club" book series. I know I spent hours every afternoon reading about the adventures of Kristy, Claudia and Co and trying to not get hit by a rogue kickball.
I mentioned "The Babysitter’s Club" at a block party a while back to a ten-year-old neighbor, who told me she “kind of knew what those were.” After a brief crisis about the passage of time, I began to entertain myself thinking about what a millennial version of the "The Babysitter’s Club" would be have to be like, to catch the interest of kids who are younger than Facebook.
Kristy Thomas
Kristy’s entire wardrobe is LuluLemon yoga pants and snapbacks. She takes Model UN - of which she is the president of and where she also represents Iran - way too seriously and cried when Bernie didn’t get the Democratic nomination. She has a Tumblr dedicated exclusively to paparazzi photos of Kristen Stewart and Cate Blanchett.
Claudia Kishi
Claudia’s dyslexia doesn’t stop her from writing rambling, misspelled captions on her Instagram account, which is mostly neon-filtered pictures of discarded candy bar wrappers and has 14,000 followers. She also sells weird homemade jewelry on Etsy to moderate success and is super into Adventure Time, Gravity Falls, and other children's cartoons she claims to watch "for the animation" .
Mary-Ann Spier
Mary-Ann talks about her cats on Facebook like they’re human children and posts what she’s listening to on Spotify every single day. It’s usually a Disney princess soundtrack. She’s very into Moana at the moment. She broke up with her boyfriend Logan after he said “Trump isn’t perfect but has some good ideas.” She wants to get a John Green quote as a tattoo for her birthday.
Stacey McGill
Stacey’s Instagram is dedicated to black-and-white photos she took of random New York City streets and out-of-focus homeless people in front of bodegas. She made her dad take her to see "Hamilton" three times. Her insulin pump has a Vera Bradley case and once she went to a store on Fifth Avenue just because she heard Kendall Jenner would be there.
Dawn Schafer
Dawn’s peasant blouses and flower-crowns look like they're from a consignment shop but actually cost upwards of $125 a piece. She overuses the word “woke” in her twitter rants about the Dakota Pipeline and her current dream in life is to go to Coachella every summer. She has a massive hipbone tattoo of a feather that also cost $125. She's a vegan and never lets anyone forget it.
Mallory Pike
Mallory is a comedy junkie and spends a lot of her free time making GIFs of her favorite SNL sketches. Once she saw Jimmy Fallon at an airport and did not conduct herself with grace. She is still really, really into horses and goes on My Little Pony forums a lot. Like, a lot a lot. Too much, one might say. Possibly a furry.
Jessi Ramsey
Jessi’s Snapchats are just videos of her ballet rehearsals and widely adored selfies with the puppy-ears filter. She secretly binge-watches "Dance Moms" when no one else is home and is genuinely concerned about Abby Lee Miller's legal troubles. Her white friends - mostly Dawn - are constantly telling her about that time they stood up to a racist at the supermarket in hopes she will give them some sort of Good Person validation - she usually just replies with "Yikes."
