The Baby-Sitters Club's only flaw is featuring a "pretty disability"

Indiewire

"In watching Netflix’s new incarnation of the book series, I have to wonder how Stacey McGill as a character does or doesn’t resonate with disabled children today? Have we really come that far when a character with diabetes can pass for disabled representation?" says Kristen Lopez. "As disabled representation remains so underseen, Stacey McGill’s diabetes becomes placed on the same pedestal. And where it concerns feminine disabled representation, it’s par for the course. Throughout most disabled narratives in film, when disabled women are depicted they are given 'pretty disabilities,' a term I use to refer to anything perceived to be a disability that doesn’t render the actress physically unattractive. Usually, we see this play out in the abundance of female characters who are deaf, mute, or blind. Where women are physically disabled they’re often facially disfigured, their disability being part and parcel of whether they’re beautiful or not."

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• The Baby-Sitters Club is reminiscent of Sex and the City: "Comparing The Baby-Sitters Club to a show like Sex and the City feels reductive and a bit crass, but the cadence and the rhythm of each episode feel very similar," says Megan Reynolds. "Sex and the City operated loosely as a show not only about the glittering lives of female archetypes but also as a collection of life lessons, bookended by a question posed at the beginning of the episode and a tidy little answer at the end. In The Baby-Sitters Club, the handwritten diary entries that opened each episode are replaced by a voice-over narration that sets up the lesson to be learned while also centering the club member in question. The similarities between the two end there. But teaching lessons about how to navigate interpersonal conflicts without surrendering their values is what Sex and the City and other shows of its kind do without pandering or patronizing. In The Baby-Sitters Club, friendships are solid but not without nuance. Conflict is resolved neatly, creating a useful blueprint of emotional confidence and stability for viewers who are of the age where figuring out how to be assertive without being terrible is a difficult ask."
• Netflix set up a real number for The Baby-Sitters Club's landline phone
• How The Baby Sitters Club's production team infused 1990s nostalgia into its sets
• The Baby-Sitters Club's costume designer wanted to pay homage to the 1990s and original book covers