New York New York! Part 1

[alula_auburn]

While I was looking for my next snark, I was surprised to find that this one had only been tackled once, and not since 2008.  I guess we just don’t ❤ NYC like Ann.  Plus, I had some artsy lolcats leftover from Rosie, and honestly, I didn't feel up to fifteen chapters of any particular sitter without inspiration.
Anyway, my impressions before

Comments

[kakeochi_umai]

First, YOU MET THE BECHDEL TEST LADY?!?!?!?! That is awesome. (Even if that name always makes me think of bechamel sauce.)

Second, my eye is twitching something crazy at this whole thing with Stacey telling the other girls what to wear, even before we got to the whole "tomboy = immature" thing.

Also, she is “gorgeous” and has “just enough freckles to be interesting.”
Ann M. Martin: providing impressionable young girls with new ideas for insecurities since 1986. PS: Telling girls they have to look and dress a certain way in order to be worthy as a person, right down to the number of goddamn freckles they have, is not very feminist, Miss "It's METEOROLOGIST, not weatherman".

The Pikes are not strict, but they haven’t allowed her to ... straighten her hair
Because it's not like curly hair was so ~in~ at that time that the appointed fashion guru of the Cult was risking her life to get perms or anything.

instead of packing better, she’ll just borrow Janine’s suitcase.
Hey, Ann, you know what's worse than being a hag to your sister who's never done anything to you? Being a hag to said sister and then expecting her to do favours for you.

Jordan charged Mal fifty cents to carry her suitcase
Uh, Mal, you ARE allowed to say no when your siblings try to extort money out of you. It will not break the universe, I promise.

Stacey pouts more about how the man paying her Bloomingdales’ bills can’t also be at her beck and call all day.
This. Shut up, you little brats.

Also, knowing that Ann apparently still has a grudge against a college professor who made her draw boxes and failed to recognize Ann’s genius and creativity definitely puts a sour spin on this whole thing for me.
This. I'm really thin-skinned and also feel like I only have the one thing I'm good at, so I can understand totally how Claudia feels. And I actually went through a period in university where I skipped a few classes and then got caught in this vicious cycle where I didn't want to look stupid during group work because I was behind so I kept skipping and got even further behind and then got even more of a mental block about going back and so on, so if Ann had had the ovaries to say "I blew off art class because I was insecure and didn't like what we were doing" or something, then I'd have totally related to it. Well, OK, it would have been too little, too late to stop my ever-growing distaste for Ann, but it would still have been better than saying it was all the art teacher's fault for not fawning over Her Perfectness and not setting the kind of work that Princess Ann liked.

“Baby-sitting for Dawn isn’t my idea of a vacation, either.”
I never thought I'd feel bad for Kristy (although I guess she is going to drag everyone to 354 baseball games in SS#14 while the others only get to choose one thing to do, so advance karma's a bitch.)

Dawn ... tells Mal that she’s going to make out her will that night.
At first my mind read "make out" in a very different way from how Ann intended, especially with "that night" in there too.

Kristy’s “special friend”
Oh God, please tell me this isn't another patronising portrayal of people with disabilities, or people with serious illnesses, or elderly people...

[alula_auburn]

Alison Bechdel is awesome.

Kristy's "special friend" has fur and four legs. Er, and is not a werewolf.

[lippian]

In the 80s and 90s, only people with non-naturally curly hair were supposed to perm and frizz it. Everything had to be as artificial as possible. I suppose. I remember my mother walking around in an enormous maternity dress with an enormous halo of frizz for hair, and being quite fashionable for her time.