Girl math. Girl dinner. Hot girl walks. The ten-year-old Sephora girls. And of course, the Eras Tour and Barbie. These all defined 2023 in one way or another, and forced many girls and women to examine what they believe it means to be a “girl.” And I think I speak for most of us when I say that despite a sudden boom in representation of “girlhood” in mainstream media, there is still a huge lack of respect for pre-teen girls.  

With the rise of social media, especially for tween girls who are arguably too young to have access to the internet, one could say that the trends surrounding figures like Taylor Swift promote positive messages for tween girls. But it also terrifies me that younger and younger girls are downloading social media and exposing themselves to disturbingly unrealistic beauty standards, “glow up” trends, and sexist messaging surrounding which “aesthetic” they fit. They are forced into boxes as reductive as “clean girl” or “messy girl” when they’re still young enough to have parental screen time limits. As a society, we have largely failed young girls by not giving them an in-between; there is DocMcStuffins for young kids and then there is Euphoria and influencer “GWRMs” and everything else on social media, which is supposed to be for teens ages thirteen and up, but are popular with pre-teens. What can tweens turn to in order to feel heard, understood, and empowered?  

I believe the answer lies in the first season of Netflix’s adaptation of The Baby-Sitters Club. This series is more than just a sweet binge-watch; it’s a haven for pre-teen girls. It tells them that beliefs and feelings matter, they are capable of making a difference, and they are enough. 

The show follows four middle school girls who start a neighborhood babysitting business together. They each use their unique talents to contribute to their larger goal: Kristy, a natural born leader, serves as President, Mary Anne uses her organizational skills as Secretary, the multitalented Claudia is the Vice President, and Stacey, the fashionable mathematician, is Treasurer. These unique, collaborative characters show younger girls that they are talented human beings, and that they can use their talents to do anything they set their minds to. 

Not only are the girls businesswomen, but they are social changemakers as well. Throughout the show, the girls are outspoken about their beliefs. Kristy is a feminist; the first scene of the show features her frustratedly explaining to Mary Anne that her sexist history teacher punished her for merely advocating that all people should’ve been included in the Declaration of Independence. Her history teacher assigns her an essay on decorum, and she writes it about how, to her, decorum means standing up for what is right.  

After Claudia’s grandmother suffers a stroke, she learns of the grandmother’s horrifying experiences in Japanese internment camps. She then transforms her heartbreak into artwork, using her talents to spread awareness about the injustices that matter to her.  

Mary Anne begins the fourth episode by talking about how shy she is, and her friends tease her for her inability to advocate for herself. When Bailey, a transgender girl (played by a transgender actor) who she is babysitting gets a high fever, Mary Anne rushes her to the hospital. When the doctors start misgendering Bailey, Mary Anne sees no choice but to pull them aside and demand that they respect the girl’s identity. She defies the box of “shy, nervous girl” that all of her friends seem to have forced her into and stands up to the much more powerful doctors. She may not be extroverted like Kristy, but her immense empathy guides her advocacy.  

We see this growth in the girls play out once again in the series’ two-part finale. What begins as a summer at Camp Moosehead becomes an all-out revolution. Claudia and Dawn (a new girl in town who joins the club partway through the series) take a camp art class and learn that the campers must pay extra money in order to get T-shirts for many of the projects. The tweens sit at lunch and discuss the injustices they see, using words like “socioeconomic stratosphere” and recognizing how “they’re creating haves and have-nots in what’s supposed to be a [utopian] environment.” I didn’t understand these concepts until 10th grade history, so I’m glad today’s tweens are getting an earlier exposure to economic injustices. 

Refusing to be powerless in the face of injustice, they use their unique talents in teaching and art to start their own art class in the woods. They give all kids a space where they can collaborate and create art, regardless of their economic statuses. Instead of being rewarded, Claudia is made to stay in her cabin as punishment for leading an unsupervised class. In response, Dawn uses her role as the camp’s morning announcer to organize all of the art campers into a “lie-in” as a means of protest. Even after facing consequence after consequence, Dawn refuses to back down. In an hilariously uncanny Les Misérables parody scene, they build a barricade on which they hold a camp-wide strike. Even after they are underestimated by the camp director, these young agents of change see their peers facing injustices and take it upon themselves to do something about it. They are organizers, public speakers, artists, and leaders, training their young viewers to do the same. 

While they may be young revolutionaries, they also deal with the classic issues of tween girlhood: crushes, grades, and friendship drama. However, the series takes an approach that I haven’t seen before. The girls are established as complex characters with talents, flaws, and strong beliefs, and then these issues are introduced only as part of their development.  

Yes, Claudia has a crush on a boy who she wants to take her to the dance, but her parents won’t let her attend because she keeps failing her math tests. She is also shown as a masterful fashionista and an ambitious artist, a girl who is proud of all she has accomplished and wants the rest of the world to be proud of her, too.  

And of course, the girls have their fair share of arguments, but they are about real problems that they have with one another. The creators of the show acknowledge that the feelings and experiences of these characters are real and raw, just like those of any pre-teen girl. Whether they’re arguing over a crush on a much older lifeguard, a video on social media, or the implications that Dawn’s strike has for Mary Anne’s theater production, the girls are emotionally mature and allow these struggles to be a part of their story together. At the core of it is their love for one another. 

Whether you’re a ten-year-old girl trying to figure out your place in the world or my mother (who watched the entire show and cried at the end of every episode), there’s a lot to love about this series. You will almost certainly see pieces of yourself in each of the girls. It is both comforting and entirely revolutionary in the way it speaks to tween girls. The series tells them that it’s okay to feel like a “pathetic crybaby” like Mary Anne does, but that they still have the ability to advocate for themselves. Pre-teen girls don’t deserve to be defined by the time they spend on social media or dealing with friend drama, and that’s why we need The Baby-Sitters Club. To the dismay of teenage girls and their moms worldwide, this show was canceled in March 2022. We need to see more girls like Kristy and Mary Anne in the mainstream, stories that celebrate tween girls as they find their place in the world and help them find unique ways to transform it.