Real Question: Is Dawn Schafer Responsible for the Measles Outbreak?

Today is Dawn Schafer’s birthday. The baby-sitters club member and health food fanatic turns 42 on February 5th, so let’s celebrate her special day by broaching a difficult subject that no one else has been brave enough to discuss: Is Dawn Schafer an anti-vaxxer or nah?

I think it’s only fair that I inform you that I fully believe Dawn is in in the former camp (anti-vaxx) and would like to share the reasons why I think that Ms. California is not only against vaccinations, but, were she a real person, would be significantly responsible for the sick children at Disneyland, once the happiest place on earth and now ground zero of a measles outbreak that has spread across America.

Exhibit A: Dawn Schafer is a notorious health nut, worried not only about the environment but about healthy eating and maximizing one’s lifespan to its fullest. In the Baby-Sitters’ Club books she’s always described as munching on an unseasoned rice cake and Dawn-splaining Stacey McGill’s (best baby-sitter, hands down) diabetes to her like Stacey doesn’t know what’s up. Considering that Dawn wants only what is good and natural in this world, it would make sense that she a) eschews anything that is man-made and/or full of GMOS and b) hates chemicals of any kind.

Plus, the fact that Dawn is concerned about both keeping pollution at bay and delaying climate change puts her in the perfect position to be an anti-vaxxer due to the cognitive dissonance that seems to occur among very left-leaning liberals who agree that yes, global warming is a real thing, but completely ignore the actual fact that the one study connecting vaccines and autism has been revealed as a fabrication.

Exhibit B: Dawn Schafer is scared of new things and thinks anything she doesn’t understand is bad. Like old ladies who don’t bother anyone. Or the entire city of New York. Is it really such a stretch that that young woman who spent the entirety of a BSC Super-Special not leaving a Manhattan apartment because she was worried about being kidnapped and murdered (dark, Ann M. Martin, dark) would grow up to be the adult who reads sites like greenmedicine.com and realscienceforrealpeople.org/realscience.html and then clogs your Facebook feed with shares about natural vaccines and using bee poison to heal cancer? If Dawn couldn’t fathom the idea that it would be safe to wander down to the corner deli to get herself a sandwich while on vacation in one of the world’s largest cultural centers, I say she’d be the first in line to earnestly read Jenny McCarthy’s book (Dawn would love a good comeback story) and then demand that her child be excluded from any vaccinations and also gluten.

Exhibit C: Dawn is a self-righteous busybody who ruins everything just by existing. In both the books and the television series, Dawn is portrayed as the voice of reason. Having recently taken the time to watch one of my favorite childhood shows all over again as research (for something) I can confidently say that everyone would have been better off without Dawn’s meddling. As a teenager she literally accused an elderly neighbor witchcraft (considering that the neighbor was trying to help Claudia Kishi be better at math, she probably wasn’t wrong) (Zing!) and tried to pin a murder on a sweet flower shop owner who had once occupied Dawn’s home as a teenager. And through it all she refused to be swayed by either facts or reason, the same way some of my Facebook friends refuse to be swayed by scientific research just because “it doesn’t feel right” and “feelings are facts, Mark.” None of these people, including Dawn, are microbiologists or immunology experts. But that doesn’t seem to bother them.

Exhibit D: Dawn lives in California. Self-explanatory.

Exhibit E: Everything in this scene in which Dawn munches on a carrot and expresses her hatred of the color purple, which has never done anything to her.

In conclusion: I firmly believe that not only would Dawn not vaccinate her children but that she would defiantly take them to Disneyland regardless of their physical health and then blame any fallout on children who have been properly vaccinated based only on internet research she’s done on my mother’s Facebook.

What do you think? Is there another fictional character you have serious questions about? Let’s hold their feet to the fire!)