Mary-Anne

I have to start by saying that Malia Baker is just perfectly cast as Mary-Anne!

In my opinion, all of the updates to Mary-Anne have been very well crafted. I love that she's half black and half white. I love how her narrative was written- the way she balances being really shy and hating conflict with standing up for the kids she babysits or herself feels modern and realistic. 

I also adore how they've celebrated Mary-Anne's natural hair. As someone who was born with very hard to manage, 2B, hair, I always felt bad about it growing up. All the cool girls had pin straight hair, hair like mine was either looked down on or made fun of and having someone like Mary-Anne on TV when I was a kid definitely would've helped me accept myself. I say it a lot, representation matters!

(Side note, in the books, when Mary-Anne got her makeover, I thought it was cool and ballsy,  but then looking at her haircut on the cover kind of negated it for me. Short hair can be awesome, and I've had really short hair a few times in my life, but the haircut the artist painted for the book and/or the cut AMM described for the cover was god awful.)

The way the writers have handled her relationship with Logan is really interesting too. The fact that *SPOILER* they're just going to enjoy being together regardless of labels felt very on trend. I really liked seeing this change because growing up, eveyone always seemed to be very focused on labels. 

There was also Mary-Anne's love for NYC, in the books that was sort of glossed over. Obviously just about everyone loves NYC, especially hopleas romantics like Mary-Anne, but why specifically? Just saying that Mary-Anne liked the city alwayd seemed kind of boring, so the way they encorporated her love of theater/Broadway gives the character so much more depth.

Overally, Mary-Anne feels very real and very relatable in this adaptation.

Up next, Stacey.

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