Today's diversity and and past interest

[sparklymouse]

Forgive the title. I didn't know how to phrase this. The revamping of the series via Netflix and the graphic novels had a lot of ethnicity changes in the characters. If the original series had been that diverse, would it have affected your interest in any way? Positive or negative.

[anzuhana]

I don't think the diversity would've affected whether or not I was interested in it. If I thought the synopsis sounded interesting, I would've given it a try and decided whether or not to continue from there.

[oldhickory]

I would have liked it. I grew up brown in a white area and I was always looking for characters and toys that looked like me. I liked the chapter in Hello Mallory where they talk about soy sauce because food I ate was actually getting a shoutout in a mainstream publication. Representation matters so much.

[sparklymouse]

I think that I would have been less likely to pick up the series and try it. That just wasn't real life for me in the 80s. I get what oldhickory is saying. I think of all of the friendship series books that I read besides BSC. Everyone was white. Fabulous Five, Sleepover Friends, Girl Talk (one Native American)... was there any series from that era that had minority characters?

[CharlotteTJohanssen]

I don’t think it would’ve affected if I read this series or not as long as this plot was good, I would’ve read it.

However I do have a problem if it was diversified in the 80s or 90s though. You think how much we snark on “Jessi‘s black” and Claudia has “almond shaped eyes” imagine how Ann (a woman who grew up in a predominantly, rich white community) would’ve tried to describe a South Asian girl or someone else who didn’t have a big presence in that community that she was writing about. People would still pick it up and read it, but I’d be curious to know how it would be written.

[oldhickory]

I was thinking about this when voting on the hottest dad yesterday. There's Mr. Ramsey and Mr. Kishi and then ... who else isn't white? They're the only regularly appearing POC families. I understand why they made POC main characters, but they could've had them in the neighborhood too. Do they ever even sit for minority families who appear multiple times?

You bring up a good point about how well it would be written. Ann probably didn't have the skill or knowledge in the 80s to write a fleshed out character with the care we expect these days. I don't think most people did so no knock on her.